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I moved my family over to Signal years ago. Anyone new who wants to message me, I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install

I moved my family over to Signal years ago. Anyone new who wants to message me, I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install it; it's been fairly frictionless, after all how hard is it to download an app and go through the fairly minimal registration process; and for someone already using WhatsApp, "one more account" probably isn't a major concern. I tried various steps in the past to retain access to WhatsApp for a couple of people who didn't move, by having a work account on my phone, with a second SIM, but a one-click mistake one time gave WhatsApp my entire contact list from the "Personal" sandbox account, and I've decided not to even bother again.

wkat4242 1y ago
For me the "one more account" is really a problem. WhatsApp is the standard messenger in most of the EU. And I don't want to go to signal because it's only marginally better. It's still American and still a walled garden (no third party apps allowed, no federation). It's a slightly less smelly walled garden.
- palata 1y ago
  I don't get this. Everyone is used to juggling between multiple apps, many of which allow to send messages. People are fine talking over Discord AND WhatsApp AND three others, but somehow "it's unbearable to add Signal". And it's not exactly "yet another app", it's pretty much a clone of WhatsApp. So if everybody moved to Signal, we could just get rid of WhatsApp. Which gets us to your second point: > And I don't want to go to signal because it's only marginally better. It's still American and still a walled garden (no third party apps allowed, no federation). It's a slightly less smelly walled garden. This, to me, is downright irrational. "Less smelly" is better, especially if it takes zero effort (you don't even need to create an account with a password, it just sends you an SMS). If there was a non-American alternative to Signal, surely I would go for it. But there isn't. In the meantime, Signal is by far the best alternative to WhatsApp in terms of privacy. Not to mention that there is actually a valid reason to not allow third party apps (spoiler: security). Last time I heard a fork of Signal making the news, it was pretty bad.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    This is not about Signal. This about being spread too thin. To be able to keep up with all the work projects I'm involved in, I need to use Slack, Discord, Matrix at the same time. Add WhatsApp on top of that. That's 4, but not all. Add e-mail and ordinary phone calls. 6 methods to just keep up with work. I also have at least three ways to reach required documents and meeting notes. I really don't want to jump like a platformer character from point to point to be able to communicate and get things done. In my personal life, I prefer "1 task, 1 application" model. Communications, one application. Personal information storage? Everything in one place, etc. Application hopping has a very big mental overhead, and kills my flow. Many colleagues are in the same boat. It's not Signal, it's any app, account, for any reason.
    - mr_toad 1y ago
      > I need to use Slack, Discord, Matrix Sounds like a perfect way to ghost people. “You send the update on Matrix? Oh, yeah I was stuck arguing with people in Slack all day, I must have missed it.”
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        Yeah that's exactly what happens. Especially because not every app allows per-user notification control on android so I just disable notifications altogether for the apps I don't use so much. I only want to be notified for the most important stuff, I don't have time to constantly tend to my phone every time someone says something. So I tend to look at it just at the end of the day. One thing that's nice about matrix is that you can select keywords to trigger notifications. Most of the other apps don't have that. So I tell people to say PRIO or PRORITY if their message is really important, so they can force a notification. Any other messages just get looked at when I get around to it and don't notify. If they abuse the priority I simply remove their right to do that. But none of the other apps seems to be able to do these keywords or (even better) have an option to mark a message as urgent or something.
    - palata 1y ago
      I don't get that. I also must use Slack, Discord, Matrix, WhatsApp and I don't see a problem in having Signal on top. When I receive a message from someone, all it takes is clicking on the notification and answering there. To the point where sometimes I can't remember on which app I was having which discussion.
- alias_neo 1y ago
  I disagree wholeheartedly that it's "only marginally better". It's not Meta, and that's a huge improvement. A European alternative would be excellent (I'm in the UK), but no such thing exists, that said, Signal's server and clients are open-source and can be self-hosted, or even deployed at scale by a European government/entity if they so wish. I work in the "secure comms" space, and I have reviewed every line of code in the open-source server (as of the revision I last worked on), and built products on it, and though I can't prove they run the same code they publish, I'm "happy enough" with what I see that I'd use it over anything owned by Meta any day. In an ideal world, I'd host it myself for everyone I communicate with to use, but without federation that's not a possibility, so given a choice between Signal and WhatsApp, the decision is hands-down Signal.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    > In an ideal world, I'd host it myself for everyone I communicate with to use, but without federation that's not a possibility, so given a choice between Signal and WhatsApp, the decision is hands-down Signal. If that's the only choice, maybe yes. Though the installed base of whatsapp is so big I could not leave it right now anyway. So Signal would only be extra. But for me to voluntarily promote an app it has to be a lot more open than Signal. Even if other people around me start using it I'll probably be the last to move.
leokennis 1y ago
> I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install it; it's been fairly frictionless, after all how hard is it to download an app and go through the fairly minimal registration process Genuinely curious. I am in WhatsApp groups for my kids soccer teams (who will be there at the game, can my kid drive together with you to the match), my kids school classes (Johnny lost his headphones did anyone see them), my work teams "social chat" (happy birthday, I am at conference XYZ) etc. etc. In your situation, which of the three scenarios applies? 1 - You are not in such groups 2 - You were in such groups, and the entire group moved over to Signal 3 - You were in such groups, but the entire group did not move over to Signal and now you are not in these groups anymore
- alias_neo 1y ago
  It's scenario 1. My children are still young, pre-school and reception so no such groups have come up yet. The odd parent that wanted to contact me has installed Signal or sent me SMS (RCS). For anything else, my wife is still on WhatsApp so she relays messages if/when they come up. EDIT: re: Work, my colleagues are all on Signal, we have lots of Signal groups to communicate.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    So in a nutshell "I have someone else on WhatsApp who keeps me in the loop" Expect this to scale, in my experience you can move your family over to another service. Groups of families your kid is somehow in contact with, not so much...
    - alias_neo 1y ago
      it's a challenge for sure, however, I've managed to get my extended family all on Signal which is about as much reach as I could hope/expect to achieve. That's my household, my parents, my grandparents, my parents-in-law, my sibling(s), cousins, aunts/uncles, sibling(s)-in-law, friends, and my colleagues. Some of my children's' friends' parents who I'm friendly enough with also began using Signal so we can communicate. Those who are school friends but not outside-of-school-friends, we can communicate with via the school's app. Almost anyone I could want to communicate with is on Signal, all of the family is directly or indirectly because of me, and friends and colleagues has been a combination. Anyone I don't know well enough to have a conversation about privacy and Meta being the antithesis of it, is not likely someone I need to communicate with. All in, my wife, on WhatsApp, isn't really "keep[ing] me in the loop", unless we're messaging a trades-person or similar, but that's infrequent enough to not be an issue.

wkat4242 1y ago

For me the "one more account" is really a problem. WhatsApp is the standard messenger in most of the EU. And I don't want to go to signal because it's only marginally better. It's still American and still a walled garden (no third party apps allowed, no federation). It's a slightly less smelly walled garden.

palata 1y ago
I don't get this. Everyone is used to juggling between multiple apps, many of which allow to send messages. People are fine talking over Discord AND WhatsApp AND three others, but somehow "it's unbearable to add Signal". And it's not exactly "yet another app", it's pretty much a clone of WhatsApp. So if everybody moved to Signal, we could just get rid of WhatsApp. Which gets us to your second point: > And I don't want to go to signal because it's only marginally better. It's still American and still a walled garden (no third party apps allowed, no federation). It's a slightly less smelly walled garden. This, to me, is downright irrational. "Less smelly" is better, especially if it takes zero effort (you don't even need to create an account with a password, it just sends you an SMS). If there was a non-American alternative to Signal, surely I would go for it. But there isn't. In the meantime, Signal is by far the best alternative to WhatsApp in terms of privacy. Not to mention that there is actually a valid reason to not allow third party apps (spoiler: security). Last time I heard a fork of Signal making the news, it was pretty bad.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  This is not about Signal. This about being spread too thin. To be able to keep up with all the work projects I'm involved in, I need to use Slack, Discord, Matrix at the same time. Add WhatsApp on top of that. That's 4, but not all. Add e-mail and ordinary phone calls. 6 methods to just keep up with work. I also have at least three ways to reach required documents and meeting notes. I really don't want to jump like a platformer character from point to point to be able to communicate and get things done. In my personal life, I prefer "1 task, 1 application" model. Communications, one application. Personal information storage? Everything in one place, etc. Application hopping has a very big mental overhead, and kills my flow. Many colleagues are in the same boat. It's not Signal, it's any app, account, for any reason.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    > I need to use Slack, Discord, Matrix Sounds like a perfect way to ghost people. “You send the update on Matrix? Oh, yeah I was stuck arguing with people in Slack all day, I must have missed it.”
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Yeah that's exactly what happens. Especially because not every app allows per-user notification control on android so I just disable notifications altogether for the apps I don't use so much. I only want to be notified for the most important stuff, I don't have time to constantly tend to my phone every time someone says something. So I tend to look at it just at the end of the day. One thing that's nice about matrix is that you can select keywords to trigger notifications. Most of the other apps don't have that. So I tell people to say PRIO or PRORITY if their message is really important, so they can force a notification. Any other messages just get looked at when I get around to it and don't notify. If they abuse the priority I simply remove their right to do that. But none of the other apps seems to be able to do these keywords or (even better) have an option to mark a message as urgent or something.
  - palata 1y ago
    I don't get that. I also must use Slack, Discord, Matrix, WhatsApp and I don't see a problem in having Signal on top. When I receive a message from someone, all it takes is clicking on the notification and answering there. To the point where sometimes I can't remember on which app I was having which discussion.
alias_neo 1y ago
I disagree wholeheartedly that it's "only marginally better". It's not Meta, and that's a huge improvement. A European alternative would be excellent (I'm in the UK), but no such thing exists, that said, Signal's server and clients are open-source and can be self-hosted, or even deployed at scale by a European government/entity if they so wish. I work in the "secure comms" space, and I have reviewed every line of code in the open-source server (as of the revision I last worked on), and built products on it, and though I can't prove they run the same code they publish, I'm "happy enough" with what I see that I'd use it over anything owned by Meta any day. In an ideal world, I'd host it myself for everyone I communicate with to use, but without federation that's not a possibility, so given a choice between Signal and WhatsApp, the decision is hands-down Signal.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  > In an ideal world, I'd host it myself for everyone I communicate with to use, but without federation that's not a possibility, so given a choice between Signal and WhatsApp, the decision is hands-down Signal. If that's the only choice, maybe yes. Though the installed base of whatsapp is so big I could not leave it right now anyway. So Signal would only be extra. But for me to voluntarily promote an app it has to be a lot more open than Signal. Even if other people around me start using it I'll probably be the last to move.

leokennis 1y ago

> I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install it; it's been fairly frictionless, after all how hard is it to download an app and go through the fairly minimal registration process Genuinely curious. I am in WhatsApp groups for my kids soccer teams (who will be there at the game, can my kid drive together with you to the match), my kids school classes (Johnny lost his headphones did anyone see them), my work teams "social chat" (happy birthday, I am at conference XYZ) etc. etc. In your situation, which of the three scenarios applies? 1 - You are not in such groups 2 - You were in such groups, and the entire group moved over to Signal 3 - You were in such groups, but the entire group did not move over to Signal and now you are not in these groups anymore

alias_neo 1y ago
It's scenario 1. My children are still young, pre-school and reception so no such groups have come up yet. The odd parent that wanted to contact me has installed Signal or sent me SMS (RCS). For anything else, my wife is still on WhatsApp so she relays messages if/when they come up. EDIT: re: Work, my colleagues are all on Signal, we have lots of Signal groups to communicate.
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  So in a nutshell "I have someone else on WhatsApp who keeps me in the loop" Expect this to scale, in my experience you can move your family over to another service. Groups of families your kid is somehow in contact with, not so much...
  - alias_neo 1y ago
    it's a challenge for sure, however, I've managed to get my extended family all on Signal which is about as much reach as I could hope/expect to achieve. That's my household, my parents, my grandparents, my parents-in-law, my sibling(s), cousins, aunts/uncles, sibling(s)-in-law, friends, and my colleagues. Some of my children's' friends' parents who I'm friendly enough with also began using Signal so we can communicate. Those who are school friends but not outside-of-school-friends, we can communicate with via the school's app. Almost anyone I could want to communicate with is on Signal, all of the family is directly or indirectly because of me, and friends and colleagues has been a combination. Anyone I don't know well enough to have a conversation about privacy and Meta being the antithesis of it, is not likely someone I need to communicate with. All in, my wife, on WhatsApp, isn't really "keep[ing] me in the loop", unless we're messaging a trades-person or similar, but that's infrequent enough to not be an issue.