[DerekBickerton]

I hope other countries don't copy the UK. With the Internet we have choice of jurisdiction and can happily avoid any cryptography projects operating out of the UK. I don't care if WhatsApp will become wiretapped in the UK. My beloved Matrix operates out of there, that's what concerns me.

And I have to use WhatsApp because of its network effect (all my friends and family are on it). I have tried recruiting them on to Signal and Matrix, but the mental fatigue for them of doing that; means I have only have three friends on Signal, and ~100s stuck on shitty WhatsApp.

Hopefully the more tech savvy friends of mine will ditch WhatsApp and choose Signal. And I'm not saying Signal doesn't have its issues (meatspace identity tied to your number etc) but it's far superior to WhatsApp which collects too much metadata like, it knows your contacts, when you talk to them, IP and other metadata.

Does anyone else have this issue of recruiting friends and family onto more privacy-respecting messenger apps?

[barrysteve]

Half don't care about privacy.

Branding a privacy app "as a privacy app" is a mistake. We need the next messenging app to be private by default AND better at making people popular and giving attention and securing relationships for the end user and all the rest of it..

The people who care about privacy are "trying to get away" and going to "get off the map". In the eyes of some average joes.

That's basically anti-marketing.

[autoexec]

> And I'm not saying Signal doesn't have its issues (meatspace identity tied to your number etc) but it's far superior to WhatsApp which collects too much metadata like, it knows your contacts, when you talk to them, IP and other metadata.

Signal also collects your contacts and it permanently stores that data in the cloud along with your name, photo, and phone number. If didn't know they were doing that, that alone should tell you how much you can trust Signal.

[jacooper]

At this point matrix will have to move out from the UK, along with Element too.