11 ms·

Signal – An Ethical Replacement for WhatsApp

187 points by miles 1y ago

L29Ah 1y ago
very ethical phone-tied centralized metadata collection
jacks004 1y ago
[dead]
miracoli 1y ago
lol I'm from Germany and most people I know use for many years already :D
- WA 1y ago
  lol I'm from Germany and most people I know use WhatsApp, especially for groups, events, activities. Almost nobody uses Signal and even less use Threema. The place after WhatsApp is Telegram.
  - f1shy 1y ago
    Lol exactly. Try to organize something in the school or kindergarten with “normalos” and try to convince them to setup signal!
    - theGeatZhopa 1y ago
      Lol I'm from Germany and i think it wouldn't be a problem as normalos typically don't own mobiles in the kindergarten already. The "unnormalos" with mobiles - yes - but, if you're the kindergartener, then you dictate. But no lol - it's a pain. The mouse cant bite of the thread.
      - f1shy 1y ago
        It is not so difficult to understand I was referring to organizing smth between parents…
        theGeatZhopa 1y ago
        I don't know, I don't have kids. May be just write what you referring to in first and not to expect others with different scopes of experiences to understand what you meant? The best thing about languages is the possibility to exactly formulate, so there's no misunderstanding possible.
  - usrusr 1y ago
    Just about everybody I know uses both. The pattern I see is that groups associated with some entity like a company or a club are on signal, because at some point (before Musk took over as chief billionaire villain) it became a thing to not have your brand associated with Meta, while many groups on the more the friends&family end of the spectrum remained on Whatsapp. And 1:1 conversations are simply on whatever messenger they started on. Which is super convenient, because of the way the Android multitasking model works (and I suspect it's similar on the other side?). Far more convenient to switch between a Signal, a Whatsapp and the occasional Facebook Messenger than between two WhatsApp groups, worse if those are Whatsapp groups with a channel hierarchy. (Telegram: even just having it installed would be seen as a political statement, it's where the weirdos congregate to antivaxx and flatearth and reinstate monarchy or whatever they do)
- jnkl 1y ago
  I'm from Germany, too. This heavily depends on your social environment. There are milieus where Signal is ubiquitous and there are mileus where people don't even know what Signal is. But I think most people live in the latter.
  - f1shy 1y ago
    My experience is absolutely the 2nd group.
- maerch 1y ago
  That hasn’t been my experience. A few tech-savvy people and those close to them may use alternatives, but even then, it’s usually just for groups where someone refuses to use WhatsApp. For everything else, they still rely on WhatsApp. On top of that, nearly all groups related to kindergarten, school, or various clubs use WhatsApp, and there’s practically no way to convince them to switch. If my wife weren’t in those groups, I’d have no idea what’s going on.
kuon 1y ago
As long as I need a phone to use those, they are not a solution.
- just-ok 1y ago
  Signal has a desktop app. Unless you mean phone number, in which case I get where you’re coming from, though I think they allow just usernames now.
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    Usernames are only for discoverability. You still need a phone number.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - CactusRocket 1y ago
    You need to install the phone app to be able to activate it. If you've been offline on the desktop app for too long, you need the phone app again to re-active the desktop app. I've also noticed a lot of issues synchronizing messages between computers using the desktop app, without having the app on a phone. They allow usernames as an alternative to sharing your phone number with other people. You still need a phone number (and the phone app) to create and activate an account. It's very phone-first.
- noman-land 1y ago
  It depends on your threat model. Since WhatsApp also requires a phone, Signal is the superior option and therefor a solution to using WhatsApp.
  - CactusRocket 1y ago
    Also depends on where you're coming from. My friends use WhatsApp and I don't because of privacy considerations. If they switch to Signal, I might still not use it because they want my phone number (and their servers are centralized, owned by one organization). So for them, amongst each-other, it would be fine to all switch to Signal probably. But for those of us who have been avoiding it altogether so far, it might not change anything whatsoever.
user3939382 1y ago
The only secure comms I’m aware of would be something like the receipt of a signal over radio encrypted with a one time pad. Transmission of the signal and key is another matter.
- jchook 1y ago
  It's illegal to encrypt CB radio signals in the US and many other countries.
  - user3939382 1y ago
    I didn’t mention CB, any particular frequency, or country. My comment was on secure communication at the abstract / theoretical level.
  - Brian_K_White 1y ago
    Toothless, since it's impossible to prove that any given message is or is not encrypted. This comment I'm writing right here might not mean what it appears to mean, and might not be aimed at who it appears to be aimed at. It's effectively merely illegal to pollute the shared medium with noise.
  - f1shy 1y ago
    I can imagine somebody could make with some AI a system that talks something that makes more or less sense, but has encoded information in the message
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    In principle, yes. Technically, no. D-STAR vocoder.
TZubiri 1y ago
Signal is cool, I think it has made a huge contribution to whatsapp through its collaboration. But I think that there's room for nuance, sure it's closed source and a closed garden, but that's precisely what allows it to be gratis and free of spam (you can't build the client, you can't build a spamming client)! Sure it's controlled by an entity that may or may not use that data for ads. But it's metadata and not content, sure the NSA or some three letter agency may tap it for national security reasons(or at least masquerading as natsec reasons), but not even subfederal law enforcement and courts can access the contents of the message (E2E encryption). The contributions of Free Software has been unquantifiable, but if it continues to treat all closed source things as equally bad, then you get extremism. Surely there's a difference between an entity seeing metadata, and an entity seeing message contents, this is a non trivial distinction. Congratulations to signal if they develop an algorithm where they can't even see the metadata, but I'm not even convinced that it's good? The article cites cases of Meta products being used for malicious purposes, at least we hear from them? At least Zuck shows up against the senate to answer when shit hits the fan, if Signal is used in other parts of the world to organize coups or ethnic cleansing, you just would never hear about it because it's all super anonymous 5 stars, but ethically they would still be contributing as much as Facebook or Whatsapp. And on that topic, I don't think overfixating on Meta's role in a multi actor causal chain to be very productive? I think it comes more of a place of Free Software developers being jealous that they didn't win the popularity contest, and less from a place of genuine concern. I used to be anti Whatsapp too, but at some point I realized that 1B users have as much say in what technologies we should use than developers, it's not all about the tech. Whatsapp has gained the trust from billions of users, ignoring them and telling them we know better because we have been indoctrinated by recruiting evangelists of an extremist ideology is not the way forward. I do believe in moderate free software and Whatsapp is one of the lowest hanging fruits to accept in the path to moderate FS
- komali2 1y ago
  > but at some point I realized that 1B users have as much say in what technologies we should use than developers, it's not all about the tech. Whatsapp has gained the trust from billions of users, ignoring them and telling them we know better because we have been indoctrinated by recruiting evangelists of an extremist ideology is not the way forward. Cab you envision systemic reasons that lead to Whatsapp's users using the software without trusting Meta? I get my internet through Comcast or AT&T. I certainly don't trust either.
jl6 1y ago
I tried Signal, but it wouldn’t let me export chats, meaning the data is trapped within the app. Did they fix that?
- viraptor 1y ago
  You're looking for "chat backups". It's there.
  - thristian 1y ago
    You can make a chat backup, but it's an encrypted binary blob, not a mailbox file or a JSON file or some other more accessible format. I think I understand why they do that (if you send someone a message on Signal, they try very hard to make it difficult for anyone but the recipient to read it, whether that's by intercepting traffic or reading data stored on your device, or rummaging through your backups) but it does make it a bit of a pain.
    - jnkl 1y ago
      It is an encrypted sqlite database and there are tools to decrypt it. I think this is more or less as good and open as it gets.
    - zarzavat 1y ago
      Seems short-sighted. The more people who use Signal, the more secure their users' chats will be because they can use other apps less. Omitting basic features for "security reasons" reduces security overall, because you can't force other people to use Signal.
  - jl6 1y ago
    On iOS?
- mercacona 1y ago
  IMHO the constant complaints about losing chats or needing conversation backups aren’t technical problems—they’re social ones. We need to reclaim the freedom to speak with others ephemerally. No one should want all their conversations recorded, yet we’re heading toward the opposite with smart glasses. Ideally, we’d agree universally: chats saved for one month (the context we can actually remember from a conversation), emails for five years (for administrative control), and conversations never recorded. However, we’ve been manipulated into needing exactly the opposite. Worse yet, we think it’s possible to maintain privacy while transcribing and archiving everything in our minds, making it public.
kseistrup 1y ago
I ditched WhatsApp back in 2021 (and lost a couple og long-distance friends in the process), and I communicate mostly over DeltaChat, XMPP (née Jabber), and Signal, in that order of preference. There are many other alternatives out there, e.g. SimpleX, but many — if not most — suffer from the inability to synchronize chats across several devices. DeltaChat should pose no problems to users coming from WhatsApp, having more or less the same UI as I remember from WhatsApp back then. DeltaChat is an amazing app, check it out: https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/ You needn't even disclose who you are.
- szszrk 1y ago
  The UI of that Delta chat app looks completely like Telegram fork (client is opensource). Function wise as well. What is the backend for it? It's hard for me to find on their website. If it's also Telegram, than what's the point? I would also like to point out that Telegram has very smooth chats sync across devices because those are NOT end2end encrypted by default.
  - raybb 1y ago
    Delta chat uses email. So you can chat with anyone that has an email address. If they happen to use the app too it'll feel more like a chat for them as well.
    - iib 1y ago
      Are there any problems with the fact that email wasn't created to be instant messaging? Are the messages sometimes delayed?
      - kseistrup 1y ago
        Not in my experience. It feels like chatting on Signal or any other instant messenger, except there are no typing indicators, especially if you use DeltaChat's chatmail server (the default if you just say “let me in”).
      - 1y ago
xvilka 1y ago
SimpleX[1], no phone number required. [1] https://simplex.chat/ https://simplex.chat/
- thristian 1y ago
  SimpleX is cool, but it has VC investors, so a lot of people won't trust it long-term (for exactly the same reasons we're talking about replacing WhatsApp now).
- Springtime 1y ago
  When I last looked at this it had severe battery drain issues on Android, to where users with only one contact and just a handful of messages were experiencing it. Appears that pinned issue is still open and unresolved. Otherwise it seemed like the most promising alternative I've seen that satisfied various requirements.
- kseistrup 1y ago
  I've used SimpleX for seeral years. I do like the concept, and I have supported the project, but in my opinion it suffers from two weaknesses/lacks: 1. It cannot synchronize chats across several devices, so you need a separat “account” for each device. This can, to some extend, be mitigated by creating a group for each contact you communicate with, and then add all their and your accounts to that group. 2. Message propagation is somewhat unreliable: If you use the method described in (1), some accounts may not receive a given message. But yes, you needn't disclose your phone number in order to create an account/profile on SimpleX.
- foresto 1y ago
  Some things that keep me away from SimpleX: - No multi-device support. - No group calls. - Establishing a contact requires sharing a large link or QR code, which is often inconvenient. - Message queues drop messages if not retrieved within a relatively short period. Last time I checked, it was 21 days, which is shorter than some of my off-grid vacations. - I couldn't find clear information on who runs the message queues, so I have to assume most are controlled by a single organization. This makes it effectively a centralized service with respect to privacy and resilience. - Funded almost entirely by venture capital, making its longevity questionable, and the likelihood of future exploitation relatively high. I'm not comfortable depending on such a service to keep in touch with people.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jacks004 1y ago
[flagged]
t_luke 1y ago
Does anyone else find Signal quite hard to use? The syncing between devices stops working a lot of the time, and needing to sign in again fairly regularly. I’ve tried switching but it doesn’t stick because of the annoyance factor.
- k1t 1y ago
  Unfortunately, while you're right, it has plenty of annoyances, there's no real alternative.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    Matrix doesn't have that problem and it's even federated, without a single point of failure.
    - k1t 1y ago
      I really want Matrix to succeed but it's not there yet, and not really making progress either. It's vastly more complicated than Signal.
      - tcfhgj 1y ago
        Matrix makes progress, see https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/ https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/ and the UX has improved a lot since Element X (compared to previous Element), especially encryption settings have been simplified (a pain point I myself discovered when onboarding less experienced people)
      - foresto 1y ago
        > I really want Matrix to succeed but it's not there yet, and not really making progress either. I suppose whether it's "there" yet depends on your personal needs, but it absolutely is making progress. Maybe slow, but steady and visible.
        gausswho 1y ago
kwo 1y ago
How does Signal make money? All chat apps suffer from the same problem that users want to use someone else’s infrastructure for free. WhatsApp is great because it is run by a for—profit company, listed on a stock market, allowing users to take an ownership stake.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mrweasel 1y ago
  > WhatsApp is great because it is run by a for—profit company That also what causes the problems. The sad part is that it didn't have to be this way, but being publicly listed currently means that you got to pump those stocks. Very few people invest in stocks because they believe in the long term future of a given company, that's old school thinking. The types of stockholders that "take ownership" also isn't going to help fund the company long term. They buy the stock once and the hold on to it. How is that going to help? WhatsApp needed to be a subscription to not go down the ads and data collection rabbit hole. Now there's no going back, more and more ads will appear and more and more tracking will sneak in. This is a Meta product after all, so I don't even understand why people are surprised.
- ethersteeds 1y ago
  It is sustained by grants and donations, although I'm not clear how near or far it is from being indefinitely sustainable. The Signal foundation was established in 2018 with $105 million from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, and it actively solicits donations. I give $20 a month. They released a blog post at the end of 2023 emphasizing the need for donations and estimating operating costs would cross $50m/year in 2025. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
- dguest 1y ago
  Mostly donations [1]. The yearly budget is around $30M, which is a lot but pretty tiny for an app so many people use. They only have around 40 employees [2]. Personally I think the small staff, donation-based funding, and security-focused security constraints are a plus: the platform seems way more stable than most and does what it needs to do. [1]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
tetrisgm 1y ago
If I wanted to self host and offer my users something with encryption like Signal, what would be a good solution? Would love to enable accounts for everyone who has an account with us on supabase. Any recommendations?
- sshine 1y ago
  SimpleX has end-to-end encryption, fancy mobile clients, and does let you host your own server: https://simplex.chat/docs/server.html https://simplex.chat/docs/server.html
  - przmk 1y ago
    Does SimpleX even sync messages between the phone and the desktop? Last time I checked they didn't unless you were maybe on the same network
    - sshine 1y ago
      They don't, and I think they argue it's a security feature. It is, at least, intentionally designed that way, for better or worse. You can get per-conversation sync by joining multiple clients to the conversation. It's one of those things where you'd probably want to be less secure and always sync to all devices.
    - foresto 1y ago
      Depends on what you mean by sync. It has limited support for tethering a mobile device to a computer on the same LAN, but lacks the kind of independent multi-device support that's a available in e.g. Matrix.
      - tetrisgm 1y ago
        That sounds like difficult UX. Especially when WhatsApp just works
        sshine 1y ago
consumer451 1y ago
As someone in the extremely near east, please create an ethical replacement for Telegram. From a product point of view, maybe that's a fork of Signal? Maybe Signal Group, or something along those lines?
- kseistrup 1y ago
  Try DeltaChat: https://delta.chat/ https://delta.chat/
- tcfhgj 1y ago
  Matrix
- CactusRocket 1y ago
  The Telegram clients are actually open source and I think pretty solid. The Matrix protocol is open, federated, and secure, but the clients are kinda janky. I've been playing with the idea of what if someone were to fork the Telegram clients and modify them to work with Matrix. That would be a "best of both worlds" situation I think.
  - consumer451 1y ago
    I really hope that you continue work on this!
kome 1y ago
we have already an ethical replacement for WhatsApp, and it's called Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp the clients are opensource (you can download it from F-Droid) and it's secure enough: https://x.com/Pinboard/status/1474096410383421452 https://x.com/Pinboard/status/1474096410383421452
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  The FSB loves Telegram. https://www.newsweek.com/telegram-messenger-russia-fsb-ties-report-2083491 https://www.newsweek.com/telegram-messenger-russia-fsb-ties-... https://istories.media/stories/2025/06/10/kak-telegram-svyazan-s-fsb/ https://istories.media/stories/2025/06/10/kak-telegram-svyaz...
  - kwo 1y ago
    I love Telegram but our family switched back to WhatsApp after that came out.
    - burnt-resistor 1y ago
      I hate to break it to you, but essentially all Android and Apple devices on US carriers can (potentially as a capability, but it's extremely unlikely in the real world) be remotely screenshotted, location tracked, and microphone and cameras activated by US intelligence agencies because they can get whatever they want inserted onto endpoints (phones and other SIM devices) by the carriers. This probably happens in most countries. State actors therefore don't really need RCE or local priv esc 0days to break into any phone or backend, social engineer an engineering shop, or plant a spy software developer to gain in-app access. WhatsApp maybe good enough, but it leans heavily towards MAANG feudalism while Signal doesn't currently. Signal won't help this massive endpoint vulnerably either, but it's backed and design is more trustworthy. Only an audited FOSS hw/sw stack that doesn't agree to carrier and local regulations requiring unknown, untrusted code loaded on a user's device would. And, honestly, I'd like a phone that can switch to e2e voip automatically should the other party have Signal or similar installed rather than making a conventional call. IDK if Silent Circle's Blackphone 2 did this or not, but the Silent Phone app that replaced it defeats the whole purpose of a Blackberry-like device.
reconnecting 1y ago
I tried to install Signal once. First, it checks and matches your phone number. Strange, but acceptable. Then, it shows a Google Captcha [0], which sends my data to Google. I checked Signal's Privacy Policy and there are no details data sharing [1]. Signal might be good at message encryption, but let's not forget that it handles user privacy unacceptably poorly. [0] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002 [1] https://signal.org/legal/ https://signal.org/legal/
- jzackpete 1y ago
  perfect is the enemy of good, with WhatsApp being neither (at least wrt privacy)
- mkj 1y ago
  Plausible they're anonymously proxying the captcha to google?
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    It's possible but if there's no transparency you can also assume the worst
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - balanc 1y ago
    Is that something that can be done?
  - reconnecting 1y ago
    Unless I'm mistaken, they use services provided by third parties, perhaps PayPal as indicated in the source code. But guess what - there's no mention of PayPal in privacy either.
  - reconnecting 1y ago
    No, there is (or was) just Google Captcha. Here is issue on Github about it. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002
neepi 1y ago
Not much point here (UK). It’s difficult to get anyone to move or even install it. No one cares enough to show any interest. Needs to be a large billboard marketing campaign which is “zuck eats children and owns WhatsApp” or something. Then you might get 5% of people move over. My immediate family are on it and two friends. That represents a year of trying.
- loehnsberg 1y ago
  I made that same experience. You can get individual people to install it, sure, you may even get a group to do this if you start it, but good luck convincing the other parents of your kid‘s sports team group, which btw you must be part of. Unfortunately, we living beings tend to go with what costs the least amount of energy - this being thinking and going through extra efforts to achieve a goal. Hence, we‘re stuck with WhatsApp by a law of nature.
- eknkc 1y ago
  Yup. These apps are not used in isolation and I find it funny that the tech people argue which is better and why. The one everyone uses is better. If you dont have a way to move masses, it does not matter.
  - cuu508 1y ago
    > If you dont have a way to move masses Or the guts to say "I'm going this way, I'll be happy if you join me" and follow through
    - eknkc 1y ago
      I’m in Turkey no UK or US so I can only speak for here. It’d be like denouncing electricity and saying join me. Good luck with that. Its not friends and family. Our office administration basically runs on a WhatsApp group. I just sent a location to a plumber using WhatsApp. They dont know / use / want anything else. At best, you might get some close people to use Signal or whatever but you have to use whatsapp to function. Especially American people won’t understand that because I believe iMessage and SMS is still the de facto standard. That would be WA here.
bigbacaloa 1y ago
[dead]
jillesvangurp 1y ago
The history of chat networks over the last quarter century is that they come and go and there is no long term loyalty to any of them. ICQ, AOL, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Google's many messengers, etc. are long forgotten and some of those used to be dominant and their disappearance seemed unimaginable. Mostly this is due to corporate stupidity and big corporations getting greedy about "owning" their user base and then throwing away the baby with the bathwater. It seems Meta (a repeat offended with this) is yet again making that mistake with whatsapp. Prediction: they'll run it into the ground just like they ran Facebook Messenger into the ground. And Facebook itself of course. Whatsapp only showed up because of extortion prices for SMS messages. It did the same thing for a fraction of the cost (1$/year initially). Easy sell, so it grew to many users. But who uses SMS at this point? I get a few once in a while. Mostly stupid 2FA codes. The core premise for Whatsapp has long disappeared. Whatsapp is probably going to implode as Meta starts pushing through unpopular things like advertising and continues to be in the spotlight for routinely doing dodgy things with respect to privacy, surveillance, etc. They are just not a great brand when it comes to that and they are losing a lot of trust over time. Mostly people use whatsapp because other people use whatsapp. Not because it's particularly good. IMHO it actually always was a bit meh compared to other things. But world+dog seems to like sending me messages with it so I'm on it. For the same reason I've had Signal on my phone for a few years now and more and more messages are coming in via that. Neither are optional at this point. I expect Signal will eat a lot of the Whatsapp traffic soon. And if not Signal than something else. Whatsapp was famously built with only a small team. That's 16 years ago. These days building something like that from scratch could be done in a fraction of the time with minimal effort. You could vibe code an MVP in an afternoon and it wouldn't be horrible. This stuff is a pure commodity at this point. We don't need trillion dollar big tech companies doing this for us.
jchook 1y ago
Signal has a central, proprietary server. It's between impractical and impossible to run your own Signal server like you can with Matrix, Revolt, or Delta Chat for example. BlueSky has a similar approach (compare to Mastodon). Also Signal requires a phone number to sign-in. It's not exactly private. AFAIK the proprietary server can glean your IP, your phone number, who you talk to, and when you talk to them. This type of metadata is valuable information. The WhatsApp co-founder gave Signal $105M in 2018. Signal costs ~$50M/year to run. It's also funded by wealthy donors such as Jack Dorsey (Twitter, BlueSky, Square). BTW Jack is now pushing Signal to integrate Bitcoin. When evaluating the "ethics" of a chat platform, we should factor-in the metadata, soft power, and eventual leverage that centralized (controlled by a few) platforms like BlueSky and Signal afford to wealthy folks who are bankrolling it.
- allset_ 1y ago
  > AFAIK the proprietary server can glean your IP, your phone number, who you talk to, and when you talk to them. This type of metadata is valuable information. To the best of my knowledge, so can matrix.org or whatever servers you connect and federate to. This is required to route messages between users. What is your point?
- tcfhgj 1y ago
  *Riot -> Element
  - jchook 1y ago
    Oops I meant Revolt, the Rust-based alternative to Discord. Updated. Thanks. https://github.com/revoltchat https://github.com/revoltchat
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  > Signal has a central, proprietary server. The signal-server repository is open source
  - afroboy 1y ago
tcfhgj 1y ago
I don't think Signal is an ethical replacement as it forces others to use the same app and vendor as you. Options like Matrix or XMPP give users more freedom
- djaychela 1y ago
  That's a great utopian ideal (and one that I subscribe to), but there is no way that is happening outside really nerdy circles such as we probably inhabit. It is of course possible to create signal clients that are forks of Signal. I don't see how this is an -ethical- issue though providing the ethics of Signal align with that of the user (they do with mine), and if they're doing something unethical then you should not be using them anyway (hence me not using WA)
  - tcfhgj 1y ago
    > but there is no way that is happening outside really nerdy Yep, see email and the phone network /s > It is of course possible to create signal clients that are forks of Signal. Which may be killed at any time when they connect to the central Signal server, see LibreSignal
    - djaychela 1y ago
      >Yep, see email and the phone network /s Which probably only exists because of network effects. My kids (18-25) don't use phones for phones, and rarely use email other than when they have to for work.
  - mmcnl 1y ago
    Trading one proprietary app that gives you ownership over your own data (WhatsApp) for another proprietary app that locks your data (Signal) is not an "ethical" replacement, it's merely a (worse) alternative.
    - djaychela 1y ago
      I think you are completely reversed in how you're analysing the situation there, so I'd like you to expand on it - two questions: 1: How does WhatsApp give you ownership over your data that Signal doesnt? 2: How is Signal locking this data?
botanical 1y ago
WhatsApp's call quality is second to none. Also the fact that it's ubiquitous, and its sync just works, makes it difficult to move to anything else. Everyone's on it in South Africa. I think we can only hope for regulation to keep it safe and force interoperability with other chat apps.
- djaychela 1y ago
  >I think we can only hope for regulation to keep it safe and force interoperability with other chat apps. Never going to happen unless legally forced to. Which is not happening any time soon in the USA. >WhatsApp's call quality is second to none. Never had a problem with Signal - in fact I've had situations where it's been a better option than anything else available to me.
  - oakpond 1y ago
    This simply must happen. I don't think there is another sustainable solution to the network-effect problem.
sMarsIntruder 1y ago
> In March I argued that we should choose Bluesky over X/Twitter, based on the obvious reason of boycotting companies connected to Musk. Let’s f*ck up Zuck just because OP doesn’t like him. How can a post like this be at the top? Please not that I advocate people to use Signal.
- kwo 1y ago
  The whole site appears to be about advocating “ethical” choices and canceling ones he does not agree with.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Free market and money vote and yadda yadda yadda requires consumers to be aware of and mobilize on boycotts. If we want competition, anti-consumer practices to disappear, price transparency, privacy, and on and on, then we need to be willing to mobilize on a boycott on the grounds of ethics or morality. We all have this theory of the invisible hand and market dynamics but as soon as people actually, you know, practice that then we get a sour taste in our mouth. The truth is cancel culture, or whatever you want to call it, is fundamental to capitalist economies in a classical sense.
  - djaychela 1y ago
    Is there a problem with that? It's difficult to tell from your post whether you think that's a good idea, other than the quotes which intimate you think the ethics are off?
    - jraph 1y ago
      > It's difficult to tell from your post whether you think that's a good idea The quotes around ethical and the misuse of the word "cancel" makes me think they pretty much don't like whatever the site author is doing.
- djaychela 1y ago
  >Let’s f*ck up Zuck just because OP doesn’t like him. How can a post like this be at the top? Because the ethics of WA and Signal are completely different, and Meta is finally moving in the direction of putting adverts into WA which was predicted years ago when it was bought by Meta.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
I see people mentioning all sorts of alternatives, but not one of Session. I can't tell if you all know something I don't and that it's garbage, or if it's just that obscure.
- pimeys 1y ago
  It is not very secure: https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/ https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/ https://soatok.blog/2025/01/20/session-round-2/ https://soatok.blog/2025/01/20/session-round-2/ They also wrote an article about Signal security, worth to read: https://soatok.blog/2025/02/18/reviewing-the-cryptography-used-by-signal/ https://soatok.blog/2025/02/18/reviewing-the-cryptography-us...
WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
If you are from the U.S. sure, serves the interests of your country If you are not from the U.S., then no, it's not a replacement for WhatsApp, it's the same https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act "but E2E encryption my dude" You have forgotten about RSA, my dude Why Signal, why not X, Y, Z? ask yourself why something from Cali always gets picked up and talked about, but people's favorite? nevaaaaaaah
BiteCode_dev 1y ago
It's not a replacement, since it doesn't have the same feature sets or ergonomics. Don't get me wrong, I use signal a lot and I love it, but presenting signals as an alternative to whatsapp is only going to disappoint people. Telegram is closer, but neither e2e encrypted nor open source. Still, I would say if you are in America and not dealing with state or industrial secrets, getting spied on by russians is better than by meta. Basically, I use both: signals for my privacy oriented friends that will go through the ordeal of using signal, and telegram with the normies so that at least they get of the zuck train.
nikanj 1y ago
A few months back I opened Signal on my daily driver phone. All my contacts and message history were simply gone. Apparently this is a security feature designed to keep me safe. There is always a tradeoff between usability and security, and Signal is too secure for me
- baobun 1y ago
  > There is always a tradeoff between usability and security, and Signal is too secure for me I'd reframe that. Inside information security, there is a tradeoff between integrity and confidentiality. Here you lost integrity and availability, which is still a security fail. In no way is Signal being "too secure" here.
bertman 1y ago
I'm still sad that they'll probably never provide a proper web client instead of that suboptimal Electron desktop thing. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4466 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4466
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  I think the issue with a traditional web app, is if they deliver one, they can be probably compelled by three-letter agencies to modify the app served to users or a specific user, to collect that user's information. Distributing it as a signed desktop/mobile application makes it so they can't tamper with what users are running to be made complicit in attacking their users
tasuki 1y ago
Wake me up when Signal stops depending on a phone number. One of the few things I feel I could lose very easily. And some people (eg my kid) don't even have a phone number!
wartijn_ 1y ago
Pointing out that WhatsApp was used to spread misinformation before Brazilian elections under the header “Ethical issues with WhatsApp” seems weird to me. According to the Guardian article[0] this article uses as a source, WhatsApp has had updates to limit the number of times messages can be forwarded. But there’s obviously a limit to what can be done because the chats are e2e encrypted. What does the author want from WhatsApp? Reading messages and blocking them if they don’t pass Meta’s moral guidelines is the opposite of want you’d want from your private chats and I don’t see any other way to effectively combat spreading misinformation. And is there any indication that Signal would prevent situations like this if it gets more widely used? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/30/whatsapp-fake-news-brazil-election-favoured-jair-bolsonaro-analysis-suggests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/30/whatsapp-fake-...
ancjothur 1y ago
For me no, until Signal will fix video call quality between ios and android. I use them both to connect with my family, signal for chats, but whatsapp for video calls, because very often in Signal you are minecraft. First place here is FaceTime link (so it opens in a browser), and second is WhatsApp.
mmcnl 1y ago
Signal doesn't provide any method to backup and restore my chats, at least on iOS. Imo this is a very important feature, I have chat history going back for years and it's basically a rich media diary of my life. It happens occasionally that I want to look up stuff that has been shared a few years ago, especially photos. Is ownership over my own data really too much to ask? The possibility of losing my entire chat history scares me. I get that some people even consider it a feature, but without the ability to backup and restore messages it's not really a "replacement" for WhatsApp, it's merely an alternative with pros and (very big) cons.
on_the_train 1y ago
No, it's just crypto bullshit.
fithisux 1y ago
I'm persuaded
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jacks004 1y ago
Signal is a solid choice privacy-focused, open-source, and free from ads or data tracking. A true ethical alternative to WhatsApp!

187 points by miles 1y ago

L29Ah 1y ago

very ethical phone-tied centralized metadata collection

jacks004 1y ago

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miracoli 1y ago

lol I'm from Germany and most people I know use for many years already :D

WA 1y ago
lol I'm from Germany and most people I know use WhatsApp, especially for groups, events, activities. Almost nobody uses Signal and even less use Threema. The place after WhatsApp is Telegram.
- f1shy 1y ago
  Lol exactly. Try to organize something in the school or kindergarten with “normalos” and try to convince them to setup signal!
  - theGeatZhopa 1y ago
    Lol I'm from Germany and i think it wouldn't be a problem as normalos typically don't own mobiles in the kindergarten already. The "unnormalos" with mobiles - yes - but, if you're the kindergartener, then you dictate. But no lol - it's a pain. The mouse cant bite of the thread.
    - f1shy 1y ago
      It is not so difficult to understand I was referring to organizing smth between parents…
      - theGeatZhopa 1y ago
        I don't know, I don't have kids. May be just write what you referring to in first and not to expect others with different scopes of experiences to understand what you meant? The best thing about languages is the possibility to exactly formulate, so there's no misunderstanding possible.
- usrusr 1y ago
  Just about everybody I know uses both. The pattern I see is that groups associated with some entity like a company or a club are on signal, because at some point (before Musk took over as chief billionaire villain) it became a thing to not have your brand associated with Meta, while many groups on the more the friends&family end of the spectrum remained on Whatsapp. And 1:1 conversations are simply on whatever messenger they started on. Which is super convenient, because of the way the Android multitasking model works (and I suspect it's similar on the other side?). Far more convenient to switch between a Signal, a Whatsapp and the occasional Facebook Messenger than between two WhatsApp groups, worse if those are Whatsapp groups with a channel hierarchy. (Telegram: even just having it installed would be seen as a political statement, it's where the weirdos congregate to antivaxx and flatearth and reinstate monarchy or whatever they do)
jnkl 1y ago
I'm from Germany, too. This heavily depends on your social environment. There are milieus where Signal is ubiquitous and there are mileus where people don't even know what Signal is. But I think most people live in the latter.
- f1shy 1y ago
  My experience is absolutely the 2nd group.
maerch 1y ago
That hasn’t been my experience. A few tech-savvy people and those close to them may use alternatives, but even then, it’s usually just for groups where someone refuses to use WhatsApp. For everything else, they still rely on WhatsApp. On top of that, nearly all groups related to kindergarten, school, or various clubs use WhatsApp, and there’s practically no way to convince them to switch. If my wife weren’t in those groups, I’d have no idea what’s going on.

kuon 1y ago

As long as I need a phone to use those, they are not a solution.

just-ok 1y ago
Signal has a desktop app. Unless you mean phone number, in which case I get where you’re coming from, though I think they allow just usernames now.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Usernames are only for discoverability. You still need a phone number.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- CactusRocket 1y ago
  You need to install the phone app to be able to activate it. If you've been offline on the desktop app for too long, you need the phone app again to re-active the desktop app. I've also noticed a lot of issues synchronizing messages between computers using the desktop app, without having the app on a phone. They allow usernames as an alternative to sharing your phone number with other people. You still need a phone number (and the phone app) to create and activate an account. It's very phone-first.
noman-land 1y ago
It depends on your threat model. Since WhatsApp also requires a phone, Signal is the superior option and therefor a solution to using WhatsApp.
- CactusRocket 1y ago
  Also depends on where you're coming from. My friends use WhatsApp and I don't because of privacy considerations. If they switch to Signal, I might still not use it because they want my phone number (and their servers are centralized, owned by one organization). So for them, amongst each-other, it would be fine to all switch to Signal probably. But for those of us who have been avoiding it altogether so far, it might not change anything whatsoever.

user3939382 1y ago

The only secure comms I’m aware of would be something like the receipt of a signal over radio encrypted with a one time pad. Transmission of the signal and key is another matter.

jchook 1y ago
It's illegal to encrypt CB radio signals in the US and many other countries.
- user3939382 1y ago
  I didn’t mention CB, any particular frequency, or country. My comment was on secure communication at the abstract / theoretical level.
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
  Toothless, since it's impossible to prove that any given message is or is not encrypted. This comment I'm writing right here might not mean what it appears to mean, and might not be aimed at who it appears to be aimed at. It's effectively merely illegal to pollute the shared medium with noise.
- f1shy 1y ago
  I can imagine somebody could make with some AI a system that talks something that makes more or less sense, but has encoded information in the message
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  In principle, yes. Technically, no. D-STAR vocoder.

TZubiri 1y ago

Signal is cool, I think it has made a huge contribution to whatsapp through its collaboration. But I think that there's room for nuance, sure it's closed source and a closed garden, but that's precisely what allows it to be gratis and free of spam (you can't build the client, you can't build a spamming client)! Sure it's controlled by an entity that may or may not use that data for ads. But it's metadata and not content, sure the NSA or some three letter agency may tap it for national security reasons(or at least masquerading as natsec reasons), but not even subfederal law enforcement and courts can access the contents of the message (E2E encryption). The contributions of Free Software has been unquantifiable, but if it continues to treat all closed source things as equally bad, then you get extremism. Surely there's a difference between an entity seeing metadata, and an entity seeing message contents, this is a non trivial distinction. Congratulations to signal if they develop an algorithm where they can't even see the metadata, but I'm not even convinced that it's good? The article cites cases of Meta products being used for malicious purposes, at least we hear from them? At least Zuck shows up against the senate to answer when shit hits the fan, if Signal is used in other parts of the world to organize coups or ethnic cleansing, you just would never hear about it because it's all super anonymous 5 stars, but ethically they would still be contributing as much as Facebook or Whatsapp. And on that topic, I don't think overfixating on Meta's role in a multi actor causal chain to be very productive? I think it comes more of a place of Free Software developers being jealous that they didn't win the popularity contest, and less from a place of genuine concern. I used to be anti Whatsapp too, but at some point I realized that 1B users have as much say in what technologies we should use than developers, it's not all about the tech. Whatsapp has gained the trust from billions of users, ignoring them and telling them we know better because we have been indoctrinated by recruiting evangelists of an extremist ideology is not the way forward. I do believe in moderate free software and Whatsapp is one of the lowest hanging fruits to accept in the path to moderate FS

komali2 1y ago
> but at some point I realized that 1B users have as much say in what technologies we should use than developers, it's not all about the tech. Whatsapp has gained the trust from billions of users, ignoring them and telling them we know better because we have been indoctrinated by recruiting evangelists of an extremist ideology is not the way forward. Cab you envision systemic reasons that lead to Whatsapp's users using the software without trusting Meta? I get my internet through Comcast or AT&T. I certainly don't trust either.

jl6 1y ago

I tried Signal, but it wouldn’t let me export chats, meaning the data is trapped within the app. Did they fix that?

viraptor 1y ago
You're looking for "chat backups". It's there.
- thristian 1y ago
  You can make a chat backup, but it's an encrypted binary blob, not a mailbox file or a JSON file or some other more accessible format. I think I understand why they do that (if you send someone a message on Signal, they try very hard to make it difficult for anyone but the recipient to read it, whether that's by intercepting traffic or reading data stored on your device, or rummaging through your backups) but it does make it a bit of a pain.
  - jnkl 1y ago
    It is an encrypted sqlite database and there are tools to decrypt it. I think this is more or less as good and open as it gets.
  - zarzavat 1y ago
    Seems short-sighted. The more people who use Signal, the more secure their users' chats will be because they can use other apps less. Omitting basic features for "security reasons" reduces security overall, because you can't force other people to use Signal.
- jl6 1y ago
  On iOS?
mercacona 1y ago
IMHO the constant complaints about losing chats or needing conversation backups aren’t technical problems—they’re social ones. We need to reclaim the freedom to speak with others ephemerally. No one should want all their conversations recorded, yet we’re heading toward the opposite with smart glasses. Ideally, we’d agree universally: chats saved for one month (the context we can actually remember from a conversation), emails for five years (for administrative control), and conversations never recorded. However, we’ve been manipulated into needing exactly the opposite. Worse yet, we think it’s possible to maintain privacy while transcribing and archiving everything in our minds, making it public.

kseistrup 1y ago

I ditched WhatsApp back in 2021 (and lost a couple og long-distance friends in the process), and I communicate mostly over DeltaChat, XMPP (née Jabber), and Signal, in that order of preference. There are many other alternatives out there, e.g. SimpleX, but many — if not most — suffer from the inability to synchronize chats across several devices. DeltaChat should pose no problems to users coming from WhatsApp, having more or less the same UI as I remember from WhatsApp back then. DeltaChat is an amazing app, check it out: https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/ You needn't even disclose who you are.

szszrk 1y ago
The UI of that Delta chat app looks completely like Telegram fork (client is opensource). Function wise as well. What is the backend for it? It's hard for me to find on their website. If it's also Telegram, than what's the point? I would also like to point out that Telegram has very smooth chats sync across devices because those are NOT end2end encrypted by default.
- raybb 1y ago
  Delta chat uses email. So you can chat with anyone that has an email address. If they happen to use the app too it'll feel more like a chat for them as well.
  - iib 1y ago
    Are there any problems with the fact that email wasn't created to be instant messaging? Are the messages sometimes delayed?
    - kseistrup 1y ago
      Not in my experience. It feels like chatting on Signal or any other instant messenger, except there are no typing indicators, especially if you use DeltaChat's chatmail server (the default if you just say “let me in”).
    - 1y ago

xvilka 1y ago

SimpleX[1], no phone number required. [1] https://simplex.chat/ https://simplex.chat/

thristian 1y ago
SimpleX is cool, but it has VC investors, so a lot of people won't trust it long-term (for exactly the same reasons we're talking about replacing WhatsApp now).
Springtime 1y ago
When I last looked at this it had severe battery drain issues on Android, to where users with only one contact and just a handful of messages were experiencing it. Appears that pinned issue is still open and unresolved. Otherwise it seemed like the most promising alternative I've seen that satisfied various requirements.
kseistrup 1y ago
I've used SimpleX for seeral years. I do like the concept, and I have supported the project, but in my opinion it suffers from two weaknesses/lacks: 1. It cannot synchronize chats across several devices, so you need a separat “account” for each device. This can, to some extend, be mitigated by creating a group for each contact you communicate with, and then add all their and your accounts to that group. 2. Message propagation is somewhat unreliable: If you use the method described in (1), some accounts may not receive a given message. But yes, you needn't disclose your phone number in order to create an account/profile on SimpleX.
foresto 1y ago
Some things that keep me away from SimpleX: - No multi-device support. - No group calls. - Establishing a contact requires sharing a large link or QR code, which is often inconvenient. - Message queues drop messages if not retrieved within a relatively short period. Last time I checked, it was 21 days, which is shorter than some of my off-grid vacations. - I couldn't find clear information on who runs the message queues, so I have to assume most are controlled by a single organization. This makes it effectively a centralized service with respect to privacy and resilience. - Funded almost entirely by venture capital, making its longevity questionable, and the likelihood of future exploitation relatively high. I'm not comfortable depending on such a service to keep in touch with people.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jacks004 1y ago

[flagged]

t_luke 1y ago

Does anyone else find Signal quite hard to use? The syncing between devices stops working a lot of the time, and needing to sign in again fairly regularly. I’ve tried switching but it doesn’t stick because of the annoyance factor.

k1t 1y ago
Unfortunately, while you're right, it has plenty of annoyances, there's no real alternative.
- fsflover 1y ago
  Matrix doesn't have that problem and it's even federated, without a single point of failure.
  - k1t 1y ago
    I really want Matrix to succeed but it's not there yet, and not really making progress either. It's vastly more complicated than Signal.
    - tcfhgj 1y ago
      Matrix makes progress, see https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/ https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/ and the UX has improved a lot since Element X (compared to previous Element), especially encryption settings have been simplified (a pain point I myself discovered when onboarding less experienced people)
    - foresto 1y ago
      > I really want Matrix to succeed but it's not there yet, and not really making progress either. I suppose whether it's "there" yet depends on your personal needs, but it absolutely is making progress. Maybe slow, but steady and visible.
      - gausswho 1y ago

kwo 1y ago

How does Signal make money? All chat apps suffer from the same problem that users want to use someone else’s infrastructure for free. WhatsApp is great because it is run by a for—profit company, listed on a stock market, allowing users to take an ownership stake.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mrweasel 1y ago
> WhatsApp is great because it is run by a for—profit company That also what causes the problems. The sad part is that it didn't have to be this way, but being publicly listed currently means that you got to pump those stocks. Very few people invest in stocks because they believe in the long term future of a given company, that's old school thinking. The types of stockholders that "take ownership" also isn't going to help fund the company long term. They buy the stock once and the hold on to it. How is that going to help? WhatsApp needed to be a subscription to not go down the ads and data collection rabbit hole. Now there's no going back, more and more ads will appear and more and more tracking will sneak in. This is a Meta product after all, so I don't even understand why people are surprised.
ethersteeds 1y ago
It is sustained by grants and donations, although I'm not clear how near or far it is from being indefinitely sustainable. The Signal foundation was established in 2018 with $105 million from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, and it actively solicits donations. I give $20 a month. They released a blog post at the end of 2023 emphasizing the need for donations and estimating operating costs would cross $50m/year in 2025. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
dguest 1y ago
Mostly donations [1]. The yearly budget is around $30M, which is a lot but pretty tiny for an app so many people use. They only have around 40 employees [2]. Personally I think the small staff, donation-based funding, and security-focused security constraints are a plus: the platform seems way more stable than most and does what it needs to do. [1]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation

tetrisgm 1y ago

If I wanted to self host and offer my users something with encryption like Signal, what would be a good solution? Would love to enable accounts for everyone who has an account with us on supabase. Any recommendations?

sshine 1y ago
SimpleX has end-to-end encryption, fancy mobile clients, and does let you host your own server: https://simplex.chat/docs/server.html https://simplex.chat/docs/server.html
- przmk 1y ago
  Does SimpleX even sync messages between the phone and the desktop? Last time I checked they didn't unless you were maybe on the same network
  - sshine 1y ago
    They don't, and I think they argue it's a security feature. It is, at least, intentionally designed that way, for better or worse. You can get per-conversation sync by joining multiple clients to the conversation. It's one of those things where you'd probably want to be less secure and always sync to all devices.
  - foresto 1y ago
    Depends on what you mean by sync. It has limited support for tethering a mobile device to a computer on the same LAN, but lacks the kind of independent multi-device support that's a available in e.g. Matrix.
    - tetrisgm 1y ago
      That sounds like difficult UX. Especially when WhatsApp just works
      - sshine 1y ago

consumer451 1y ago

As someone in the extremely near east, please create an ethical replacement for Telegram. From a product point of view, maybe that's a fork of Signal? Maybe Signal Group, or something along those lines?

kseistrup 1y ago
Try DeltaChat: https://delta.chat/ https://delta.chat/
tcfhgj 1y ago
Matrix
CactusRocket 1y ago
The Telegram clients are actually open source and I think pretty solid. The Matrix protocol is open, federated, and secure, but the clients are kinda janky. I've been playing with the idea of what if someone were to fork the Telegram clients and modify them to work with Matrix. That would be a "best of both worlds" situation I think.
- consumer451 1y ago
  I really hope that you continue work on this!

kome 1y ago

we have already an ethical replacement for WhatsApp, and it's called Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp the clients are opensource (you can download it from F-Droid) and it's secure enough: https://x.com/Pinboard/status/1474096410383421452 https://x.com/Pinboard/status/1474096410383421452

burnt-resistor 1y ago
The FSB loves Telegram. https://www.newsweek.com/telegram-messenger-russia-fsb-ties-report-2083491 https://www.newsweek.com/telegram-messenger-russia-fsb-ties-... https://istories.media/stories/2025/06/10/kak-telegram-svyazan-s-fsb/ https://istories.media/stories/2025/06/10/kak-telegram-svyaz...
- kwo 1y ago
  I love Telegram but our family switched back to WhatsApp after that came out.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    I hate to break it to you, but essentially all Android and Apple devices on US carriers can (potentially as a capability, but it's extremely unlikely in the real world) be remotely screenshotted, location tracked, and microphone and cameras activated by US intelligence agencies because they can get whatever they want inserted onto endpoints (phones and other SIM devices) by the carriers. This probably happens in most countries. State actors therefore don't really need RCE or local priv esc 0days to break into any phone or backend, social engineer an engineering shop, or plant a spy software developer to gain in-app access. WhatsApp maybe good enough, but it leans heavily towards MAANG feudalism while Signal doesn't currently. Signal won't help this massive endpoint vulnerably either, but it's backed and design is more trustworthy. Only an audited FOSS hw/sw stack that doesn't agree to carrier and local regulations requiring unknown, untrusted code loaded on a user's device would. And, honestly, I'd like a phone that can switch to e2e voip automatically should the other party have Signal or similar installed rather than making a conventional call. IDK if Silent Circle's Blackphone 2 did this or not, but the Silent Phone app that replaced it defeats the whole purpose of a Blackberry-like device.

reconnecting 1y ago

I tried to install Signal once. First, it checks and matches your phone number. Strange, but acceptable. Then, it shows a Google Captcha [0], which sends my data to Google. I checked Signal's Privacy Policy and there are no details data sharing [1]. Signal might be good at message encryption, but let's not forget that it handles user privacy unacceptably poorly. [0] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002 [1] https://signal.org/legal/ https://signal.org/legal/

jzackpete 1y ago
perfect is the enemy of good, with WhatsApp being neither (at least wrt privacy)
mkj 1y ago
Plausible they're anonymously proxying the captcha to google?
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  It's possible but if there's no transparency you can also assume the worst
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- balanc 1y ago
  Is that something that can be done?
- reconnecting 1y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, they use services provided by third parties, perhaps PayPal as indicated in the source code. But guess what - there's no mention of PayPal in privacy either.
- reconnecting 1y ago
  No, there is (or was) just Google Captcha. Here is issue on Github about it. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/6002

neepi 1y ago

Not much point here (UK). It’s difficult to get anyone to move or even install it. No one cares enough to show any interest. Needs to be a large billboard marketing campaign which is “zuck eats children and owns WhatsApp” or something. Then you might get 5% of people move over. My immediate family are on it and two friends. That represents a year of trying.

loehnsberg 1y ago
I made that same experience. You can get individual people to install it, sure, you may even get a group to do this if you start it, but good luck convincing the other parents of your kid‘s sports team group, which btw you must be part of. Unfortunately, we living beings tend to go with what costs the least amount of energy - this being thinking and going through extra efforts to achieve a goal. Hence, we‘re stuck with WhatsApp by a law of nature.
eknkc 1y ago
Yup. These apps are not used in isolation and I find it funny that the tech people argue which is better and why. The one everyone uses is better. If you dont have a way to move masses, it does not matter.
- cuu508 1y ago
  > If you dont have a way to move masses Or the guts to say "I'm going this way, I'll be happy if you join me" and follow through
  - eknkc 1y ago
    I’m in Turkey no UK or US so I can only speak for here. It’d be like denouncing electricity and saying join me. Good luck with that. Its not friends and family. Our office administration basically runs on a WhatsApp group. I just sent a location to a plumber using WhatsApp. They dont know / use / want anything else. At best, you might get some close people to use Signal or whatever but you have to use whatsapp to function. Especially American people won’t understand that because I believe iMessage and SMS is still the de facto standard. That would be WA here.

bigbacaloa 1y ago

[dead]

jillesvangurp 1y ago

The history of chat networks over the last quarter century is that they come and go and there is no long term loyalty to any of them. ICQ, AOL, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Google's many messengers, etc. are long forgotten and some of those used to be dominant and their disappearance seemed unimaginable. Mostly this is due to corporate stupidity and big corporations getting greedy about "owning" their user base and then throwing away the baby with the bathwater. It seems Meta (a repeat offended with this) is yet again making that mistake with whatsapp. Prediction: they'll run it into the ground just like they ran Facebook Messenger into the ground. And Facebook itself of course. Whatsapp only showed up because of extortion prices for SMS messages. It did the same thing for a fraction of the cost (1$/year initially). Easy sell, so it grew to many users. But who uses SMS at this point? I get a few once in a while. Mostly stupid 2FA codes. The core premise for Whatsapp has long disappeared. Whatsapp is probably going to implode as Meta starts pushing through unpopular things like advertising and continues to be in the spotlight for routinely doing dodgy things with respect to privacy, surveillance, etc. They are just not a great brand when it comes to that and they are losing a lot of trust over time. Mostly people use whatsapp because other people use whatsapp. Not because it's particularly good. IMHO it actually always was a bit meh compared to other things. But world+dog seems to like sending me messages with it so I'm on it. For the same reason I've had Signal on my phone for a few years now and more and more messages are coming in via that. Neither are optional at this point. I expect Signal will eat a lot of the Whatsapp traffic soon. And if not Signal than something else. Whatsapp was famously built with only a small team. That's 16 years ago. These days building something like that from scratch could be done in a fraction of the time with minimal effort. You could vibe code an MVP in an afternoon and it wouldn't be horrible. This stuff is a pure commodity at this point. We don't need trillion dollar big tech companies doing this for us.

jchook 1y ago

Signal has a central, proprietary server. It's between impractical and impossible to run your own Signal server like you can with Matrix, Revolt, or Delta Chat for example. BlueSky has a similar approach (compare to Mastodon). Also Signal requires a phone number to sign-in. It's not exactly private. AFAIK the proprietary server can glean your IP, your phone number, who you talk to, and when you talk to them. This type of metadata is valuable information. The WhatsApp co-founder gave Signal $105M in 2018. Signal costs ~$50M/year to run. It's also funded by wealthy donors such as Jack Dorsey (Twitter, BlueSky, Square). BTW Jack is now pushing Signal to integrate Bitcoin. When evaluating the "ethics" of a chat platform, we should factor-in the metadata, soft power, and eventual leverage that centralized (controlled by a few) platforms like BlueSky and Signal afford to wealthy folks who are bankrolling it.

allset_ 1y ago
> AFAIK the proprietary server can glean your IP, your phone number, who you talk to, and when you talk to them. This type of metadata is valuable information. To the best of my knowledge, so can matrix.org or whatever servers you connect and federate to. This is required to route messages between users. What is your point?
tcfhgj 1y ago
*Riot -> Element
- jchook 1y ago
  Oops I meant Revolt, the Rust-based alternative to Discord. Updated. Thanks. https://github.com/revoltchat https://github.com/revoltchat
pcthrowaway 1y ago
> Signal has a central, proprietary server. The signal-server repository is open source
- afroboy 1y ago

tcfhgj 1y ago

I don't think Signal is an ethical replacement as it forces others to use the same app and vendor as you. Options like Matrix or XMPP give users more freedom

djaychela 1y ago
That's a great utopian ideal (and one that I subscribe to), but there is no way that is happening outside really nerdy circles such as we probably inhabit. It is of course possible to create signal clients that are forks of Signal. I don't see how this is an -ethical- issue though providing the ethics of Signal align with that of the user (they do with mine), and if they're doing something unethical then you should not be using them anyway (hence me not using WA)
- tcfhgj 1y ago
  > but there is no way that is happening outside really nerdy Yep, see email and the phone network /s > It is of course possible to create signal clients that are forks of Signal. Which may be killed at any time when they connect to the central Signal server, see LibreSignal
  - djaychela 1y ago
    >Yep, see email and the phone network /s Which probably only exists because of network effects. My kids (18-25) don't use phones for phones, and rarely use email other than when they have to for work.
- mmcnl 1y ago
  Trading one proprietary app that gives you ownership over your own data (WhatsApp) for another proprietary app that locks your data (Signal) is not an "ethical" replacement, it's merely a (worse) alternative.
  - djaychela 1y ago
    I think you are completely reversed in how you're analysing the situation there, so I'd like you to expand on it - two questions: 1: How does WhatsApp give you ownership over your data that Signal doesnt? 2: How is Signal locking this data?

botanical 1y ago

WhatsApp's call quality is second to none. Also the fact that it's ubiquitous, and its sync just works, makes it difficult to move to anything else. Everyone's on it in South Africa. I think we can only hope for regulation to keep it safe and force interoperability with other chat apps.

djaychela 1y ago
>I think we can only hope for regulation to keep it safe and force interoperability with other chat apps. Never going to happen unless legally forced to. Which is not happening any time soon in the USA. >WhatsApp's call quality is second to none. Never had a problem with Signal - in fact I've had situations where it's been a better option than anything else available to me.
- oakpond 1y ago
  This simply must happen. I don't think there is another sustainable solution to the network-effect problem.

sMarsIntruder 1y ago

> In March I argued that we should choose Bluesky over X/Twitter, based on the obvious reason of boycotting companies connected to Musk. Let’s f*ck up Zuck just because OP doesn’t like him. How can a post like this be at the top? Please not that I advocate people to use Signal.

kwo 1y ago
The whole site appears to be about advocating “ethical” choices and canceling ones he does not agree with.
- const_cast 1y ago
  Free market and money vote and yadda yadda yadda requires consumers to be aware of and mobilize on boycotts. If we want competition, anti-consumer practices to disappear, price transparency, privacy, and on and on, then we need to be willing to mobilize on a boycott on the grounds of ethics or morality. We all have this theory of the invisible hand and market dynamics but as soon as people actually, you know, practice that then we get a sour taste in our mouth. The truth is cancel culture, or whatever you want to call it, is fundamental to capitalist economies in a classical sense.
- djaychela 1y ago
  Is there a problem with that? It's difficult to tell from your post whether you think that's a good idea, other than the quotes which intimate you think the ethics are off?
  - jraph 1y ago
    > It's difficult to tell from your post whether you think that's a good idea The quotes around ethical and the misuse of the word "cancel" makes me think they pretty much don't like whatever the site author is doing.
djaychela 1y ago
>Let’s f*ck up Zuck just because OP doesn’t like him. How can a post like this be at the top? Because the ethics of WA and Signal are completely different, and Meta is finally moving in the direction of putting adverts into WA which was predicted years ago when it was bought by Meta.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

I see people mentioning all sorts of alternatives, but not one of Session. I can't tell if you all know something I don't and that it's garbage, or if it's just that obscure.

pimeys 1y ago
It is not very secure: https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/ https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/ https://soatok.blog/2025/01/20/session-round-2/ https://soatok.blog/2025/01/20/session-round-2/ They also wrote an article about Signal security, worth to read: https://soatok.blog/2025/02/18/reviewing-the-cryptography-used-by-signal/ https://soatok.blog/2025/02/18/reviewing-the-cryptography-us...

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago

If you are from the U.S. sure, serves the interests of your country If you are not from the U.S., then no, it's not a replacement for WhatsApp, it's the same https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act "but E2E encryption my dude" You have forgotten about RSA, my dude Why Signal, why not X, Y, Z? ask yourself why something from Cali always gets picked up and talked about, but people's favorite? nevaaaaaaah

BiteCode_dev 1y ago

It's not a replacement, since it doesn't have the same feature sets or ergonomics. Don't get me wrong, I use signal a lot and I love it, but presenting signals as an alternative to whatsapp is only going to disappoint people. Telegram is closer, but neither e2e encrypted nor open source. Still, I would say if you are in America and not dealing with state or industrial secrets, getting spied on by russians is better than by meta. Basically, I use both: signals for my privacy oriented friends that will go through the ordeal of using signal, and telegram with the normies so that at least they get of the zuck train.

nikanj 1y ago

A few months back I opened Signal on my daily driver phone. All my contacts and message history were simply gone. Apparently this is a security feature designed to keep me safe. There is always a tradeoff between usability and security, and Signal is too secure for me

baobun 1y ago
> There is always a tradeoff between usability and security, and Signal is too secure for me I'd reframe that. Inside information security, there is a tradeoff between integrity and confidentiality. Here you lost integrity and availability, which is still a security fail. In no way is Signal being "too secure" here.

bertman 1y ago

I'm still sad that they'll probably never provide a proper web client instead of that suboptimal Electron desktop thing. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4466 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4466

pcthrowaway 1y ago
I think the issue with a traditional web app, is if they deliver one, they can be probably compelled by three-letter agencies to modify the app served to users or a specific user, to collect that user's information. Distributing it as a signed desktop/mobile application makes it so they can't tamper with what users are running to be made complicit in attacking their users

tasuki 1y ago

Wake me up when Signal stops depending on a phone number. One of the few things I feel I could lose very easily. And some people (eg my kid) don't even have a phone number!

wartijn_ 1y ago

Pointing out that WhatsApp was used to spread misinformation before Brazilian elections under the header “Ethical issues with WhatsApp” seems weird to me. According to the Guardian article[0] this article uses as a source, WhatsApp has had updates to limit the number of times messages can be forwarded. But there’s obviously a limit to what can be done because the chats are e2e encrypted. What does the author want from WhatsApp? Reading messages and blocking them if they don’t pass Meta’s moral guidelines is the opposite of want you’d want from your private chats and I don’t see any other way to effectively combat spreading misinformation. And is there any indication that Signal would prevent situations like this if it gets more widely used? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/30/whatsapp-fake-news-brazil-election-favoured-jair-bolsonaro-analysis-suggests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/30/whatsapp-fake-...

ancjothur 1y ago

For me no, until Signal will fix video call quality between ios and android. I use them both to connect with my family, signal for chats, but whatsapp for video calls, because very often in Signal you are minecraft. First place here is FaceTime link (so it opens in a browser), and second is WhatsApp.

mmcnl 1y ago

Signal doesn't provide any method to backup and restore my chats, at least on iOS. Imo this is a very important feature, I have chat history going back for years and it's basically a rich media diary of my life. It happens occasionally that I want to look up stuff that has been shared a few years ago, especially photos. Is ownership over my own data really too much to ask? The possibility of losing my entire chat history scares me. I get that some people even consider it a feature, but without the ability to backup and restore messages it's not really a "replacement" for WhatsApp, it's merely an alternative with pros and (very big) cons.

on_the_train 1y ago

No, it's just crypto bullshit.

fithisux 1y ago

I'm persuaded

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jacks004 1y ago

Signal is a solid choice privacy-focused, open-source, and free from ads or data tracking. A true ethical alternative to WhatsApp!