Wish more of my contact list would switch over to Signal. It's nearly the same. I don't see why it's so hard for some people to just start using Signal instead of WhatsApp.
Oh well.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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My dad won't switch from Facebook messenger so now we have to talk via unencrypted sms
Because people are beyond stupid. "i dont want to download another app" - while having an app for almost every other store and bullshit game and whatever
I think what they really mean is "I don't want another account".
Hell I've been getting rid of accounts lately. Feels good.
Ya it’d be better if it didn’t require a phone number but it’s a solid start as it’s build up a user base over the past decade. Matrix is good but I know far less people that use it and it’ll be a long time of growing with nerdy/geeky communities before it starts getting more mainstream users
signal requires a phone number and won't even allow you to send sms to those that aren't on signal.
its better, but still not great.
It used to function as a fallback SMS/MMS messenger (like how iMessage does) but when Google started moving to convert Android from SMS/MMS to RCS Signal made the hard decision to cut the fallback functionality rather than follow Google's new framework.
I personally hope once the dust settles Signal designs a RCS engine and restores the fallback functionality.
Yeah killing the sms function was basically a deal breaker for me, no matter how much I tried I could only get three people to use Signal, the rest were all sms. When the sms feature was removed 2 of the 3 dropped Signal completely, so now the only person I know who still uses it is my mom and even she still flips back and forth between Signal and Google messages when texting me.
I still have Signal on my phone and suggest it people when they ask how to contact me, but everyone just wants to text my phone number.
If you need to send sms to someone not on signal, why not just send them an sms
I like Signal. I even got all my close friends and family on it, specifically to message me because I won't use whatsapp. The PIN reminders are annoying it enough to be legitimately holding it back from mass appeal imho
How about Delta Chat? At least as secure as Signal, open source, and decentralized.
A truly ethical replacement would not need a phone number
And it would have as much spam as email.
And would have FOSS implementations of reference server & client + an openly specified protocol.
Like Matrix.
Matrix still has it's problems. All the meta data is still saved on every server permanently.
There is still space to improve from there.
Anyone using Session? I finally got most of my friends and family on Signal so I'm not gonna switch but I just heard about it, seems pretty good.
Basically Signal but without the weakness of a phone number & runs on a Tor-like network. It's still a work-in-progress thing but you CAN use it to send messages
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Proprietary servers is still proprietary software
Don't let perfection stand in the way of good enough
It may not be the holy grail, but moving away from Meta-owned Whatsapp is already a pretty significant improvement
I agree and it would be much better if people would use Signal instead of WhatsApp, but I think there's still one problem.
Due to how messaging platforms work, every time you switch you lose pretty much everything (messages, media, etc) This makes switching very hard even for a nerd like me, because if Signal is not "perfect" it means that I will have to switch again at some point and lose everything again.
Thats a problem with silos (where one owner hosts all the servers) in general. You will have to switch the entire ecosystem once the inevitable enshitification sets in. It's a good idea to switch to something open source and federated (where many different non profit organisations and even self hosting individuals host many different servers). That way you can migrate your history and contacts to another server of necessary but never have to switch the ecosystem again. Think it how email works, it's the best known federated system. If you don't like you email provider anymore you can just chose another one and still keep your contacts and messages on a client like Thunderbird forever. Xmpp and matrix are the hottest candidates in my opinion, but you can check the messenger matrix that was linked in a comment above to see what suits you best.
Well said, the problem really is that Signal isn't federated. I'm keeping an eye on Matrix for now.
I've been using Signal for years and my database was getting really bloated with media, attachments, etc but I didn't want to delete it all. I used this and it's incredible:
https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools
Just make a backup from within signal, copy that backup file to your PC, then run this tool. The commands I used make an HTML webpage that looks just like the signal messenger, along with a way of searching your messages. You can choose different commands to export however you like.
I used:
signalbackup-tools [input] [passphrase] --exporthtml [directory] --split --searchpage --originalfilenames
So while this doesn't help you move off your current messenger, you don't have to worry that your data/messages will be lost in Signal.
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After Trump was elected and inaugurated, Signal has finally been gaining some steam here in the Netherlands.
It's still an American company, so it's not ideal. But it's still significantly better better than letting a tech giant like Facebook have control over the most commonly used chat app.
WhatsApp needs to go and Signal is the most likely way in which we can achieve that. We can worry about the American elephant in the room later.
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It's ethical because it runs on donations and has a non-profit business model.
Meta likely spends at least $1 billion a year running WhatsApp.
Please donate to Signal if you use it.
signal not being on fdroid is a strike against them
It is though. I currently use Signal installed through F-Droid. You just need to add a separate repository.
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