(Update: usernames are coming in 2021) As far as I'm concerned from lurking on their community forum over the last year, they're actively working on it because many privacy advocates share the same feeling, inluding Snowden himself and their plan is to require it for signup (which is reasonable to prevent spam) but leave it as an option when it comes to contact discovery, but who knows, they may not require it all.

I shared your opinion when I first started using Signal, but as months have passed and I've been suggesting more people to use Signal and Element, everyone has chosen Signal as their way of communicating with me. When they install Signal, the first thing they point out is the ease of use, the resemblance to WhatsApp, being able to have group calls within the app in both mobile and desktop; in contrast, when they register a Matrix account, they are confused as to how to find me because of the fact that I'm using my personal Matrix homeserver, as well as pointing out how slow the message sending is in the main isntance and how unpolished the UI looks. Also, the fact that I have to use the Jitsi integration for a simple video call and therefore rely on selfhosting another service (Jitsi's main instance video quality is very poor) is inconvenient IMO.

I'm not trying to argue whether one service is better than the other for anyone's case, because at the end of the day I know Matrix is far superior if everyone was technically apt. However, that's not the case with the majority of people, and relying on a phone as an option, which seems to be what Signal is aiming for with all their recent changes on groups and the introduction of PINs, is the best way to go, as people need simple privacy, and Signal is amazing at providing this.

Btw, if anyone's fond of CLI clients (I believe you are, Dess), here are some for both services:

• scli (Signal)
• siggo (Signal)
• signal-weechat(Signal)
• gomuks (Matrix)
• matrix-weechat (Matrix)

sender and recipient phone numbers

Only the recipient actually thanks to sealed sender. So if you're using a VPN, they can't build your social graph. There are services that also allow you to create a one time phone number, which you can then secure with a removed so that you Signal identifier doesn't get taken over by someone else. They are working on making it possible to use usernames instead of phone numbers.

And if you're using Matrix or something like that, you are still trusting the admins of both instances (sender and receiver) with your metadata (and matrix leaks more metadata than Signal). If you're running your own small instance, they can easily build your social graph just by monitoring the connection to that instance.

Signal also has a much more straightforward UX, making it usable for non tech-savvy people, which is often overlooked by free software advocates.

They have a ton of very good arguments here. You can also find Matrix's response.

This is why I favor Matrix, I don't have to give anybody any info and it would be hard for the government to build a social graph of my contacts if we use VPN's or Tor to connect.

that's not actually the case, i read in the signal blog (if i find it i'll link it) that no metadata travels unencrypted and no metadata is stored on the servers. even in groups, there is no database storing the list of members, as the exchange of keys happens only between devices with zero-knowledge. if all the members of the group reset their phones the group is non-existing anymore as it never was anywhere in the first place.

There's another post adding telegram here. This is what it looks like:

There seems to be a bit more than with Signal. I guess is highly depends on which instance you interact with. Matrix encrypts less metadata than Signal and not all conversations are E2EE.

Yes, but that's just it. They don't link it to your name (The name you enter is only shared with the people you message, and is encrypted).

They also use your contacts contact discovery, so you can seamlessly start sending Signal messages to you address book. Once again they use the as little info as possible (the phone numbers are hashed). You can have more info about why private contact discovery is hard here and a potential solution here.

This is mentioned in the app store, but under the category "data NOT linked to you"

Not very well. Telegram is not fully open source, E2EE is off by default, they use their own weird cypher, etc.

This thread has some very good suggestions, so if Signal isn't your cup of tea, I'd suggest taking a look at one of them.

Telegram is far far behind Signal. In terms of privacy, it's not owned by a big Corp but Signal isn't either, and from a technical perspective, Telegram has pretty no E2EE, while almost everything in Signal is E2E encrypted.

The issue with the messages being delivered late only happens when there are notifications issues too. Check your settings. Also, it seems that when an app isn't opened for a while, it looses the notifications. I have that issue with element.

Check the signal app settings. The app should be allowed to use any battery it wants etc, many android flavors give it a battery restriction which inhibits signal from working in the background.