this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
105 points (97.3% liked)
Asklemmy
44672 readers
2033 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
While there may be better options out there, from a purely security standpoint.
The real world, with non-tech people needs solutions that are easy, fast and as close to foolproof as possible.
I choose Signal, because my mum, my sisters and brothers (none of which are tech people) can all go to their app stores and install Signal, it works and it is easy. Signal is private BY DEFAULT, I don't have to remind them to turn on security for each chat, there is voice and video chat for individuals and groups, I can use it to send files. It is really good. Secure communication is their primary goal.
I have been using Signal since it was called TextSecure and I only had one contact using it.
Yes it sucked when they dropped SMS support; but these days about 98% of my messaging goes through Signal. Any SMS is usually from my doctor/dentist/bank.
I never really trusted Telegram, too many compromises. Secure communication is not their primary goal.
All big 3, Signal Telegram SimpleX, are just go to app store install, and send invite to contacts. SimpleX gets framed as technical and dissuades new users from installing, while it's just as easy as the other 2.
Signal tells me which contacts in my contacts list has Signal. It also alerts me when someone in my contacts installs Signal.
I believe Telegram also does that.
SimpleX does not.
Let me start saying that for convenience I adopted Signal. Now, this argument that it validates your contacts is actually something that isn't the best feature of Signal since it implies that it is requesting and having access to phone numbers.
I don't let my number available as my contact, I created the ID and I'm using it in case someone wants to connect with me but that probably isn't something that everyone is practicing and the fact that they retain my number it doesn't digest well.
I'm not sure how is SimpleX nowadays but features like stickers and even some emoticons or message reactions were not possible. Family members and friends would be very difficult to persuade to go back to a very simplistic communication app.
I always keep an eye in alternatives and if usability reaches a good point we may need to consider SimpleX as the messenger for the mainstream recommendation.