Signal works. The adoption is fairly slow, but I’ve had friends slowly begin to use it.
Signal gets some things right, but others wrong, such as phone numbers and centralized architecture. As such, it doesn’t fit the “everybody wants to use” part.
WhatsApp uses phone numbers and a centralized architecture. Remind me how many people use it?
Seeing how the dumb community feels trapped now that Meta stopped supporting KaiOS, I can tell there are a lot of people that wish they could leave the service. A lot of spaces make you feel like you have to use it, not want to use it. I used a few months while I was in the UK, but after that I’ve been lucky enough to delete my account as the service was useless elsewhere where other places I lived, no one used it.
…That said, I now have issues with LINE as a defacto chat option locally that gets in the way. My account was crushed after they canceled LINE Lite which was 10× smaller with no bloat or trackers & I refused to “upgrade” (where like WhatsApp & Signal, one is forced to have a mobile device as a primary device). Largely I can inconvenience everyone by making them choose a different means of communication (with email be largely the only common denominator) but if I were dating again, I would inevitably be forced to use the unsafe app putting myself in the position a lot of WhatsApp users feel they are without effective choice.
“some people use” ≠ “everybody wants to use”
(And are you sincerely suggesting WhatsApp, which is run by one of the largest and most aggressive privacy invaders the world has ever known, as a privacy friendly application? I would suggest re-thinking that position if you want to be taken seriously.)
I’ve been using Signal since like 2016 and have not seen any appreciable adoption rate whatsoever within my social network.
I used to actively try to get people to use it but I got enough ambivalent or negative responses that I just stopped asking.
Exactly. And I gave up trying even when it was “easier”. Not to mention, since it can’t do SMS anymore, I actually helped my mom. stop using it, because then she’d need 2 different messaging apps. She and I now use Google Messages to text and whatever Google is calling the integrated video chat app now.
Yeah, a new messaging app is definitely a hard sell for me if it’s data/wifi only. I have Discord for unimportant internet conversations that can wait for me to burn data and texting for important things like work because I get unlimited texts. Having a separate app for a couple of people would be annoying.
My biggest problem with Signal is how much battery it uses when you don’t have Google services on your phone.
It easily uses 30-40% of my battery compared to the rest.
Signal is great. I miss when it worked with SMS. There are 2 E2EE SMS apps that I’m aware of, bit one is not well supported and the other needs quite a bit of UI work before it’s usable by the general public. Also, neither can be used as the default SMS app on Apple phones,but that’s not the app’s fault.
My problem is that it does not work on multiple devices at the same time, so I have personally given up on it. Maybe it has changed, did not check for a long time.
It works everywhere except Android tablets, and you can just use Molly for that.
I don’t think they’re in trouble, they’re just talking about long term funding because it’s relevant. Can’t expand and get more funding without mentioning that you need it
Of the articles I saw about funding
- one was by Signal, estimating future costs
- one was by that Grayzone guy, misrepresenting where funds were from (said it was CIA lol), how much was being changed (title implied it was entirely CIA funded but it was a past, publicly documented investment by a government program)
This was the article that raised a small stir. Some question the motivation and accuracy of some of the statements. The grabber quote is:
The unprecedented disclosure’s motivation was simple - the platform is rapidly running out of money, and in dire need of donations to stay afloat.
I think he’s talking about this, but it’s very clearly just a normal fundraising pitch that doesn’t even hint at a current issue with funding.
One of their own posts. No motivation to research a link for you
