I can’t use them because I can’t convince anybody to switch with me. I talk to most people on discord and I’d rather move to using Matrix, but I can’t convince any of my friends or family or anyone I know to use anything else.
I just told everybody that I only reply on Threema and don’t use anything else.
My thought process was - if they can’t be arsed to use another app (which is an extremely effortless task to do) then they are probably not worth staying in contact with.
The 3 people that were most important in my life at that point got the app immediately.
After over a decade with threema I now have over 40 contacts there, mostly friends, some colleagues, multiple hobby centric groups etc.
I guess just start and don’t compromise and be patient
This is pretty much exactly what I did. I said I will be using signal, and if you want to stay in contact with me, that’s how you will do it, because I will not reply to anything else.
Same. Works perfectly with family
Me too. My Fam is on Signal now.
I just told everybody that I only reply on Threema
if they can’t be arsed to use another app (which is an extremely effortless task to do) then they are probably not worth staying in contact with
So if someone said you have to use their messagee of choice - Signal, Whatsapp, Matrix, FB Messager, Discord - you’d have no problem meeting them there because it’s effortless, yeah?
You left out two important real world aspects from your thought experiment.
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one person cares about a specific aspect of the messenger - privacy - and the other doesn’t care, they are just on whatever their peers told them to be on. So if their messenger happens to have the aspect I care about I’ll do it. Since they don’t have any such criteria I expect them to do it as well.
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If that person is important enough for me and doesn’t budge I’ll call or E-Mail them. Which is less private than an e2ee messenger, but more private than data harvesting companies.
Exactly this. I use Signal for people close to me and SMS or Email for those who don’t use signal, who I don’t have coversations with often anyways. Dispite it’s many, many flaws, I will use SMS before I use a Meta messenger.
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None of the alternatives are good enough yet. Either the UX is bad, or they are missing important features, or both in most cases. There is too much focus on privacy and encryption and not enough on being easy to use, and having the features people are used to.
Asking friends on Discord to switch to Matrix which is missing most of the features and bots they are used to is not going to work out. Same for Telegram to Signal or Matrix when they’re used to group chats, channels, stickers, bots to handle moderation of new users, polls, forwarding of messages, stories, and so on.
None of the Discord ‘alternatives’ that come up seem to support game streaming with low latency, some don’t even have voice rooms yet, they’re just a text chat with a meeting room feature tacked on.
Mumble is perfectly fine for low-latency VoIP for gaming—I think it was the first to even use the Opus codec everyone uses now. Mumble uses a ton less resources than an Electron app. You will want your main chat on another protocol, but this is hardly a barrier.
Use whatever you use now less and less and when they ask why u late just claim ur discord app was bugging or u were “talking to ur friends” on element.
you NEED to convince, by simply telling or proving
You have to negotiate.
They: Do you have whatsapp?
You: No i hate that app but we can use Rehnijobuboba, heard of that?
They: No and there’s no way I’m installing something I can’t even speak.
You: Ok, you dont want to install that and I don’t want whatsapp, lets meet halfway and use Signal together!
They: Fine.
Putting up a synapse server in the public cloud and building bridges to the apps people use. At least I get my messaging in one place
My iptv dealer uses it so I have to for that
Tell them the reason they keep getting creepy ads for stuff they’re talking about in the car is FB messenger.
That creeps enough people out.
Its hard to move people from discord a lot of the matrix uis arent good enough yet.
Wirg signal i simply dont respond on other services for 2 days but respond instantly on signal. And make sure everyone knows it. I also have a weekly bbq and the invite goes in the signal group chat and the signal group chat alone.
Once u get enough people everyone else moves cos of fomo.
As much as I expect the down votes… But this is why I like beeper. It’s a good catch all for unsavvy folk. Easier login with having other major chatting apps. (Self hosting is available and self hosted bridges are on dock this year…)
I started donating to signal and told the family that they have to use it now otherwise it would be waste of money. And everyone switched immediately.
I won’t use anything other popular other than signal. There are some other cool apps like simplex behind for but I keep that for my enthusiasts out there.
People who don’t want to keep in touch and still use WhatsApp despite WhatsApp using the signal protocol make me wonder how much they want to keep in touch with me and how much they understand their tools and devices.
I also wonder what other bullshit apps they use as well but won’t install signal.
Luckily I have friends and family who indeed do want to stay in touch and who also recognize the implications of using questionable software. I keep them close.
I only have a few privacy-focused friends on Signal and Matrix and I talk to them that way. I have a few friends who use my personal Nextcloud and just use Nextcloud Talk to chat with me. For all others, I still use the mainstream platforms and just take care to not post any info that I don’t want public and I make sure the apps have limited info and app permissions.
I think it is tough to convince others to switch until they themselves see the need, at which point they’ll start asking you for advice on what to do.
With new contacts, I’ll usually ask if they have Signal first and if they don’t then I don’t really push it. I think just getting the name out there every once in a while is the most you can do.
Don’t try convincing anyone. Make yourself visibly more available in one place over another.
You become impossible to text without it. This only works once, so choose well. We do WIRE, have for years.
The issue is FBM is something you can find just about everyone on. Pulling people off that is difficult. So you’ll need to incognito to yank them off.
I got my family to switch to Signal a while ago after a high profile data harvesting scandal with WhatsApp. Some were looking at telegram and I showed them how that had dogshit security by just finding another high profile case.
People like to be able to send documents, bank numbers, etc. with ease. Remind them that’s not really possible with SMS or WhatsApp or whatever. (Technically Signal still is centralized and is vulnerable to shenanigans, but the fact that it’s open source and truly E2EE mitigate that. And has the least friction of all the options.)
Anyone who thinks a secure messaging app is all they need to keep their communications private from government snooping is a fool. All of the end-to-end encryption in the world won’t really accomplish anything when there are any number of other ways to read your screen, log keys, etc. The app just encrypts messages, what happens after that on the user’s device is outside of the app’s design.
Never assume any digital device is safe. Never.
This is why my preferred way of communicating is to sit in darkness and construct one-time pad ciphers which I then put in a new safe that I don’t have the combination to unlock and is welded shut and dropped into the ocean. But other than that I like to use grapheneOS and matrix. I can’t be sure it’s 100% private, but I am 100% sure that facebook isn’t private, so I’d rather use matrix.
James Cameron now knows your secrets
