not barely enough
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Privacy
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not much. most of them are still using telegram believing durov is a good guy
Everyone I'm close with uses Signal. Family, friends and even some coworkers.
this is the type of question i would only answer on signal
12 family members, 3 friends.
I got my parents and a few friends. I take longer to answer anywhere else.
We are a matrix family, mind you.
2 that I know of, but that’s the majority of my social circle (not working, no family). The other people I don’t think would want to because it’s different and difficult and those are “leave everything at default” sort of people when it comes to tech, so lost cause anyway.
Both the people who do use it are there because of me, though!
My partner and I were struggling when I was android and they were iOS, there was delays that threw everything out of order, so we tried a few messaging apps that worked cross platform and I found signal and we started using it together, and my friend started using it when dating a new person because e2ee for naughty photos and stuff, at my suggestion. They were using Snapchat and I was like ummmm.. no. Don’t do that. But we use it to talk all the time now.
None, they barely had the energy to switch to Telegram while staying on WhatsApp when it became popular a few years ago. Nobody wants to take it seriously because they "have nothing to hide".
Only 2 IRL friends, family no they're too stubborn and don't care for privacy
Three fiddy
6
As far as I'm aware: Zero.
In theory everyone around me does. I have refused to use whatsapp and fb messenger and the like for around 10 years now. As a result I don't have contact with the majority of people I used to call friends as they refused to use anything else.
Consequently my immediate family use it and a few friends that actually cared to stay in touch do.
I have a couple of hold outs who I have contact with but pretty much everyone I'm in regular contact are on signal now.
All but two of them.
Most of the people I want to receive messages from use Signal. But to be fair (to be faaaiiiir), that number isn't that large.
Almost zero. We are all in the Matrix. It’s especially necessary when you are refugees by 🇷🇺, but personally me started to use matrix a very long time ago.
I usually use matrix too though haven’t used it with irl friends 💪
Four.
My whole family (excluding my extended family) uses Signal to talk with me, haha.
My mother tried it once
…once
Only a small handful of people in my circle are willing to use it. Most can’t be bothered to change despite my efforts to explain how much better it is to use. I’ve waned in my usage of unencrypted chat so that is isolating me from some which saddens me a bit. I can handle that, but I am far more disappointed in people’s indifference in the matter.
I don't find it "better" in any way other than privacy.
From a user standpoint, the UI is just SMS, that is it's not good.
Plus I no longer trust them after the lie that they dropped SMS because if "engineering costs". There are free SMS apps, because the app has fuck all to do with SMS - your app merely registers as the SMS app, and uses the native API calls for the SMS database.
From a user standpoint, the UI is just SMS, that is it's not good.
SMS don't support group chats, do they?
I think you misunderstand the purpose of Signal. It's for encrypted communication. SMS can be encrypted but it can be a real hassle and security risk if messages are sent over 2 different channels and start arriving out of order or not at all. Sending media over SMS is also a problem as now that introduces another problem: MMS is over data, not SMS. If you don't have data but do have SMS, a message in the chain isn't delivered which means key renegotiation.
They dropped SMS for very good reasons. It's not because "they are lazy" or and they had "fuck all to do". If it really were that easy, it would've been done.
Me and one other tech friend who appeased me. We tried simplex first, but sometimes their background service would be off and they wouldnt get messages. So we switch to Molly.
Immediate family, two friend groups I'm in, a client's client, that's about it.
Or perhaps there are other people around and we just aven't managed to realize / First Conatct.
Tech friends, all my family, and all my wife's family are mostly on signal. Other "regular" friends from other circles are on a mix of Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.
Myself, my wife, her parents, and my parents all use it, though honestly the latter are there for grandkid pictures and I’m confident 100% of their conversations with anyone else are sms/facebook/etc.
A bunch. I simply do not communicate without private messengers. If somebody asked me to use Matrix / Element, that'd be fine too.
People who don't care enough to use a private messenger are implying that they don't care about my and our privacy. It's quite simple for me not to want to talk to them 🤷♂️
Friends are almost all on signal. Parents are bad at technology and can barely figure out sms.
One for me.
only one, online friend 👀
0
Unfortunately
None that I know of.
All of my close friends, slowly making its way in some members of my family. Always find it funny when a friend that I haven’t seens in a while say : yeah I have signal install for some shit and I proceed to had him/her to all the stupid conversations my crazy friends made
Just me. I'm holding out I'll meet someone else who has it installed someday.
I had a friend the other day telling me that his mother made the whole family group switch from Whatsapp to Signal following Meta supporting Trump. Unexpected, but good to see.
Lol, funny the things that make people jump.
Glad to see it, but clearly privacy wasn't the reason, which is weird to me.
1 person
Zero
The entire family on both sides now! We still use FaceTime for video sometimes as it is also E2EE and seems to be much less often blurry than signal video.
most! i have one straggler on telegram
most of the people I'm closest to do. other than that it's all Whatsapp, unfortunately.
None.
When they dropped SMS support, I no longer had a mechanism to get people to switch.
I don't know. So it very well may be zero.