[Rhapso]

I enthusiastically recommend using signal for normal communication. So long as using a private messenger is reserved for "illicit" use cases, that meta information of using it is itself a dangerous to the users.

https://kmlawfirm.com/2023/02/28/its-not-what-you-say-its-ho...

I'll be blunt and say I don't trust governments to "do the right thing" so the only way past this is to normalize using it for all use cases and doing so protects vulnerable people.

[randomNumber7]

It depends what your goal is.

For example in germany, while i wouldnt trust the government, there are some decent laws the founding fathers made after ww2 that are hard to change.

So just because you use something like tor, signal is not enough. You need to be proven guilty by harder facts so using this is no danger.

[kvdveer]

Having good laws is not enough, not even if they are hard to change. The Netherlands had decent legal protections for Jewish people, right up to may 15th 1940. After that, those laws didn't protect any of them.

[newsclues]

People are policy.

Even with laws on the books, people enforce (or not) the law.

[91bananas]

See USA in the year 2025 about those laws the founding fathers put in to place...

[thephyber]

There are two likely ways I could interpret your parent regarding crime.

One is that they worry that if only criminals use the tool, the tool will be targeted by legislators and simple possession/ usage of the tool will eventually be criminalized.

The other is that there needs to be a crowd of innocent people to hide the guilty person and make the investigators / prosecutors work hard to find other corroborating evidence of the crime (not just using the channel of comms).

A third that has nothing to do with crime is that all people deserve to have strong privacy and we should normalize using a very secure method of comms.

[gear54rus]

I'd be enthusiastically using it for 'normal' communication if they haven't idiotically removed SMS support.

Without that, they won't ever reach mass adoption because WhatsApp and Telegram are already there and are superior in basically every way.

[Mistletoe]

They aren’t superior in the most important way, which is the security and privacy.

[Rhapso]

I think you missed the point. WhatsApp and Telegram don't offer the safety or security Signal does.

They removed SMS to preserve that safety and security. It isn't a for profit business. We are the ones motivated to help them get adopted. if donations don't correlate with increased users Signal actually can't tolerate growth.

Do whatsapp or telegram have the same models? Can you tell if you are the customer or the product with them?

[fragmede]

Given that I don't pay to use signal, why should a bunch of words about governence convince me that I'm not the product to signal either?

[Rhapso]

With that level of nihilism/skepticism why would paying for the privilege give confidence you are not a product? Only a similar pile of words keeps them from double-dipping and making you both customer and product.

[Mistletoe]

It has spread like wildfire in my friends and family group. It’s amazing how fast a good product that does what people want naturally spreads.