[alias_neo]

I moved my family over to Signal years ago.

Anyone new who wants to message me, I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install it; it's been fairly frictionless, after all how hard is it to download an app and go through the fairly minimal registration process; and for someone already using WhatsApp, "one more account" probably isn't a major concern.

I tried various steps in the past to retain access to WhatsApp for a couple of people who didn't move, by having a work account on my phone, with a second SIM, but a one-click mistake one time gave WhatsApp my entire contact list from the "Personal" sandbox account, and I've decided not to even bother again.

[leokennis]

> I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install it; it's been fairly frictionless, after all how hard is it to download an app and go through the fairly minimal registration process

Genuinely curious. I am in WhatsApp groups for my kids soccer teams (who will be there at the game, can my kid drive together with you to the match), my kids school classes (Johnny lost his headphones did anyone see them), my work teams "social chat" (happy birthday, I am at conference XYZ) etc. etc. In your situation, which of the three scenarios applies?

1 - You are not in such groups

2 - You were in such groups, and the entire group moved over to Signal

3 - You were in such groups, but the entire group did not move over to Signal and now you are not in these groups anymore

[sebastiennight]

Option 1 mostly. I think it's also worth taking into consideration one thing.

People on Signal tend to have much less volume of overall messages and groups. For someone on WhatsApp to forward you the invite is a hassle for them, sure, but it is an infinitesimal unnoticeable increment on how many in/out messages they deal with in a day.

As I mention in another thread, people will complain that they "have too many apps" if you pitch Signal as a privacy app. They would install it instantly if you told them the emojis are funnier or whatever. Because they already installed 300+ apps and one more is actually .3% increment ; whereas for your typical GrapheneOS F-droid person, adding whatsapp would be a +15% increase of apps on their homepage.

It's kind of the same with those WhatsApp groups. There will be 1,000 messages in the group this week/month. 3 of those are the actual invite you need, and if you have actual human connections with folks, someone will send you those.

[jen20]

I've managed to go a very long time - living in both the UK and the US - using only iMessage and (as of around 2017) Signal.

I finally had to install WhatsApp on a trip recently for group coordination, but ensured it didn't get things like contact access, and removed it afterwards.

Kids school may well be an outlier (US), but they send formal communication by email (with an SMS notification or call for emergencies), and the parent group is all on iMessage.

[alias_neo]

It's scenario 1. My children are still young, pre-school and reception so no such groups have come up yet. The odd parent that wanted to contact me has installed Signal or sent me SMS (RCS). For anything else, my wife is still on WhatsApp so she relays messages if/when they come up.

EDIT: re: Work, my colleagues are all on Signal, we have lots of Signal groups to communicate.

[rickdeckard]

So in a nutshell "I have someone else on WhatsApp who keeps me in the loop"

Expect this to scale, in my experience you can move your family over to another service. Groups of families your kid is somehow in contact with, not so much...

[alias_neo]

it's a challenge for sure, however, I've managed to get my extended family all on Signal which is about as much reach as I could hope/expect to achieve.

That's my household, my parents, my grandparents, my parents-in-law, my sibling(s), cousins, aunts/uncles, sibling(s)-in-law, friends, and my colleagues.

Some of my children's' friends' parents who I'm friendly enough with also began using Signal so we can communicate. Those who are school friends but not outside-of-school-friends, we can communicate with via the school's app.

Almost anyone I could want to communicate with is on Signal, all of the family is directly or indirectly because of me, and friends and colleagues has been a combination.

Anyone I don't know well enough to have a conversation about privacy and Meta being the antithesis of it, is not likely someone I need to communicate with.

All in, my wife, on WhatsApp, isn't really "keep[ing] me in the loop", unless we're messaging a trades-person or similar, but that's infrequent enough to not be an issue.

[wkat4242]

For me the "one more account" is really a problem. WhatsApp is the standard messenger in most of the EU.

And I don't want to go to signal because it's only marginally better. It's still American and still a walled garden (no third party apps allowed, no federation). It's a slightly less smelly walled garden.

[palata]

I don't get this. Everyone is used to juggling between multiple apps, many of which allow to send messages. People are fine talking over Discord AND WhatsApp AND three others, but somehow "it's unbearable to add Signal". And it's not exactly "yet another app", it's pretty much a clone of WhatsApp. So if everybody moved to Signal, we could just get rid of WhatsApp. Which gets us to your second point:

> And I don't want to go to signal because it's only marginally better. It's still American and still a walled garden (no third party apps allowed, no federation). It's a slightly less smelly walled garden.

This, to me, is downright irrational. "Less smelly" is better, especially if it takes zero effort (you don't even need to create an account with a password, it just sends you an SMS).

If there was a non-American alternative to Signal, surely I would go for it. But there isn't. In the meantime, Signal is by far the best alternative to WhatsApp in terms of privacy.

Not to mention that there is actually a valid reason to not allow third party apps (spoiler: security). Last time I heard a fork of Signal making the news, it was pretty bad.

[wkat4242]

I don't use the others you mention. Only telegram because many communities are there (it's the only chat app with good group chat functionality)

But it's exactly because I already have to deal with too many of them that I don't want to add more.

Also I don't like moxie's attitude but that's more of a personal concern that won't apply to most. Like not allowing third party clients or federation and shooting many suggestions down on github. It's his right to do that but it's also mine to not want to use it. For a "just a little bit better" experience I'm not moving to that.

I use matrix a lot and I think this is by far the best and most open option but most people don't know it. I bridge all the other apps through it now. Also, arathorn is a much nicer person who responds much better to criticism.

> If there was a non-American alternative to Signal, surely I would go for it. But there isn't. In the meantime, Signal is by far the best alternative to WhatsApp in terms of privacy.

But I wouldn't be able to actually move. It would just be yet another one. Not even much better in any way than whatsapp.

> Not to mention that there is actually a valid reason to not allow third party apps (spoiler: security). Last time I heard a fork of Signal making the news, it was pretty bad.

I don't care so much about that (and I work in cybersec). What matters more to me is being in control of my data. Being able to export them wherever I want etc.

I had an issue recently with whatsapp where they locked my account because of "spam". I wasn't spamming but they probably thought my matrix bridge was suspicious. However because of that bridge I could still access my chat data. I couldn't in whatsapp itself. Signal could do the same to me. So I would only use it bridged to Matrix anyway, like I do whatsapp.

And in terms of security: I don't believe neither WhatsApp nor Signal is good enough to prevent a state actor from reading my messages. Even if they can't get in the app they can compromise an endpoint. And even a bad third-party app will be sufficient to prevent drive-by hackers with a pineapple from reading my messages. So I don't see much difference there.

[palata]

For someone who "works in cybersec", you have surprising opinions...

Like you seem to care about your messages not being entirely public ("And even a bad third-party app will be sufficient to prevent drive-by hackers with a pineapple from reading my messages") but at the same time you're fine with Telegram not being E2EE.

And then you seem to consider that a state actor being able to read the messages in transit is the same as them hacking into the phones?

And it all suggests that somehow the only reasonable threat model is "not caring about a state actor targetting oneself specifically and not caring about anything more than 'drive-by hackers with a pineapple'"?

[wkat4242]

I work in cybersec, not saying I'm a good one :) I hate my job (moving into cyber was a mistake) but I'm currently staying in it for mortgage reasons. And I don't ascribe to the regular security dogma.

I think third-party signal apps are just too thin a target for anyone intermediate to bother. Signal itself hardly is. Also, most of the stuff I discuss on these is just banter and stupid memes that people send me.

[dotancohen]

  > But I wouldn't be able to actually move. It would just be yet another one.

Actually, you would. A few months ago WhatsApp had a huge downtime in my country, and lots of people move to Telegram. It turns out, just telling people that you're moving to Telegram, that's enough to get them to move with you. I was already on Telegram, but I saw it happen enough times to be surprised myself.

Just don't keep a backup WhatsApp account around, because then people will use it.

[wkat4242]

I don't think that will work with the massive whatsapp userbase we have here. Literally everyone I know is on whatsapp.

It's really not worth the hassle for me especially since signal is only marginally better.

[palata]

What is "the hassle"? Do you mean the few seconds required to install Signal on your phone? Or do you mean converting all your friends to Signal?

I understand the latter, but for the former... it's probably faster to install Signal than to answer to a message on HN.

If everybody just installed Signal (because it's better, even if marginally), then eventually everybody would be on Signal and it would be easy to switch.

[bayindirh]

This is not about Signal. This about being spread too thin. To be able to keep up with all the work projects I'm involved in, I need to use Slack, Discord, Matrix at the same time. Add WhatsApp on top of that. That's 4, but not all. Add e-mail and ordinary phone calls.

6 methods to just keep up with work. I also have at least three ways to reach required documents and meeting notes. I really don't want to jump like a platformer character from point to point to be able to communicate and get things done.

In my personal life, I prefer "1 task, 1 application" model. Communications, one application. Personal information storage? Everything in one place, etc.

Application hopping has a very big mental overhead, and kills my flow. Many colleagues are in the same boat.

It's not Signal, it's any app, account, for any reason.

[palata]

I don't get that. I also must use Slack, Discord, Matrix, WhatsApp and I don't see a problem in having Signal on top. When I receive a message from someone, all it takes is clicking on the notification and answering there.

To the point where sometimes I can't remember on which app I was having which discussion.

[mr_toad]

> I need to use Slack, Discord, Matrix

Sounds like a perfect way to ghost people. “You send the update on Matrix? Oh, yeah I was stuck arguing with people in Slack all day, I must have missed it.”

[wkat4242]

Yeah that's exactly what happens. Especially because not every app allows per-user notification control on android so I just disable notifications altogether for the apps I don't use so much. I only want to be notified for the most important stuff, I don't have time to constantly tend to my phone every time someone says something. So I tend to look at it just at the end of the day.

One thing that's nice about matrix is that you can select keywords to trigger notifications. Most of the other apps don't have that. So I tell people to say PRIO or PRORITY if their message is really important, so they can force a notification. Any other messages just get looked at when I get around to it and don't notify. If they abuse the priority I simply remove their right to do that.

But none of the other apps seems to be able to do these keywords or (even better) have an option to mark a message as urgent or something.

[alias_neo]

I disagree wholeheartedly that it's "only marginally better". It's not Meta, and that's a huge improvement.

A European alternative would be excellent (I'm in the UK), but no such thing exists, that said, Signal's server and clients are open-source and can be self-hosted, or even deployed at scale by a European government/entity if they so wish.

I work in the "secure comms" space, and I have reviewed every line of code in the open-source server (as of the revision I last worked on), and built products on it, and though I can't prove they run the same code they publish, I'm "happy enough" with what I see that I'd use it over anything owned by Meta any day.

In an ideal world, I'd host it myself for everyone I communicate with to use, but without federation that's not a possibility, so given a choice between Signal and WhatsApp, the decision is hands-down Signal.

[wkat4242]

> In an ideal world, I'd host it myself for everyone I communicate with to use, but without federation that's not a possibility, so given a choice between Signal and WhatsApp, the decision is hands-down Signal.

If that's the only choice, maybe yes. Though the installed base of whatsapp is so big I could not leave it right now anyway. So Signal would only be extra.

But for me to voluntarily promote an app it has to be a lot more open than Signal. Even if other people around me start using it I'll probably be the last to move.