it ceases to be a burner with usage. gaze into the abyss and the abyss gazes back into you

Apparently this is against Facebook&#x27;s ToS and it risks account suspension at any time (removing access to anything you bought in the Oculus store).I am thankful that I made the decision early on to use steam for purchases early on.

It&#x27;s no longer a burner if you type in payment details to buy stuff, it&#x27;s then linked to your banking identity.

If you&#x27;ve got $200 and a chip in your shoulder, Oculus&#x27; arbitration clause in their user agreement ensures that if you pay $200, Oculus will pay thousands to handle the arbitration, and case law so far says they can&#x27;t &quot;combine&quot; arbitration cases just because its convenient for them to do so.I no longer have an oculus HMD, but Oculus no longer has any profit from me.

You’re telling me! I got my mom an Oculus since she wouldn’t need a beefy computer to run VR. A few weeks after getting it, they want the Oculus account switched over to Facebook. Luckily, she can use the Oculus account for a few more years, but it was still so annoying.

3 years of me and my girlfriend using signal. no problem whatsoeverlol. whatsapp

ouch. first I thought that it is about FBI, then realized it is about Facebook. They should merge sometime in future, anyway.

Or, more likely, someone will buy it and screw it up. That&#x27;s pretty much par for the course.

Curious to all those family power users.  What would you want to see in the next gen WhatsApp?

I just installed element today (the new name for riot)
It’s interesting and may have some features like rooms that will build interest outside of just being an IM tool. I do miss the days of AIM&#x2F;Jabber&#x2F;Google Talk&#x2F; where everything just worked. Bringing that experience to phones should be the goal rather than jumping from service to service.My friends from Europe and Brazil are locked into WhatsApp, my American friends seem to prefer FB messenger. They’re really using 2 versions of the same company’s products which are “incompatible” at this point. Facebook could make them compatible with one another and with each other only OR they could do the socially beneficially thing and use an open protocol. Unless employees at FB push for this, they’re likely to take the former route.

&gt;Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix flaws of existing messaging apps.And then 2-3 years after that an entirely incompatible platform will do the same thing...

This is a stretch for Android at least, Google charges a one-time $25 fee for a Play Store developer account and provides unlimited push notifications for no extra charge.

God dammit we&#x27;ve had standards that work. Apple and Google are responsible for killing all of the decent messaging protocols by censoring the clients from their app stores.When smartphones came out people modified IRC with support for push brokers and message replay but because of app stores this means push brokers for community maintained clients have to be maintained by the individual volunteer paying (yes! paying, shut up about the free dev accounts they don&#x27;t allow you to send push notifications) for the &quot;privilege&quot; of submitting the app (meaning they have low to zero availability.) The relay Mozilla maintains allows servers and users to choose who brokers push messages but Apple and Google screw over their users for profit and this is the result.Smartphone app stores have made IM unusable.

The sooner they take such actions the better it is for everyone in the long run. Someone somewhere will come up with an alternative that is better than anything we have today. And sorry but Signal is not the pinnacle of messaging.I like what Matrix is doing but they are far away from becoming mainstream. Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix flaws of existing messaging apps. This will then be followed by social media but it might take another 6-7 years to fix that mess.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;LibreSignal&#x2F;LibreSignal&#x2F;issues&#x2F;37#issuecomment-217211165" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;LibreSignal&#x2F;LibreSignal&#x2F;issues&#x2F;37#issueco...</a>Moving to a different walled garden is not a solution.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>

Hopefully, it is however a slow process. In India, whatsapp is so dominant, I cant imagine what it would take for them to move to anything else

Naively it seems like the problem that will make progress at both ends with the right spark. As I image it, soon enough someone else will have already convinced part of your network to make the move.People, in general, don&#x27;t have a qualm about installing another app when it&#x27;s recommended by someone they trust.

While the network effects are there, I do think messaging networks are less durable than social media networks, because you can take your contact list with you across networks.

WhatsApp has such a strong network effect, that a wholesale move off is very difficult. I asked my immediate family to move to Signal and they agreed.Then came the question - can we talk to people on whatsapp using signal because friends, aunts, uncles, cousins who live international all live on whatsapp. Moving your network, their network and their networks network becomes quite the task.

The quality is good not great. If you are going to compared to Duo or Facetime, its not there yet. Ill say thats its not a show stopper though

Signal users: How is quality of multi-person video calls? If it&#x27;s as good, I wonder why it&#x27;s still a beta feature.

I&#x27;ve not had it either. Perhaps it&#x27;s being rolled out over time in the run up to 8 Feb switchover?

Im in the US and received it 2 days ago. Im the only one in the family and amongst my friends to have gotten it

That&#x27;s odd. I did not receive any notification yet?
Is the privacy policy country specific?

I&#x27;ll just leave this here<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;epic.org&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;internet&#x2F;ftc&#x2F;whatsapp&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;epic.org&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;internet&#x2F;ftc&#x2F;whatsapp&#x2F;</a>

Telegram always has encryption, just no end-to-end encryption by default. This is a privacy&#x2F;convenience trade-off. When chatting about groceries&#x2F;memes&#x2F;latest Netflix releases, you don&#x27;t really need E2EE that much, and chats without E2EE are synced to all devices in Telegram, including a fully-supported desktop app.

Signal. Open source, non-profit, very good privacy defaults. Telegram seems even worse than whatsapp to be honest because they don&#x27;t even have encryption on by default.

Telegram because it works across all my devices and so far has been adopted by friends. Closest to iMessage for any non Apple device for me.

Out of interest, what do you use instead?

Signal is just another walled garden, making it a no-go for me.

Signal, because I have more trust in Moxie that the Telegram team.I have not used Telegram though, so that’s not a preference based on usability, just on trust.

I would prefer signal, but I use Telegram. Everyone I talk to likes the feature set, so Signal would seem like a step backward.

Prefer Telegram. My p2p communication is minimal and I manage dozens of groups with thousands of members. Telegram not only handles this but provides a lot of tools to manage groups effectively.

I personally use Signal, but I think Session is great for the crowd that wants &quot;Signal but without the phone number&quot;.

Sessions is my go to for privacy related messaging. It&#x27;s a fork of Signal with data pushed over a decentralised network.

I prefer Element, but apparently it&#x27;s not popular enough even among HN users, so don&#x27;t even hope. Signal is popular among the HN users, because it was hyped for a long time by tech-journalists as a pinnacle of secure messaging, but as an app it&#x27;s even worse than WhatsApp. And not very popular outside of HN. Telegram is very popular in Russia&amp;neighbours and only mildly popular in Europe, even less so in USA. Arguably the best of 3 in terms of usability, HN users don&#x27;t like it because it has some non-standard e2e encryption, which is not enabled by default in private chats.Also, FYI, Telegram is going to introduce some paid features soon, but it&#x27;s not completely clear what they&#x27;ll be. There just was some talking about that&#x27;s it about the time they are going to monetize it, but I&#x27;m not sure if they announced what exactly becomes paid and what doesn&#x27;t.

Signal and Telegram seem to be the most commonly mentioned alternatives  here. Which one do you prefer and why?

Which turned out to be a bunch of hyped up marketing talk. Why does every person in SV I know seem to love the narrative that we’re being mind controlled by micro-targeted FB ads, which to be fair is what I used to believe.Everyone on HN switches between “ads don’t work and targeting is BS” to “ads are manipulating our entire country by taking our data”

How do you use iMessage if you got android phone? I hate this thing, would rather give my data to facebook then use it because it creates class separation between poor and rich. I have seen it with my kids who wanted iphone because they couldn&#x27;t communicate with all the iphone kids who used iMessage. That&#x27;s in itself much worst to me than some privacy which i already gave up on.

Fortunately I don&#x27;t live in a place where WhatsApp is completely pervasive. I personally had luck saying &quot;if you want to contact me use Signal, iMessage or at the very least SMS&quot; and when people asked why, I would cite Cambridge Analytica.

I had success moving my friend group onto Signal, but that was a group of young-ish, privacy interested, anti-Facebookers, so it wasn&#x27;t much of a hard sell.

Why not just use SMS&#x2F;iMessage groups ?

From the opposite point of view, in the last hour I’ve been added to 3 different group chats on Signal that were all previously WhatsApp chats (in which I did not participate, in spite of many of those friends repeatedly asking me to).That’s added at least 20 or 30 friends&#x2F;acquaintances into my signal contact list that I’m 99% sure downloaded signal for the first time this morning.

I&#x27;ve moved some group chats to discord and have had pretty good luck with it so far.

I personally moved to Element&#x2F;Matrix with a large community. It works quite well.

Why must there be extraction at all? Even trade seems like it would be better for the majority of parties involved, including having the effect of not having a bunch of pissed off people down the line.

Network effects as a emergent principle has been discovered to violate the promises of capitalist economics. We have a right to come together and set the limits and terms by which a few can extract from the many.

Another vote for Telegram here. I tried to get at least the core group of family&#x2F;friends on Signal or Wire and to their credit they tried but it never stuck. They loved Telegram so much that we now have the entire extended family&#x2F;friends on it.

Interesting that you had such a different result with Telegram. I&#x27;d prefer to use Signal for privacy reasons, but like you I burnt a lot of social capital trying to get my extended family to use it!

I had success at least moving my parents and sister to chat with me on Telegram. I was having weird issues with Telegram video call (very low sound on my parent&#x27;s phones), so I still had to call them on Whatsapp. Also, didn&#x27;t find any audio call option on Telegram, only video call.

Signal has improved a lot. I burnt a lot of the same thing, but it&#x27;s finally sticking when I ask people to first install it within the last year or so.

It will be a hard sell for me to switch, that&#x27;s for sure. I am already using Whatsapp for Western contacts, Kakaotalk for Korean contacts, and WeChat for China contacts. I don&#x27;t have any Japan contacts currently, or else I&#x27;m sure I will have to install Line. I installed Signal on my laptop for one heavy-privacy-proponent friend, and had Telegram for a while for another friend&#x27;s group business chat, but I never really used either.

Another bonus of telegram (as compared to WhatsApp) is you can access the messages even when your phone run out of battery.

Telegram has no end-to-end encryption for group chats at all.And normal chats are not end-to-end encrypted by default. Are you using end-to-end encrypted chats with your contacts?

I contact the majority of my friends with telegram, the UX is similar enough and people get on board quite quickly- the difficult part is convincing someone to install &#x2F;another&#x2F; messaging app- if they have network effects too then it&#x27;s a hard sell.But once most people have both it gets easier.Signal (UX wise) is not really super great for my family, I burned a lot of my &quot;technical expert advisor&quot; capital and reputation by pushing that too hard.

People still use facebook&#x2F;instagram&#x2F;gmail. If you tell them whatsapp is linked to facebook, it changes nothing to them...

It bears repeating: Telegram is not e2e encrypted. Messages you write on telegram will be stored on some Russian servers forever.

IMO telegram has the best feature and usability parity as Whatsapp..As for converting people who are not that interested, I can tell you from experience talking about privacy generally doesn&#x27;t sell it.

Sadly, no 6 people was my max and those were my family members. And my mom still complains Whatsapp was easier..

Probably depends on you. Do people want stuff from you? If yes chances are good.Don&#x27;t expect people to uninstall Whatsapp. Having multiple messengers is fine.

I moved almost all my friends and family to Telegram. I think the secret, once I managed to get them to install it, was to create common groups instead than many one-to-one chats.Then they got hooked up, mostly thanks to the huge amount of high quality stickers.

You can try locking down the app, it&#x27;s not ideal but it is better than nothing:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25664130" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25664130</a>

I had better luck because most of the people I know aren&#x27;t deeply invested in their apps. I just told everyone to add me on signal and over the years more people have started using it, and suggest signal or a phone call when its time to have a conversation

And that is an improvement over WhatsApp when Telegram doesn&#x27;t even encrypt group chats?

Don&#x27;t you think that Telegram has the same monetization problems (it burns &quot;a few hundred million dollars a year&quot; while the owner left Russia with $300m in his bank account a few years ago) and they already announced their monetization plans <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;23&#x2F;telegram-to-launch-an-ad-platform-as-it-approaches-500-million-users&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;23&#x2F;telegram-to-launch-an-ad-p...</a>
Where would you move next?

I managed to get almost everyone I know on Telegram in the last few years, to the point I get a WhatsApp message less than once a week. On the other hand, I usually hundreds of messages daily on Telegram. It&#x27;s not hard if there&#x27;s already interest among the people you talk with and you find the right way to get them on board.

Whatsapp had to compete with SMS, so when I was introduced to WhatsApp I thought it was a godsend and immediately adopted it. Also advertised it to all my friends. Switching now might be harder because there is a lot less to gain, besides some non-tangible “privacy”. What is this thing called “privacy”?

Telegram is getting really popular in India for bigger groups such as those in building societies and for parents in schools as they allow for more members. For one to one communication I don&#x27;t see a change happening soon.

&gt; cross-platform messaging was new.when was cross-platform messaging ever new?... IRC, AIM, etc ...

I remember paying a dollar to use WhatsApp for an year. I wish it remained independent and subscription-supported.

Sure the network effect is strong but let’s not forget how WhatsApp got here in the first place: people installing a strange new app, often shared by their friends via a text message invite link. I remember sitting in a circle with a group of friends one night 10+ years ago while each of us installed WhatsApp and had our first conversations on the app. It was a time when BBM was dominant and cross-platform messaging was new. Fast forward to today and already many of my groups are switching to Telegram or Signal.The move can be made faster now because groups are so prevalent on WhatsApp.

&gt; I&#x27;d love to give up WhatsApp, but network effects are key here.Be the change you want to see in the world.

I am moving to Signal too. Group by Group. May not happen over night, but in few weeks

How did the Covid lockdowns and family crisis in your examples affect the choice between Whatsapp and Signal?

In Europe the WhatsApp alternatives are generally framed as tools for pedophiles and organized crime. Even installing them on your phone may alert LEO that you&#x27;re suspect. This move by Facebook is highly troubling.edit: mass downvote! here are the links.this link talks specifically about signal protocol being used by organized crime <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.volkskrant.nl&#x2F;nieuws-achtergrond&#x2F;waarom-criminelen-geen-whatsapp-gebruiken-en-meer-over-hoe-de-politie-kon-meelezen~b4c7afd5&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.volkskrant.nl&#x2F;nieuws-achtergrond&#x2F;waarom-criminel...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.securityweek.com&#x2F;telegram-rivaling-tor-home-criminal-forums" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.securityweek.com&#x2F;telegram-rivaling-tor-home-crim...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nakedsecurity.sophos.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;03&#x2F;criminals-are-hiding-in-telegram-but-backdoors-are-not-the-answer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nakedsecurity.sophos.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;03&#x2F;criminals-are-hi...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;life-style&#x2F;gadgets-and-tech&#x2F;news&#x2F;telegram-app-drugs-sell-channels-bots-crime-graffiti-dropgangs-dark-web-a8814671.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;life-style&#x2F;gadgets-and-tech&#x2F;ne...</a>

See elsewhere in this discussion why Signal is not much better:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25668547" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25668547</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25669657" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25669657</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25668659" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25668659</a>

I&#x27;ve used Signal for years, and for most of that time only had about three people who also used it in my contacts.My wife recently got her entire extended family to use Signal. She has always refused to use WhatsApp. They all love Signal now, and use it all the time. However, this was during a family crisis.During the Covid lockdowns, many companies I know used Signal as their preferred non corporate communication platform over WhatsApp... But again, that was a crisis.It seems to be difficult to dislodge people from their preferred platforms without some kind of external driver to adopt it.

&gt; The key was being stubborn and banking on them eventually wanting to talk to me.This. Same for me. I just put a message like this in the family whatsapp groups and then deleted the app&#x2F;account: &#x27;Hey everyone, I&#x27;m not going to be on WhatsApp anymore - you can call, text, signal, telegram or email me. Talk to you later!&#x27;. It was that simple. It took a little while but now my family is on Telegram. I know they still use WhatsApp but it&#x27;s honestly not my problem or issue that they use the app - I just don&#x27;t want to.

I managed to get most of my family to use telegram. I just stopped using whatsapp and convinced a few of them to do so also, the rest came because they couldn&#x27;t speak to us otherwise.The key was being stubborn and banking on them eventually wanting to talk to me.

If you&#x27;re in Europe with a typical circle of friends, your advice is basically equivalent to &quot;don&#x27;t communicate with people, works fine&quot;.

I hope you&#x27;re fine with Telegram sharing your location data.

What percentage of those messages are end-to-end encrypted?

Yes, I&#x27;ve moved all my friends and family to Telegram and it&#x27;s been great. I communicate with them daily since many months.

You should try it again now, Signal is very user friendly these days. I&#x27;ve moved most of my very non-tech-savvy family and friends onto it without too much drama.

I don&#x27;t know how you make your loved ones stop using specific software, and generally speaking I wouldn&#x27;t want to. But if people want to contact me, well, they have to use a mechanism I also use.I know what you&#x27;re asking, but I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s a fix unless you somehow have tremendous influence with them. So you either put up with being coerced by your group, or you don&#x27;t.This is probably easier if you never used the services in the first place. My mom will occasionally whine that she has to open Imessage to talk to me, and that&#x27;s about the extent of it. But of course, I am missing whatever they get up to on FB without me. And that&#x27;s OK with me, but I know it isn&#x27;t with everyone.

For info, the colors (and whole style) in Signal are the same as iMessage.

Signal - moved my immediate family to it, and now have a few friends on there as well.It had some rockiness maybe about 3 years ago, but with their new group implementation and some other small tweaks I find it just as easy to use as whatsapp, albeit it a little uglier.#1 complaint is the coloring - incoming messages should be high contrast, outgoing should have the background color. For some reason signal does the opposite and it&#x27;s hideous.

this is wrong way to look at things, switch is never binary. Yes i have whatsapp, but i also have discord, messenger, hangouts, etc. You need to find an angle to attract user for something different and then keep them for everything else.

You don&#x27;t have to pick a messaging app for life.

My thoughts as well. If the product is free, who is paying the devs? Who is paying for infra? I&#x27;m exclusively on Threema since it&#x27;s not free, and the yearly external code reviews are stellar. The only thing that bugged me was that it was not open source, which changed by the end of 2020. Multi device coming this year, which was the last thing missing for my use case.

&gt; signalAmongst many, many other factors, it&#x27;s a nonprofit foundation, not a commercial company.Long term, it has backing from people (like the original founders of Whatsapp) who want to see an open solution flourish. Plus people can donate.Also, both the client and server are open source.

How&#x27;s signal different? It&#x27;s also in the same position as whatsapp was a few years ago. For the time being it may be better, but surely it is not a long-term alternative?

Unfortunately, I&#x27;m on the same stand as you. I managed to move my direct family and one group of friends into Telegram, but the rest didn&#x27;t follow and many have been pestering me to go back.I was thinking about going back, actually, but using a separate phone number (dual SIM FTW) and a work profile sandbox with heavily restricted permissions. I might still give it a shot, see if that&#x27;s enough to quell FB&#x27;s insatiable hunger for personal data.

Solid <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inrupt.com&#x2F;solid&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;inrupt.com&#x2F;solid&#x2F;</a>
ActivityPub <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ActivityPub" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ActivityPub</a>
See Fediverse for more examples <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fediverse</a>

I&#x27;m wondering if someone can develop a product that addresses the networking effect problem. I.e. a service that allows groups to move their member lists seamlessly between networks and to be able to also see at a glance, which networks (e.g. WhatsApp, Signal, FB Messenger, Slack) the members are on. Perhaps a network of network memberships?

Not OP but in a similar situation.The main lock-ins for WhatsApp with my friends&#x2F;family&#x2F;colleagues are:1. Group chats. SMS group chat doesn&#x27;t exist (or it&#x27;s next to unknown) in Australia.2. Sharing images and videos. SMS destroys images&#x2F;videos&#x2F;gifs (if they even send).3. International. Messaging friends&#x2F;colleagues when they&#x27;re overseas is easy.4. Videochat (however, it&#x27;s usually FaceTime with an older relative).I attempted a shift to Telegram with a few close friends and family members. Eventually, we started to drop back to the &quot;normal&quot; comms route because our extended network was on WhatsApp&#x2F;iMessage and juggling several methods was irritating (e.g you message a friend on Telegram and get no response -- they then message you later that day on WhatsApp -- it&#x27;s irritating to move the conversation back to Telegram).

I don&#x27;t use any of the private and popular messaging apps on my phone and do rely on SMS and phone calls to stay in touch. But there are limitations:- SMS is not encrypted.- SMS supports text only. MMS is not well supported, and often not free.- SMS is sometimes not as &quot;instant&quot; as it can be delayed.- Delivery reports and, read receipts are not user-friendly, and maybe unreliable, too.- Group SMS support depends on your default SMS app.RCS or Rich Communication Service on 4g and 5g looks to fix this, but support and compatibility between network is still lacking. Privacy laws also need a reevaluation as even cellular providers are looking to data harvesting to make more money and RCS may also lack encryption support.

To list a few benefits:- e2e encryption- many extra chat features (reactions, stickers, replies, polls, etc). It might seem unnecessary but imo they do genuinely increase functionality and ease of communication- scalable to large groups (maybe sms is as well, I&#x27;ve never tried more than 3-4 people)- don&#x27;t need a phone, can message from a computer instead- messages sync across multiple devices- video calling for groups with some apps

Most phone companies on their lower tier plans make you pick 1-2 of free calls, texts or a data allowance. High end plans aren&#x27;t nearly so popular because most people don&#x27;t get high end phones and of the people that do, many buy direct from Apple so don&#x27;t have a contract associated with it, instead just using a prepay or sim only plan. So it&#x27;s really only the high end android phones which get bought on contract which is a much smaller market than iPhones or the actual big market segment here: €100-200 androidsNobody picks free texts. This leaves 15c&#x2F;message as a discouragement for using SMS.

For impromptu groups when you don&#x27;t want to give your number?

This is a genuine question, what is it that prohibits your group from using text messages and phone calls? I do not use any apps for communication, and can’t think of why I would have a need.

Such implicit locks are quite common a hamper to let the best product succeed.We are all running what most would consider an outdated and poorly designed c.p.u. architecture by modern standards, simply because most software is not compiled to run on other architectures, and it won&#x27;t be until those architectures see significant adoption.

I moved family and friends quite successfully over once I’d had a child and told them that I didn’t want any photos sharing on facebooks platforms.

I have used WhatsApp and Telegram and Signal. For me the network effects are the opposite - just driving me back to using text messages.

&gt; Has anyone here had any success moving a large group of people onto something like Signal or Telegram? If so, do you have any tips?I just dropped the link in the title into all the group chats I&#x27;m in, said I&#x27;m headed to signal and removed myself from the groups.I was not the first person to do that in these groups. Will it cause a critical mass exodus? Idk. I won&#x27;t know, I won&#x27;t be back.

One thing that is strange with signal is that you are required to have a phone number to signup?That&#x27;s one reason with I prefer Matrix&#x2F;Element...

I&#x27;m taking this approach now too. There&#x27;s a free text status message as well that&#x27;s suitable for the purpose.App is going in February though.

I like the simple idea of replying on another service, thanks for that.

This is changing rapidly. Many
people I know are moving Signal. Also, don’t delete WhatsApp right away. Do a “silent” move: whenever people send you a WhatsApp answer on iMessage if they’re Apple users and actively push the Android friends over to signal. Works well in my case.

Telegram isn&#x27;t serious about privacy. They made my number searchable and notified people who have me in their Google contact list even though I didn&#x27;t grant Telegram access to my contact list (before the time when Android would enforce this with permissions) and didn&#x27;t allow them to use my number for anything.Then it turned out that they have a setting where one can opt out, but what good is that if you already were opted in automatically.In &quot;Last Seen &amp; Online&quot; I had a deleted account in the exceptions of those who can always see my status, even though I never added one.Telegram may be better than WhatsApp, but it is far from fantastic.

Consider Threema instead.  It recently went open source and it has top-notch, Signal-quality crypto and you don&#x27;t need to provide a phone number or email.

Telegram lacks end-to-end encrypted group chats and normal chats are not end-to-end encrypted by default, you have to switch to a &quot;secure&quot; chat every time you start a new chat.

Telegram is fantastic! Frankly I think it has a better ux then Whatsapp, especially considering the desktop apps.

I also use email (and Threema), but it annoys me a lot when I then get those &quot;(no subject)&quot;-Emails with multi-megabyte VID-20201225-WA0005.mp4 attachments.I just wish they would keep all their WhatsApp stuff away from me.

I just stopped sending stuff to friends and family who want to keep using whatsapp.So I just use email.

It&#x27;s not only about friends. Here in Mexico many small businesses operate with Whatsapp (eg: food delivery, gas delivery, plumber, etc).

If your employer insists on installing and using a specific application on a phone, ask them for a phone to use it on. Don&#x27;t feel the need to install it onto your personal device.

WhatsApp is a masterclass in network effects. You can no longer decide whether or not you want to use it. Because your employer uses it, you have no choice but to use it. The only thing that will disrupt this is if security concerns make companies come out and explicitly ask employees not to use WhatsApp and I don&#x27;t see that happening any time soon.

When I had roommates, one only wanted to use services A, B, ... and another one C, D, ... with no intersection between the 2 sets. So we had 2 group chats on two different services and we had to transfer messages from one to the other.I don&#x27;t know whom was not respecting whom, but I didn&#x27;t feel really respected either, despite respecting each guy wishes.

My response to anyone is &quot;I&#x27;m sorry, but I don&#x27;t use WhatsApp or Instagram, and I rarely use Facebook because I don&#x27;t trust them. You can reach me through X, Y, or Z.&quot;If someone refuses to make an actual call, text me, email me, or use Signal, then clearly they don&#x27;t respect me enough for me to need to communicate with them.

I shifted my family to Threema last year. Paid for it myself in the case of my younger siblings :D But it‘s working really well.

I managed to get a part of my family to Threema. Just the part of &quot;you are paying for the product, thus you are not the product yourselves&quot; was reasonable enough.In my friends circle we are all on telegram (after trying wire which is just buggy as hell), but I think this is mainly due to its multi device story and then fact that it is not WhatsApp.

I&#x27;ve had success and you&#x27;re right that it is about network effects. So you gotta take into account who you can convince first. But also consider that Signal hasn&#x27;t been fully featured until about last month. So it isn&#x27;t a good idea to just try to convert random non-techy people. For them you&#x27;d need to use current events that highlight how important privacy is (which there have been quite a few this year). But also focus on generating a critical mass. Now it isn&#x27;t hard for me to convert people because we&#x27;ll be planning things and 4&#x2F;5 people have Signal so you just strong arm the fifth person and then they start using it more because they realize a fair amount of their friends are already there. It takes time though and let&#x27;s be real about that Signal hasn&#x27;t been fully featured. Until recently it has been more a geeky app.So tldr target the people you want to convert to develop a critical mass.

I managed to get people on Telegram by showing Stickers and public groups you can join without sharing your number.Signal is much harder to sell to non-tech users IMHO.

My family is on Threema, but I advocated for it heavily and it&#x27;s still an island and they all use WhatsApp in parallel. But at least family photos get shared on Threema now.

I simply stopped using anything except decentralized ethical services that offer freedom, privacy, and high security like Matrix.I refuse to help walled gardens get bigger. It has cost me a lot of contacts, but so be it. There is always a choice.If you had a friend you respected that was vegan for ethical or environmental convictions would you insist on continuing to exclusively have social gatherings at BBQ restaurants with no menu options for them? Would you take them seriously if they caved to avoid being excluded from the group?When I deleted all walled garden messengers by Google, Facebook etc they knew I wasn&#x27;t kidding. Anyone that refuses to make small allowances for you living your convictions is not your friend.The people that need to talk to me use matrix now or found other ways to reach out like e-mail or in person. Those that don&#x27;t respect my ethics don&#x27;t get free advice from me anymore.

Wait til WhatsApp gets ads. The only reason Facebook hasn&#x27;t introduced them yet is because they are terrified we will leave.

It’s a shame the technology and usages are still moving quickly enough that there’s no obvious standardization that’ll last the next five years.Social technologies would benefit from some regulation along the lines of “you must be able to use other apps to send to&#x2F;receive from your app” for at least a minimal feature set, but it would be super hard to nail down what that regulation should exactly be.

I moved my entire family onto it easily. But they are fairly conservative and so it simply was a matter of explaining the situation about big tech lying and they were sold.

I&#x27;d love to give up WhatsApp, but network effects are key here. I tried moving my extended family off WhatsApp onto Signal a couple of years ago and it failed miserably because the app wasn&#x27;t nearly as easy to use, and they had all their friends on Whatsapp. Has anyone here had any success moving a large group of people onto something like Signal or Telegram? If so, do you have any tips?

Yay! I&#x27;ve been trying to get friends to jump onto telegram for a while now. Hopefully this might do it!

I&#x27;m still confused as to why Telegram doesn&#x27;t have message reactions which every other platform has. I understand that some peoeple feel like it&#x27;s not needed but if they don&#x27;t want they wouldn&#x27;t have to use and in my workflow when talking in groups is to use them extensively and replying with stickers is a terrible experience.

Depending on your perspective, Signal is actually a worse Telegram. Telegram has the best UX and feature set ouf of all messaging apps, and privacy does not outweigh convenience for the vast majority of people.

&gt; They have sprinkled them into different countries and they claim that servers from different jurisdictions are necessary to access the data. So if an agency wants to access it, they have to get warrants from different countries.That&#x27;s a neat trick, but not as neat as Signal&#x27;s &quot;sure, here&#x27;s all the data we have - the time and ip address of their last use.&quot;(I&#x27;m sure a bunch of the &quot;better UX, UI, and features&quot; people like in Telegram rely on them storing more data on their servers, so that comes down to a privacy&#x2F;convenience tradeoff, which as others have pointed out almost always comes down on the convenience side for 99.99% of people...)

I think the UI is better. Encryption is worse. But I like how they structured their data centers. They have sprinkled them into different countries and they claim that servers from different jurisdictions are necessary to access the data. So if an agency wants to access it, they have to get warrants from different countries. With all the war on encryption going on, e.g. forcing companies to include backdoors, I think this is the way to go.

Signal has all of those features except the final one, which is of debatable value.

Signal is good for privacy and that&#x27;s about it. Telegram has voice calls, videos calls, stickers and easy sticker creation, super convenient in-line gif&#x2F;pic&#x2F;video search, video and voice messages, and you can add people without sharing your phone number...

A lot of people mention Telegram, as far as I can tell, it&#x27;s a worse Signal. What advantages does it have over Signal?

FB owned = FB. Why is that so hard to understand?

prbly they&#x27;re not using it to &#x27;improve&#x27;, but to e.g. worsen? That statement would be legally true. lol.

That &quot;Today,&quot; hook sure sounds rather ominous to me.&quot;Today, I&#x27;ve not murdered you yet! Look at that accomplishment I&#x27;ve made!&quot;

Seems like, no. On their EU Privacy Policy, it says:“Today, Facebook does not use your WhatsApp account information to improve your Facebook product experiences or provide you more relevant Facebook ad experiences on Facebook.“

This was the very question I have. Presumably given this ultimatum they would pull out of the EU market? That’s great that solves the problem of getting my friends and family onto something else!

I also got the notification, but it&#x27;s strange because WhatsApp in Europe is from WhatsApp Ireland Limited, and WhatsApp outside is from WhatsApp LLC. 
They are different companies with different legal requirements. 
I&#x27;ve seen some news stating that these new changes apply only to WhatsApp LLC, but the notification seem to say otherwise.Someone else with more info could explain better?

European user here - I got the notification today so... I guess it does?

There are no customers. If you’re not paying for it, you’re not a customer: you’re the product.Whatever WhatsApp&#x2F;Facebook do to “take care” of the “customers” is just like pig farmers taking care of pigs.

Does this also apply to European customers, given GDPR?

So, the part below is new, or not new? And what is &quot;user content&quot; exactly? All messages, images and audio?_______&gt;WhatsApp, according to the App Store, reserves the right to collect:PurchasesFinancial informationLocationContactsUser contentIdentifiersUsage data andDiagnostics

&gt; all the features you want out of an IM without too much of the bloat.Except default E2E (which WhatsApp, Signal, Wire, Threema etc. do provide).

Try Telegram. It’s as easy to use as WhatsApp for non-tech family and friends, yet has all the features you want out of an IM without too much of the bloat. It has native apps on all major platforms, and for the techies it has a solid API so you can do fun stuff like write your own bots.

Signal is owned by a non-profit which cannot be sold to a for-profit like Facebook, Google, or Apple. The WhatsApp founder learned the lessons from the Facebook acquisition and improved almost every aspect when developing Signal.

&gt; or Slack would be a suitable replacementJumping out of the Facebook frypan into the Salesforce fire doesn&#x27;t seem to be a particularly winning move...(Which also raises the question, whichever alternative you choose, you probably need to evaluate the risk of Facebook (or some equally evil corp) acquiring them down the track. I wonder how likely Discord&#x2F;Telegram&#x2F;Signal are to be able to resist Facebook-sized acquisition offers?)

I&#x27;d like to move my family off of WhatsApp due to these concerns. I&#x27;ve used Signal before, but I am not a big fan of it. I often have to re-register my devices to sign in, syncing takes a long time, and conversations do not persist across devices. I am perfectly happy using a paid service. Does anyone here think Discord or Slack would be a suitable replacement?

I wouldn&#x27;t really agree here. They are on the same topic, yes, but the Arstechnica article is actual news coverage that explains what&#x27;s going on, as opposed to the linked page which is just Whatsapp&#x27;s official corpospeak.

DUPLICATE: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25656993" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25656993</a>

IMO it works just as well and unlike Telegram it&#x27;s actually credible... The telegram crypto is an absolute disaster and they have been pretty shady and defensive when asked about it in the past. Not to mention the back-end is closed-source. Also, the desktop clients still don&#x27;t support encryption, many years after it&#x27;s been first requested.

not as good in terms of UI&#x2F;ux but compared to pgp emails much simplier
ps telegram is no more secure than Whatsapp unless u use secret chats

IMHO, Signal main advantage is that you can sell it to your parents and friends like &quot;WhatsApp, but safe&quot;.It tries to have feature-parity to WhatsApp; looks the same, works the same. All this while researching innovations on cryptography that doesn&#x27;t compromise user experience too much.In my experience, doing exactly what WhatsApp does (but safer) makes it an easy sell to people around me.

Telegram has had several security and privacy issues in the past.  It also stores your messages unencrypted on their server by default.

Telegram is only end-to-end encrypted in a feature called secret chats. Groups and channels and individual chats are not end-to-end encrypted.In other words, Telegram doesn&#x27;t even deserve to be in the same conversation. Even if it had the best encryption out there (however you define that), that wouldn&#x27;t mean anything when it&#x27;s not used in like 98% of the cases (percentage pulled out of my ass).It&#x27;s like comparing Signal to Facebook&#x27;s Messenger, and I&#x27;d still say Messenger over Telegram because at least it uses Signal&#x27;s protocol under the hood (I believe the feature is called hidden conversations) instead of inventing its own thing and ignoring the expert opinions.

Hardly comparable in terms of usability. But then, WhatsApp isn&#x27;t that good compared to Telegram either. In fact, I wouldn&#x27;t use WhatsApp at all if various communities wouldn&#x27;t host there group-chats I belong to. So I don&#x27;t think usability has that much to do with your ability to switch. And supposed &quot;security&quot; has almost nothing to do with it whatsoever.So I personally don&#x27;t even know if I&#x27;ll keep fighting for my privacy and stuff or if I&#x27;m going to give up now. I don&#x27;t want to, but I honestly don&#x27;t imagine how on Feb08 I will be telling people who aren&#x27;t my close friends or co-workers, but communication with whom is really valuable to me, that I refuse to join any WhatsApp group chats anymore, so they will have to notify me about anything important (important to me, in he first place!) personally via SMS, Telegram, email, whatever. Especially now, when people are forced to communicate remotely and stuff gets cancelled&#x2F;renewed&#x2F;delayed because of another round of idiotic government regulations, so if I&#x27;ll fall out of these communities, I&#x27;m pretty much left in the vacuum and won&#x27;t know about anything that happens.

If the backend is open source then there is recourse.

True but you have to consider the app needs to be user friendly to see any real adoption...Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I love Riot (or whatever it&#x27;s called these days) but it&#x27;s just not user-friendly for your average Joe...

Users want centralized services.  Syncing across devices and shared history are mandatory features, and are basically impossible to do well in distributed models.

The problem isn&#x27;t silos, it&#x27;s lack of privacy. Signal solves that problem.

I have started to migrate from WhatsApp to iMessage with Apple and Signal with Android users. At least not a single silo...

Isn’t the problem profit motive? Wikipedia is a foundation, so it works the same way it always has. We need this for more basic services like messaging and identity

Can you clarify what you mean by a &quot;silo&quot;? Do you mean once you start using Signal you&#x27;re stuck in Signal, and you can&#x27;t export all your messages into another app?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matrix.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matrix.org</a>

That&#x27;s just moving from one silo to another though.  Users of centralized services don&#x27;t have much recourse when the company pulls the rug out from under them.

The APK is really not that hard to find... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;android&#x2F;apk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;android&#x2F;apk&#x2F;</a>That page also states &quot;Advanced users with special needs can download the Signal APK directly. Most users should not do this under normal circumstances.&quot; which IMO is a very good point. Downloading random APKs from the internet is rarely a good idea...

Last time I tried to use it it on my android didn&#x27;t work without google play services. And they really bury the apk download, which means it&#x27;s useless(or heavily discouraged) for people without a google account.(Edit: this is rather a negative comment but its out of frustration -- I want to use it!)

Facebook messenger and Google hangouts actually had federation. So even that doesn&#x27;t mean a lot.However I&#x27;d also promote federation-first services like Matrix. Only issue with Matrix is the e2e being so clumsy IMO

Getting people off of WhatsApp onto Signal means taking power away from a closed platform that makes billions from manipulating its users, which is already a win. Signal is not only not that, but is in fact a completely open non-profit project, so it&#x27;s basically impossible for it to turn into that.Even moving from Fb to Telegram is an improvement in almost all respects and it&#x27;s sure as hell a lot easier to do than going straight to Matrix&#x2F;Riot&#x2F;whatever it is these days. Don&#x27;t be a purist and let people have their compromises, lest you end up like the &quot;GNU&#x2F;&quot; part in front of &quot;Linux&quot;.

Stop promoting services with no federation, they&#x27;ll just end up in the same spot 10 years from now.EDIT: To the people downvoting this: I said the same thing a long time ago about whatsapp before Facebook bought them.

Your mistake is believing those apps are for socializing.They’re for aggregate metrics and attention collecting on the part of the company.I do not have a Facebook empire, Twitter, TikTok or other social media presence.I email academics I can’t visit.I group text friends and family to make plans, and use the calendar built into my phone to remind myself of those events.

Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology.I&#x27;ve never owned a cell phone nor ever had a social media account in my life. Sure, it gets me the occasional eye roll but trust me, my social life is just fine.Caveat: old person speaking.

Signal&#x27;s not like... &quot;tech for tech people.&quot; It&#x27;s very much usable for nontechnical family members, etc.

&gt; Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology.If people won’t go to the trouble of using an alternate way of getting in touch with you then they’re not really your friends.

&gt; Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other than you, you end up being sidelined.Make it happen.Be the change you want to see.

Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology. Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other than you, you end up being sidelined. The technology gets enforced and leaves one with no choice but to accept it or be a red flag.Shouldn&#x27;t it be possible to delete your whatsapp chat and contacts data regularly from the cloud? Eg. one could delete the whatsapp account, clear data on cloud and make a new account again. Having more control over your data stored by Facebook would give more power to the users of enforced by the government.

“Open source” is sold to the people as “you have the most control”, but in reality once your data reaches their end, you have no idea what is deal with it.
Open source centralized solution does not an will not solve the problem. They can not.

I don&#x27;t read a lot about it on HN, but at least the threema client[0] is open-source, too, and the servers are in Switzerland.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threema.ch&#x2F;en&#x2F;open-source" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threema.ch&#x2F;en&#x2F;open-source</a>

Once again - Signal[0] as an alternative. It&#x27;s fully Open-Source (including the backend) and their crypto is public and independently verified[1][2][3]...[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Signal_(software)#Encryption_p" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Signal_(software)#Encryption_p</a>...[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threatpost.com&#x2F;signal-audit-reveals-protocol-cryptog" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threatpost.com&#x2F;signal-audit-reveals-protocol-cryptog</a>...[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;1013.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eprint.iacr.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;1013.pdf</a> [PDF]

That&#x27;s a dumb move from facebook unless they are planning to buy every other chat applications and ask their users to share their data with Facebook. I&#x27;m amazed that they are asking for it and not doing it already.

Wasn&#x27;t that Facebook&#x27;s main promise when they purchased WhatsApp?Forget whether or not they can, legally; if I recall correctly they explicitly promised not to.People who work for those without integrity are baffling to me.

I am hosting rocketchat for majority of communication just for my family. It has some maintenance overhead but generally works really well

How do you come to that number? $30 per month from WhatsApp alone? This source seems to think it&#x27;s closer to $30 per year per user for the whole of facebook: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;234056&#x2F;facebooks-average-advertising-revenue-per-user&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;234056&#x2F;facebooks-average...</a>

If you live in US, the number has to be probably close to $30&#x2F;month to match what FB is making out of you

YouTube values the absence of their ads at $12&#x2F;mo.If I make $1&#x2F;mo&#x2F;per user from adverts, but my conversion rate is 1&#x2F;12 at $12&#x2F;mo, then I&#x27;m making $23 for every 12 users.Doesn&#x27;t mean I make $12&#x2F;user&#x2F;month.

Few years ago we discussed these numbers on a pretty popular (top 5 of its kind) local pic-and-discussion forum. Devs said that an average user brings around $2 in a year (including those using adblock, etc). I sent them around $8 and they turned off any ads for my account forever. I could just continue using ad blocking, but they made that “hey you’re using” header that annoyed me on mobile, where it is hard to “pick an element”. Of course their income&#x2F;user ratio is not comparable to youtube’s one, but they meet their ends well, and also have much much lower megabytes&#x2F;user ratio. In infra costs they may be even more profitable per user than youtube (just a blind guess).

Facebook doesn’t make $12 per user per month last time I checked. They have about 80b revenue from 2.5 billion users.Maybe in the US they might get that per user, but not worldwide.

$1 a year is super low. YouTube values their ads at approximately $12 a month[0] - FB can’t be much less.(E: 12, not 18. 18 is for families)0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;YouTube.com&#x2F;premium" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;YouTube.com&#x2F;premium</a>

&gt; I&#x27;d pay $1 &#x2F; year to opt out of that and be the customer rather than the product.And I’d pay $5,000 for a new Tesla. Though I have no idea why someone would sell me one for so cheap.

That was the original business model of whatsapp

How about pay $1 &#x2F; year to opt out of all data sharing?I foolishly installed the Facebook app on Android for a while. When I asked for a data dump from Facebook I was amazed at the amount of data it had stolen from my phone, including full contacts list. It sounds like that is exactly what Facebook are planning with WhatsApp.I&#x27;d pay $1 &#x2F; year to opt out of that and be the customer rather than the product.

Did they really do this just as the election was being certified? No one outside of tech will be talking about this for a while...

Maybe these privacy policy changes are not super scary yet (honestly, it&#x27;s difficult to even read the thing since its littered with legalese traps that confuse me). And at least end-to-end encryption still seems to be on the table, but where are they headed? WhatsApp is so easy to use that most people will just click &quot;Agree&quot; and trade their privacy for convenience.Messaging in the Netherlands almost universally runs on WhatsApp these days. Nobody uses text messages anymore, understandably, but somehow we all ended up on a platform run by Facebook. &quot;Whatsappen&quot; (messaging on Whatsapp) and &quot;appje&quot; (short for WhatsApp message) are even official words now. Need to contact a friend? Send an appje. Need support from a company? Send an appje. Need to send a message to your team at work? Send an appje in the group chat.Has anyone managed to get their contacts to switch to Signal? I can&#x27;t even get tech-savvy people to switch, since they always seem to find some minor annoyance that makes them instantly dismiss the app and go back to WhatsApp.

They’re clearly ever so worried about these anti-trust suits then...

The protocol isn&#x27;t really the root issue with interoperability. It&#x27;s identity. As a start you should be able to easily use your verified identities across the different systems.Signal would probably be a poor base for an interoperability standard. Which flavour would you use? Signal Messenger, Matrix, OMEMO and allegedly WhatsApp all use the Signal protocol but can not interoperate at all.Signal Protocol is also more complex than it needs to be. It has two levels of forward secrecy for example. It is basically all the crypto geekery of the last few decades packed into a instant messaging protocol. Something intended as an interconnection standard should be as simple as possible.

Couldn&#x27;t the EU force them to standardize the protocol and to interoperate with other client&#x2F;servers?With WhatsApp becoming the new defacto sms &#x2F; mms it would make sense.Could they even reuse pieces of the legislation that made it happen for usb chargers?

WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app