[outime]

>Nobody uses Signal in France [from the 5000 sample]

If one would've come to HN and read the last few months worth of posts you'd come to think that a lot of people from around the world moved to Signal. But then again this is a reminder about how little HN represents compared to the general population's tech choices.

[GiveOver]

Compared to how many of those numbers have Whatsapp (1750), it's more popular than I'd have guessed. 1 Signal user for every 18 Whatsapp users

[0xcafecafe]

That signal move backfired for me. Before it was just whatsapp. Now with some folks from my generation moving to signal and the older folks from the parent's generation staying with whatsapp, I have had to maintain presence across 2 chat applications.

[Hallucinaut]

What's the actual cost here? You have one app open or another, no different to two distinct chatgroups in WhatsApp except for some small extra CPU cost for changing app focus if switching between them.

The only issue I've seen is when I want to add someone who's only WhatsApp to a Signal chat, which has happened maybe twice until they also joined.

Personally I feel good about taking even a small amount of Comms out of Zuckerberg's clutches

[dukeyukey]

Right now I'm maintaining:

* Messenger for family and some friends * WhatsApp for group chats and most of my friends * SMS for older family members * Signal and Telegram for a select few privacy-conscious friends

And at least one family member uses three of these, and it's a toss-up which one he'll use at any given time.

[Grimm1]

My anecdata but, my friend in France does and has been forever. That's how her and I keep in contact and video chat. Perhaps their sample wasn't representative.

[outime]

I'd say a sample of 5000 random phone numbers is more representative than individual comments from a community obsessed (in a positive way) with privacy.

[Grimm1]

That's not my argument. My friend isn't privacy obsessed and not a part of this community.