this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
-21 points (37.0% liked)

Technology

58141 readers
4769 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
enu
[email protected]
L4s
-21
Signal is just a company selling privacy (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology
80 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Signal is a centralized app, run by a company. If they are offered enough money or legal threat they will sell out or close.

I am sure people will make an argument that its FOSS and people will just fork it if it goes bad, but a new fork will have 0 users and Signal will still have all of your old contacts. Why not make a switch now? Before it is even more popular and you have more reasons to stay? Why fork it if there are already decentralized apps that use same encryption, like XMPP apps?

Sure you can find flaws in every app, including XMPP implementations, but if we will have to write code for a new Signal fork, why not just fix whatever is that bugs you in XMPP clients?

If you want to use Matrix, that is fine as well, we can always bridge the two open protocols. But you cant bridge Signal if their company doesn't allow it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you suggesting any alternatives? Most of the ones I have tried are either too technical or too much effort for everyone I know so I have nobody to talk to outside of signal and plain sms

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I suggested XMPP in my original post. It is hard, but still will take just few minutes, for a lifetime of solved privacy and centralization issues. Unlike centralized apps, decentralized networks don't really die, just look at email. XMPP is over 20 years old and will live for 20 more, few minutes spent to set it up is well worth it.