6 ms·

Aside from Signal and Telegram, is there any worthy alternative?

jakebasile 8y ago
I've just defaulted back to iMessage for pretty much everything - not an ideal option if you don't mostly talk to people with Apple devices though.
- tajen 8y ago
  What about groupchat?
  - brisance 8y ago
    iOS supports group chat. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724
- bassman9000 8y ago
  Thanks, but we have a mixed ecosystem, and Apple vendor lock-in is not an option. Plus, their current pro-privacy stance seems phony.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Phony in what way?
    - bassman9000 8y ago
      In the way that's not the result of a real pro-privacy strategy, but a unintended side effect of losing the voice assistant battle. Because Siri was getting behind, they now market themselves, directly or not, as privacy friendly. IMHO, they haven't yet found a way to market those vast amounts of tracking information without causing another scandal.
      - lakechfoma 8y ago
        What do you think of choices like aggregating GPS tracks from Apple Maps to augment their map data like Google but with the key difference of removing the start and end points client side? Really going for the "we want the capability without the liability" angle here. Doesn't seem too phony to me.
      - xvector 8y ago
        > Because Siri was getting behind, they now market themselves, directly or not, as privacy friendly. I think you need to justify your statement a bit more, as right now, it amounts to baseless speculation. Apple's entire ecosystem is designed with privacy in mind, and they've consistently doubled down on it every time. Consider the Secure Enclave - Apple would be able to profit quite a bit if they harvested their users' data, but they have long since made the choice to encrypt it with a per-device key that is effectively impossible to extract. Combined with their spats with the government to avoid decrypting or introducing backdoors, I think you would be very hard-pressed to find a company or culture that values user privacy more than Apple. This isn't something they've done because Siri was falling behind. This is what caused Siri to fall behind.
moe_32 8y ago
E-mail. It's pretty amazing.
- bassman9000 8y ago
  It is, and I've discussed how it will be around and strong 10 years from now, when many other current platforms are past dead. But it's not an option for the fast-pace, short-text, short-lived communication, thread style conversations. No, Gmail lock-in is not an option.
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    Email, not gmail.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Decentralized, can be filtered, everyone has it... yep, email.
- mynewtb 8y ago
  - You are lucky of your provider does push notifications - no presence or typing indicators - no working end to end encryption, definitely so for group threads - no reasonable concept of managing groups - no standard way of quoting - inefficient or unsafe media sharing - insane amounts of spam - no lightweight formatting - no avatars And that's just what randomly came to mind. E-mail sucks for almost anything.
  - romwell 8y ago
    >E-mail sucks for almost anything. Ever tried sending a message that's several pages long on anything but email? Go ahead, do it. See how <your preferred messenger> hits the ground face down on that. Even your short comment is too long to be comfortably read in most IM apps. >- no standard way of quoting Using > is a de-facto standard. Now, I know, you have objections. Before you voice them, try receiving a long message in your IM of choice, and try writing a response quoting parts of the long message you just got. Could you manage to do it in a single message? Ah. Some of use like to write, you know. And email is good for that. Almost anything else sucks.
gglitch 8y ago
https://keybase.io/ https://keybase.io/
Boulth 8y ago
https://conversations.im https://conversations.im the same security primitives as in Signal, but open and decentralized.
walterbell 8y ago
Matrix/Riot and Wire.com (from ex-Skype team), who are working with IETF to standardize an open protocol for E2E encrypted messaging. We need to get back to open protocols.
- dest 8y ago
  Interesting info. Do you have some ressources about this effort of standardization?
  - walterbell 8y ago
    https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/ It's progressing rapidly. Cisco, Google, Facebook & others participating.
    - dest 8y ago
      Thanks, will follow this (we package Matrix for B2B)
Vinnl 8y ago
That depends on what it is you don't like about those two. I presume phone number identification and non-standard encryption?
- bassman9000 8y ago
  Encryption and ease-of-adoption. I have no troubles testing 20 apps, but my family needs something really easy to use.
axaxs 8y ago
I compared them all at one time. Encrypted by default was a must, the rest were excluded. Signal - Featureless Telegram - Not encrypted by default, and controversial encryption Wire - Really liked Wire, but it had a bug of not doing push notifications correctly. Many missed messages until opening the app manually and seeing them. Viber - No real complaint with Viber I guess, I don't quite remember why I didn't like it. LINE - This is what I settled on. Nice interface, customizable, same encryption as WhatsApp/Signal/etc, voice and video also encrypted E2E, everything worked flawlessly. I wish more Americans used it. In the end, LINE was the winner. That said, if Wire were to fix the issues I had with them, I would choose it instead. I really like the fact that you can use multiple devices with Wire, which is the only one that let's you do that.
- poisonarena 8y ago
  Tried to get my Whatsapp group to switch to LINE when I visited Japan this summer, because I liked the interface and all the stickers, but unfortunately it didn't stick :(
  - axaxs 8y ago
    Oh yes I didn't even mention the stickers! As an adult I thought I'd never use such childish things, but my wife and I abuse them all the time and find them absolutely hilarious. That's probably a big reason I convinced her to switch.
- crtasm 8y ago
  I had the same problem with Wire, it prompted me to move to Signal. It has giphy gifs/stickers, emoticons and basic sketching now if those were features you desired. LINE I've not heard of. Play store says it contains adverts and IAP. Is the 'lite' version good enough (it doesn't mention ads)?
  - axaxs 8y ago
    LINE is a bit weird. It's more than just a messenger, and if you venture into its bigger world you'll see an ad on some pages, but for things within the app. IAP would be premium stickers, games, and making international calls(google LINE OUT, it has decent rates). I don't recall ever seeing a 3rd party ad. I use LINE strictly as a messenger - if you do this, you will never see an ad. I do get a random message from LINE USA every month or two letting me know of some event, but that's about it and I can live with it.
pmlnr 8y ago
XMPP, Matrix, SMS, email.

I've just defaulted back to iMessage for pretty much everything - not an ideal option if you don't mostly talk to people with Apple devices though.

tajen 8y ago
What about groupchat?
- brisance 8y ago
  iOS supports group chat. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724
bassman9000 8y ago
Thanks, but we have a mixed ecosystem, and Apple vendor lock-in is not an option. Plus, their current pro-privacy stance seems phony.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Phony in what way?
  - bassman9000 8y ago
    In the way that's not the result of a real pro-privacy strategy, but a unintended side effect of losing the voice assistant battle. Because Siri was getting behind, they now market themselves, directly or not, as privacy friendly. IMHO, they haven't yet found a way to market those vast amounts of tracking information without causing another scandal.
    - lakechfoma 8y ago
      What do you think of choices like aggregating GPS tracks from Apple Maps to augment their map data like Google but with the key difference of removing the start and end points client side? Really going for the "we want the capability without the liability" angle here. Doesn't seem too phony to me.
    - xvector 8y ago
      > Because Siri was getting behind, they now market themselves, directly or not, as privacy friendly. I think you need to justify your statement a bit more, as right now, it amounts to baseless speculation. Apple's entire ecosystem is designed with privacy in mind, and they've consistently doubled down on it every time. Consider the Secure Enclave - Apple would be able to profit quite a bit if they harvested their users' data, but they have long since made the choice to encrypt it with a per-device key that is effectively impossible to extract. Combined with their spats with the government to avoid decrypting or introducing backdoors, I think you would be very hard-pressed to find a company or culture that values user privacy more than Apple. This isn't something they've done because Siri was falling behind. This is what caused Siri to fall behind.

moe_32 8y ago

E-mail. It's pretty amazing.

bassman9000 8y ago
It is, and I've discussed how it will be around and strong 10 years from now, when many other current platforms are past dead. But it's not an option for the fast-pace, short-text, short-lived communication, thread style conversations. No, Gmail lock-in is not an option.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Email, not gmail.
pmlnr 8y ago
Decentralized, can be filtered, everyone has it... yep, email.
mynewtb 8y ago
- You are lucky of your provider does push notifications - no presence or typing indicators - no working end to end encryption, definitely so for group threads - no reasonable concept of managing groups - no standard way of quoting - inefficient or unsafe media sharing - insane amounts of spam - no lightweight formatting - no avatars And that's just what randomly came to mind. E-mail sucks for almost anything.
- romwell 8y ago
  >E-mail sucks for almost anything. Ever tried sending a message that's several pages long on anything but email? Go ahead, do it. See how <your preferred messenger> hits the ground face down on that. Even your short comment is too long to be comfortably read in most IM apps. >- no standard way of quoting Using > is a de-facto standard. Now, I know, you have objections. Before you voice them, try receiving a long message in your IM of choice, and try writing a response quoting parts of the long message you just got. Could you manage to do it in a single message? Ah. Some of use like to write, you know. And email is good for that. Almost anything else sucks.

gglitch 8y ago

https://keybase.io/ https://keybase.io/

Boulth 8y ago

https://conversations.im https://conversations.im the same security primitives as in Signal, but open and decentralized.

walterbell 8y ago

Matrix/Riot and Wire.com (from ex-Skype team), who are working with IETF to standardize an open protocol for E2E encrypted messaging. We need to get back to open protocols.

dest 8y ago
Interesting info. Do you have some ressources about this effort of standardization?
- walterbell 8y ago
  https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/ It's progressing rapidly. Cisco, Google, Facebook & others participating.
  - dest 8y ago
    Thanks, will follow this (we package Matrix for B2B)

Vinnl 8y ago

That depends on what it is you don't like about those two. I presume phone number identification and non-standard encryption?

bassman9000 8y ago
Encryption and ease-of-adoption. I have no troubles testing 20 apps, but my family needs something really easy to use.

axaxs 8y ago

I compared them all at one time. Encrypted by default was a must, the rest were excluded. Signal - Featureless Telegram - Not encrypted by default, and controversial encryption Wire - Really liked Wire, but it had a bug of not doing push notifications correctly. Many missed messages until opening the app manually and seeing them. Viber - No real complaint with Viber I guess, I don't quite remember why I didn't like it. LINE - This is what I settled on. Nice interface, customizable, same encryption as WhatsApp/Signal/etc, voice and video also encrypted E2E, everything worked flawlessly. I wish more Americans used it. In the end, LINE was the winner. That said, if Wire were to fix the issues I had with them, I would choose it instead. I really like the fact that you can use multiple devices with Wire, which is the only one that let's you do that.

poisonarena 8y ago
Tried to get my Whatsapp group to switch to LINE when I visited Japan this summer, because I liked the interface and all the stickers, but unfortunately it didn't stick :(
- axaxs 8y ago
  Oh yes I didn't even mention the stickers! As an adult I thought I'd never use such childish things, but my wife and I abuse them all the time and find them absolutely hilarious. That's probably a big reason I convinced her to switch.
crtasm 8y ago
I had the same problem with Wire, it prompted me to move to Signal. It has giphy gifs/stickers, emoticons and basic sketching now if those were features you desired. LINE I've not heard of. Play store says it contains adverts and IAP. Is the 'lite' version good enough (it doesn't mention ads)?
- axaxs 8y ago
  LINE is a bit weird. It's more than just a messenger, and if you venture into its bigger world you'll see an ad on some pages, but for things within the app. IAP would be premium stickers, games, and making international calls(google LINE OUT, it has decent rates). I don't recall ever seeing a 3rd party ad. I use LINE strictly as a messenger - if you do this, you will never see an ad. I do get a random message from LINE USA every month or two letting me know of some event, but that's about it and I can live with it.

pmlnr 8y ago

XMPP, Matrix, SMS, email.