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I'd argue this is a good thing. Facebook is not immortal. Every user that Facebook alienates is a win. Already many non-technical people have been moving to Sig

by mantap 6y ago

I'd argue this is a good thing. Facebook is not immortal. Every user that Facebook alienates is a win. Already many non-technical people have been moving to Signal after Facebook's new privacy policy. We need better alternatives, not better Facebook.

pmlnr 6y ago
Sadly, Signal is not the ideal solution either. When I started with the internet, there were countless free/non free email providers, and now nearly everything is gmail, outlook, yahoo, qq, and a few more big ones. We're playing the same with messaging, whereas in reality what we'd need is federated providers, competing with their client software which can all write to each other - see SMS and email. I was talking with my wife that somehow people are OK with a borrowed (rented?) identity for so many things. xyz@gmail.com, +00-00 on whatsapp, etc, and there as only a few wanting to be mail@this-is-my-home-on-the-internet.me, though this is a very different topic.
- ohthehugemanate 6y ago
  What are the intermediate steps to get there? For me, an intermediate step to a lot of worlds I like better than this one, is for a diverse ecosystem of messengers to compete on security, openness, and guarantees of not surveilling/monetizing users. In the last weeks I've had all my WhatsApp groups of "normal people" start discussing alternative messengers on exactly these terms. They've looked into Viber, Telegram, SMS, Signal, and others. So i'm happy with that.
  - pmlnr 6y ago
    Matrix.org - built on matrix, a federated, but somewhat fat protocol -, or one of conversations.im, quicksy.im, blabber.im, www.jabber.de, etc, all built on xmpp. EDIT the point with these is tricky, because they are not all-in-one solutions. People these days tend to think that an app/program == the service, but this is so not the case. I've tried telling people they could use other programs to access gmail, but it was like talking to a wall, and this is serious issue in this - the instant messenger - case as well. I have no idea how to tell people that it's possible to use _something else_ as an interface. Somehow most of them understand that there are different browsers to access the internet, but they don't apply this thinking to other protocols and services. Hence recommendations for services who provide their "own" apps, conversations being the root, quicksy and blabber being derivatives.
- sipos 6y ago
  > We're playing the same with messaging, whereas in reality what we'd need is federated providers, competing with their client software which can all write to each other - see SMS and email. True, but nothing particularly good seems to exist yet. It has to solve the problem of end-to-end encryption in a way that users can manage to not lose their keys too easily, which is a hard problem. It only has to solve this, when email did not (at least in an easily usable way for most people) because it already exists in messaging, but that doesn't stop it not being well solved holding back the situation. Anything that uses an open source client is a meaningful step better than WhatsApp, because it is easier to make and maintain a bridge from something better, like Matrix, IMHO. At least recently, I did not think Matrix was easy enough to use and stable enough to recomend to people, but them moving to something with an open source client, is better than nothing IMHO. I'm not convinced Signal is better than Telegram, as an alternative, since Telegram is so much easier to use if you don't care about end-to-end encryption (most users don't sadly), and basically as easy to use (but much less trustworthy) if you do. I'm not sure which is better TBH, but I expect more people will stay off WhatsApp if they try Telegram than if they only try Signal, which is an advantage of recomending that (though I'm not sure it out-weighs the advantage of there being less end-to-end encryption).

by mantap 6y ago

pmlnr 6y ago

Sadly, Signal is not the ideal solution either. When I started with the internet, there were countless free/non free email providers, and now nearly everything is gmail, outlook, yahoo, qq, and a few more big ones. We're playing the same with messaging, whereas in reality what we'd need is federated providers, competing with their client software which can all write to each other - see SMS and email. I was talking with my wife that somehow people are OK with a borrowed (rented?) identity for so many things. xyz@gmail.com, +00-00 on whatsapp, etc, and there as only a few wanting to be mail@this-is-my-home-on-the-internet.me, though this is a very different topic.

ohthehugemanate 6y ago
What are the intermediate steps to get there? For me, an intermediate step to a lot of worlds I like better than this one, is for a diverse ecosystem of messengers to compete on security, openness, and guarantees of not surveilling/monetizing users. In the last weeks I've had all my WhatsApp groups of "normal people" start discussing alternative messengers on exactly these terms. They've looked into Viber, Telegram, SMS, Signal, and others. So i'm happy with that.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  Matrix.org - built on matrix, a federated, but somewhat fat protocol -, or one of conversations.im, quicksy.im, blabber.im, www.jabber.de, etc, all built on xmpp. EDIT the point with these is tricky, because they are not all-in-one solutions. People these days tend to think that an app/program == the service, but this is so not the case. I've tried telling people they could use other programs to access gmail, but it was like talking to a wall, and this is serious issue in this - the instant messenger - case as well. I have no idea how to tell people that it's possible to use _something else_ as an interface. Somehow most of them understand that there are different browsers to access the internet, but they don't apply this thinking to other protocols and services. Hence recommendations for services who provide their "own" apps, conversations being the root, quicksy and blabber being derivatives.
sipos 6y ago
> We're playing the same with messaging, whereas in reality what we'd need is federated providers, competing with their client software which can all write to each other - see SMS and email. True, but nothing particularly good seems to exist yet. It has to solve the problem of end-to-end encryption in a way that users can manage to not lose their keys too easily, which is a hard problem. It only has to solve this, when email did not (at least in an easily usable way for most people) because it already exists in messaging, but that doesn't stop it not being well solved holding back the situation. Anything that uses an open source client is a meaningful step better than WhatsApp, because it is easier to make and maintain a bridge from something better, like Matrix, IMHO. At least recently, I did not think Matrix was easy enough to use and stable enough to recomend to people, but them moving to something with an open source client, is better than nothing IMHO. I'm not convinced Signal is better than Telegram, as an alternative, since Telegram is so much easier to use if you don't care about end-to-end encryption (most users don't sadly), and basically as easy to use (but much less trustworthy) if you do. I'm not sure which is better TBH, but I expect more people will stay off WhatsApp if they try Telegram than if they only try Signal, which is an advantage of recomending that (though I'm not sure it out-weighs the advantage of there being less end-to-end encryption).