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Signal is one of the great undertakings of our time. And it's one of the last bastions of internet freedom. A free-to-use global communications platform that d

• miramba 3y ago
  Requiring a phone number is like asking for an id. What does signal offer that whatsapp doesn‘t? Serious question. Edit: Ok, ok, I was wrong, signal does have advantages over whatsapp.
  • Vinnl 3y ago
    It encrypts your metadata (the most important data) and doesn't use it to manipulate you. It's a non-profit. And now you can use it without exposing your phone number to other users.
  • nicce 3y ago
    WhatsApp does not provide real encryption - all the metadata is unencrypted!
    • KomoD 3y ago
      And they're also owned by Facebook, not exactly a company that should be trusted
  • pyramid301 3y ago
    Whatsapp only e2e encrypts message contents. The only thing Signal knows about you at any given time is the time of account creation and the date of your account’s last connection to Signal servers. That's tied to your phone number. They don't know who you chat with, the contents of those messages, your phone contacts, anything. I'd get a chuckle out of comparing that with the privacy of Whatsapp.
  • croes 3y ago
    No data sharing with FB
  • purplejacket 3y ago
    Again: Metadata. WhatsApp records a timestamp of every message you send/receive, and who the other party is. Signal only records two pieces of metadata: timestamp of when you signed up, timestamp of the last time you sent a message.
  • revicon 3y ago
    Whatsapp message content can be pulled via a subpoena along with a lot of other private data. Signal's can not. FBI doc on what messaging apps can provide via subpoena pulled by a FOIA request... https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=21114562 https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=2111...
    • rmgk 3y ago
      That link says for WhatsApp: > Message Content: Limited* > * If target is using an iPhone and iCloud backups enabled, iCloud returns may include WhatsApp data, to include message content
    • arp242 3y ago
      > Whatsapp message content can be pulled via a subpoena along with a lot of other private data. Signal's can not. Your own link does not say that. At all. It directly disputes that.
    • godelski 3y ago
      I think this link is better https://signal.org/bigbrother/ https://signal.org/bigbrother/
  • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    People who subpoena Whatsapp know who your friends are.
  • cja 3y ago
    1. Facebook owns WhatsApp and uses it to collect data about people, such as who they communicate with, how and when. They also know about many of the websites you visit and what you do there. They know everything you do on Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. They buy mountains of data about us from other sources. By analysing all of that data they can probably do a reasonable job at guessing the content of your WhatsApp messages. 2. WhatsApp tries to get every user to accept the option to backup messages and photos to Google Drive, where they sit unencrypted and accessible by Google. Even if you reject that option yourself, your correspondents are likely to have enabled it (if only just to stop WhatsApp from nagging about it) and so your messages are available for Google to read. Example of why this can be bad: https://www.vice.com/en/article/zm8q43/paul-manafort-icloud-whatsapp-bad-opsec-witness-tampering https://www.vice.com/en/article/zm8q43/paul-manafort-icloud-... 3. Google Photos asks WhatsApp users if they'd like it to back up their WhatsApp photos. Even if you reject that option, your correspondents may have enabled it and so your photos are stored online unencrypted and accessible by Google. 4. Why should we limit what Google and Facebook know about us? Google and Facebook influence our behaviour for the benefit of their paying customers. Their computer systems are too powerful for our minds. They work against us, not for us. Companies like Facebook will come to be seen like tobacco companies, except that the harm is as from mind altering drugs. There is a documentary on Netflix called The Social Dilemma which explains this well. The polarisation of societies and the spread of conspiracy theories are some of the effects. The only defence is to disengage. 5. Read about Chinese-style social credit to understand why you want companies like Facebook and Google to know as little about you as possible. This is a good overview: https://nhglobalpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/china-social-credit-system.jpg https://nhglobalpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/chin...
    • joshuaissac 3y ago
      > backup messages and photos to Google Drive, where they sit unencrypted and accessible by Google WhatsApp provides an option (off by default) to encrypt the backup with a password so that it cannot be decrypted by Google.
  • ninkendo 3y ago
    My 2¢, as someone who tried using WhatsApp once and ran away screaming: WhatsApp requires you to give it access to all your contacts (your entire address book) in order to use it at all. This information is uploaded straight to Facebook’s servers where they’ll inevitably use it to place your WhatsApp account in a social graph so they know who you are based on your contacts. I found this to be unacceptable so I uninstalled it.
  • kelnos 3y ago
    Even if all the other things sibling posters mentioned didn't exist, the simple fact that Whatsapp is owned by Meta and Signal is not... well, that'd be enough for me.
• dijit 3y ago
  Yeah, nah, it might be fashionable but I'm not 100% convinced that it's not an operation intended to be a lightening rod for "private" communication. Given how tightly they control development, disallow third-party clients, disallow federation, disallow self-hosting servers, have a history if disallowing use without google play and have hid huge development features from the public (mobile-coin) despite being open source. etc; The idea that it's a great undertaking of our time is so bombastic that it's guaranteed to be false even if you truly believe that they are completely altruistic (which I'm willing to believe but it's not coming easy to me based on the above). "What's better"? Matrix. Which seeks to solve all of my points, the only thing lacking is market share which honestly is partially caused by these "easy to use" services which trade off everything else, which also consumes developer mind-share even if you're unwilling to acknowledge that. (devs are motivated to solve issues for friends, family and themselves if they are exposed more frequently to systems and services that are sub-par).
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
    The reason Signal is successful is because it at least somewhat reliably works, while Matrix is the worst of fiddleware. https://blog.koehntopp.info/2024/02/13/the-matrix-trashfire.html https://blog.koehntopp.info/2024/02/13/the-matrix-trashfire.... explains why Matrix is lacking market share, and I think Signal's decision to be aggressively closed is due to a justified fear of becoming that.
    • sitzkrieg 3y ago
      the matrix protocol immediately fell over on syncing huge channels etc tho
      • jeltz 3y ago
        They have fixed that with sliding sync but not all clients support that yet.
        • NavinF 3y ago
• godelski 3y ago
  > We should support it. If you haven't already, then consider signing up for a recurring donation to the Signal Foundation. I always like to remind people that you can also donate through your employer and many will match. This is a great way to multiply your donation and everybody wins. Your org is going to donate x amount a year anyways and so might as well "vote" on where some of this money goes.
• oezi 3y ago
  While I am thankful that Signal exists and is a considerate of privacy concerns I don't think their decisions are always right. For instance, I would love to see picture sent to me by my spouse automatically saved to camera roll. Signal has no option for this because it could put the privacy of me and the sender in jeopardy.
  • godelski 3y ago
    They have a community forum with a feature request system. Though I'll admit it's a big echo chamber there. But every new user adds a new voice and I can't see how that isn't a good thing. Fwiw, I want this feature too. And others. I've submitted feature requests in the past. I even asked that usernames add QR codes and links. I'm not sure if I was heard, but hey, the feature is there and even some of the echo people were against it.
  • kiwijamo 3y ago
    WhatsApp has this feature and it drives me nuts. My roll is full of crap people (especially chat groups) send me and I have to clean it up every now and then. I surely hope Signal doesn't do this and keeps the current approach of allowing users the option to download the images they want, when they want.
  • kelnos 3y ago
    I actually like it this way. Occasionally (not always, which is even more confusing), images from random Whatsapp conversations ends up in the Android equivalent of my camera roll, and it annoys me to no end. My camera roll is for photos that I have taken. If I want to put something from someone else in there, that's a decision I will pro-actively make. Other apps shouldn't be doing that for me.
• jjav 3y ago
  > And it's one of the last bastions of internet freedom. I don't want to be too negative on Signal since they do some good work and I do use it. But freedom? No. It is another completely proprietary platform. A better one, but still proprietary, so the antithesis of internet freedom. For example just earlier this month the Signal client overnight stopped working on my old Mac because they decided to no longer support older OSX releases. So I can longer use it on that machine, my primary desktop. If Signal was in any way open or free (as in freedom) I'd just compile my own client to speak an open protocol and be back in business. But no, Signal is just a proprietary service with a proprietary client.
  • gruez 3y ago
    >If Signal was in any way open or free (as in freedom) I'd just compile my own client to speak an open protocol and be back in business. But no, Signal is just a proprietary service with a proprietary client. Isn't the source code available? What's preventing you from compiling your own copy?
    • dingnuts 3y ago
      The server is centralized -- you might be able to stand up your own but it doesn't matter because you can't use it to talk to anyone else who isn't using your custom built app that uses your server
      • gruez 3y ago
        In other words you're complaining that it's not federated? That point has been relitigated in other parts of this thread so I don't want to go down that path. More to the point, I don't think that's what the parent post is talking about. He's complaining how he can't run signal on his outdated machine, not that he can't run his own private server.
  • warwren 3y ago
    Here u go https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop
• purpleblue 3y ago
  I thought I read that Signal has some funding by the US government. Was that not correct?
  • godelski 3y ago
    That's correct, but so what? So does Tor. The US isn't a single unified entity. They get some funding from groups that promote encryption. Gov still wants encryption for their own people and for people in authoritarian countries (it's hard for normal people to overturn an authoritative government when all communications are watched. No need to discuss CIA). But also remember there's plenty of US gov groups that attack Signal too. Just saying "US funded" isn't strong enough on it's own. The gov has it's hands in everything so it's too noisy. You'd need to make an argument about it's dependency on that money, which they aren't. Records are public btw, they are a nonprofit.
• tw04 3y ago
  They need to actually listen to users. Signal needs to support SMS, they need to support backups, they need to support easily migrating to new devices. I don't care if it makes me slightly less secure, make it a checkbox in the client that I agree if I enable the features, I'm a moron because some nation state could abuse it. Otherwise, it'll always be niche. I'm never getting non-technical friends and family to adopt a messaging app that isn't unified for SMS and secure messaging. When they say "users might not know they're sending insecure SMS messages" - fine, you own the client. Make the client bright red with a flashing "INSECURE MESSAGES" across it for all I care. It's not hard to inform a user in 2024 that they are sending a less secure message.
  • newaccount74 3y ago
    Signal has so many footguns that I stopped recommending it. I know more than one person who lost all their messages and pictures when they switched phones.
  • kelnos 3y ago
    > I'm never getting non-technical friends and family to adopt a messaging app that isn't unified for SMS and secure messaging Er, what? So no one you know uses Whatsapp, FB Messenger, Telegram, Google Talk, or anything else? I suppose it's possible that's true, but even if so, you and the people you know do not represent the common-case user.
• Lucyj001 3y ago
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• AmandaFranky 3y ago
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