this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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You are definitely right but it's probably almost right at the sweet spot. Decentralization/federation is great for privacy, but think about what most non-technical people can handle. With federation alone, practically all non-tech people would even fail (or be confused by) the first step, namely to find an instance.
So are there more privacy friendly options than Signal? Definitely. But are those user friendly enough most people could use it? I can't think of one, but would live to hear some alternatives that are simple enough my mom could use it.
Not everything has to be federated anyway, it's not inherently better for privacy by default, because you are putting your trust in more people. Signal can be audited easier than 1000 people hosting their own servers.
Signal isn't perfect, but it's the best option we have that everyone can understand to use.
We get no privacy when the only server rug pulls.
Then we move on. There's always a fork or alternative waiting.
You think you have privacy with buttfuckers6969 running your server? Reddit and Lemmy never cease to amaze me.
Never heard of end-to-end encryption?
Jesus Christ 🤦♂️ you really do.
I'm not sure what I expected.
On the user friendly note... The unfortunate part is that I'd love to use Signal, but there is no one on it. And I don't mean that millions of people use it is today, but there isn't a single person in my circle that uses it. Even if i started today and convinced one person, to use it, it wouldn't be something that I would default to because the non privacy focused apps are just easier.
So my arguement is there are no simple alternatives because every alternative still hasn't solved the population/popularity issue. I need one of these apps to be able to import ongoing groups and conversations that people can just immediately pick up in signal when I abandon whatsapp or whatever.... That's before I start using it, let alone my mom.
I do hope they get there though
I did the same what @warm said and I don't even have WhatsApp. If someone needs something from me they have to write on Signal (or SMS 🤣).
That issue is down to you. To us.
Convincing people is hard and some might never move away from what they have.
I managed to convince my family and friends, they still use WhatsApp to talk to some people, but otherwise they use Signal.
I mean, people understand mails alright, which is fairly similar to the fediverde. They get very enthousiastic about AI and don't know anything about how it works.
But to be fair Mail is pretty centralized too nowadays for most people @gmail and @outlook. Of course there are others but my point is that there a a hand full of providers up to a point that it's almost unfeasible to maintain and run you own mailserver because there is a high chance that those large providers will flag your mail as spam because it's rare to see a "wild" mailserver.
It's because they think AI will make them rich somehow and Signal is just a "boring" chat app.
Nothing like a mall, and your examples don't affect usability.
Your Mom could use https://simplex.chat/ I bet.
I'm pretty sure she couldn't. She would wonder why she couldn't contact anyone from her contact list. Sending individual links to probably hundreds of people without knowing if they use Simplex is completely unfeasible. Signal and WhatsApp you just open the app, immediately see who else uses it and can start texting. No multiple profiles, no meeting to scan QR codes or sending links, which is especially ironic because she would probably send that via Signal or WhatsApp 🤣