My friends wanted to move off Telegram to Signal. I said sure let's move off Telegram, but let's move onto Matrix instead. Now I have to use a Matrix bridge to talk to them and I still had to install Signal lol
I mean Signal is definitely better than Telegram, but if we were going to make a move anyway, I would've preferred the one that doesn't require a phone number, or even the existence of a phone.
My whole life I kept trying to move people to the better chat program/app. It's a waste of time. Either they'll do our don't on their own time.
Maybe simplex or Threema for that. Matrix is like replacement of IRC
Wait... Browser cookies?
What flavour?
Persistent cookies
What do they taste of?
The first thing that came to mind for 'persistence' was sweat...
Maybe something long-lasting in that case
I'll pass, I'm not a fan of sweat taste.
Butterscotch
I like both butter and scotch, but never thought of combining them before. Seems a bit odd, but now I'm intrigued!
Be careful combining things like that.
It's not going well for me....
Yum!
In an evil world bribery is the only way to get things done.
Nice!
Nice! How were you successful?
Maybe that's is the way... Big corporations are silently inserting their corporate dicks in our asses by convincing or bribing their way by some propaganda or some gain.
Signal vs session: which is better?
Signal is better than Session if you value privacy:
The Session developers dropped Perfect Forward Secrecy because it would be hard to work around it.
First things first, let’s talk about what we’re leaving behind: Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and deniability.
Source: https://getsession.org/session-protocol-explained
In plain English, they dropped a security feature for their own convenience to the detriment of their users' security.
For anyone unsure what PFS provides:
The value of forward secrecy is that it protects past communication.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_secrecy
The Session devs also claim:
Session provides protections against these types of threats in other ways — through fully anonymous account creation, onion routing, and metadata minimisation, for example.
Reading between the lines, we can interpret that as introducing security through obscurity, which is generally considered bad practice - https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/656.html
Lastly, Session does not provide quantum resistant encryption, the latest and greatest tech in ensuring your messages stay private. Signal, SimpleX (via PQXDH [1] ) and iMessage (via PQ3 [2] ) - as far as I'm aware - are the only messaging platforms that support quantum-resistant encryption.
If you want something like Signal but without phone numbers, give SimpleX a try. It's basically a fork of Signal with a ton of privacy features, like working without a phone number. I like it but the UX still needs a lot of polish before I try getting family/friends on it.
Afaik session's main thing is that it's like signal but without phone numbers. While there are cases where one might prefer that, the use of phone numbers does provide some benefits. It makes things simple so even my elderly parents can use it. So it's not that one approach is better, there's just different use cases
Musk once wrote “use signal.” Since I learned that I’m a bit paranoid about it.
Also it’s banned in Russia? There’s a reason.
Musk also said not to use Signal [1] - I wouldn't put any weight behind anything Elon says, right or wrong.
I should add, Signal and SimpleX are best in class when it comes to private messaging. If anyone says otherwise, please provide evidence.
Russia prefers services they can spy on.
If an E2E encrypted messenger is banned in a country, it is like a badge of honour I guess.
Sorry. I wish I hadn’t a few years ago. I will be looking to move to a non-Android, non-iOS phone soon so family will need another way to contact me. I can’t take a project serious that demands I use one of the corpo duopoly phones or even have a phone at all, but Signal, LINE, & a couple of other chat apps have this weird requirement.
XMPP and Threema don't require a phone number. And if you want you can run XMPP on your own server.
The difficulty will be convincing family to move again—not the technology options
I know, most people I know stick to whatssucks and faciesbook messenger.
Why don’t you contribute to Signal and be the change you want to see? You can make a pull request in GitHub.
The creator explictly made this choice.
Also screw telling folks they must use Microsoft products to contribute to a project.
The developer literally puts information in the README.md on how to contribute code, so you’re correct they made the choice to allow collaboration.
Either collaborate to make it do what you want or quit whining about it not doing that thing. Signal is free after all, the least you could do is contribute if you want more features.
GitHub is a great version control system, regardless of its owner.
I mean the creator requires the Android/iOS primary device or no service… by design. They do not want another option.
Also not every project is open to contributions that fundamentally change things—which is why forks are so common in free software. Changing this core isn’t worth the effort since there are alternatives that already do everything Signal does, but just have a worse marketing team. I am very much allowed to be as angry at family stuck on Signal as I would if they used WhatsApp for similar reasons—both technical & social.