signal not being on fdroid is a strike against them
Signal – an ethical replacement for WhatsApp
Submitted 9 months ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://greenstarsproject.org/2025/06/15/signal-an-ethical-replacement-for-whatsapp/
Comments
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
CubitOom@infosec.pub 9 months ago
You can always install a release of any Android APK from a git repo using obtainium.
Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Signal is on F-Droid.
qaz@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It is though. I currently use Signal installed through F-Droid.
timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Fair. There is Molly on fdroid if you like.
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 9 months ago
Molly is great.
mio@lemmy.mio19.uk 9 months ago
How about matrix?
tux0r@feddit.org 9 months ago
vga@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
That blog post was my reason to double down on Matrix.
philpo@feddit.org 9 months ago
Overdramatic blog post,sorry. I can’t stand the whole “fremmium” crybabies that then literally recommend the next freemium or “non transparent funding model” service… And don’t understand the fundamental difference between the Protocol and one of its implementations.
Matrix as a protocol is solid and is used far beyond the Matrix messenger. (e.g. the French and German governmental messenger, the German healthcare messenger,various armies,etc.) With a lot of commits coming from there - but not enough funding,that is definitely an issue.
The current issue with Freemium is solely limited to the matrix.org instance. There are hundreds of federated instances out there that aren’t Freemium and won’t have the need to go that way as they are funded differently.(e.g. the Lemmy Instance I am currently writing from, feddit - we are financed through other means) As they are federated it doesn’t matter - and honestly, I personally tend to see this as a good thing - it will lead users away from matrix.org towards other instances, making the whole network more reliable and decentralized.
There are two other issues that are relevant, though: The way the foundation is run is not ideal, definitely - there are and were issues and I am not happy with some management decisions, but at least they are getting somewhat better recently (government board). The whole protocol does not evolve as fast as it should be and this is an issue,especially as a it also affects bug fixing. As an executive for a (much smaller) company myself I see management issues and infighting due to lack of leadership within the foundation and I am not happy with that. The second issue is Element as a company that does things companies do - focus on making money. This in theory would be a good thing if Element would send enough money AND effort upstream to seriously bring the whole project forward. For a long time this seemed to be the case,but licensing issues and the “stale” development off Element X(Matrix 2.0) has me questioning that as well - but recent changes show us hope in that regard. We also need to carefully reconsider if element is keeping too much"closed" source code for monetized features and what influence VC really has. In conclusion: We need better leadership for Matrix,more transparency and more funding.
The good news is: It doesn’t mattter too much - if the current foundation fucks up and goes belly up it is not the end of Matrix - the protocol is decentralized enough and the licencing of the core components permissive enough for another (better?) foundation to start over. There are dozends of clients available and we have alternative servers available by now.
The funding part nevertheless is my major pet peeve here. All around Europe governments try to get rid of US tech - and use Matrix protocol based products. But they hardly if ever fund that. If Germany, France, Poland and Luxembourg (the big users) would give 5€ per year for each client they implement all issues with funding would be gone, Matrix 2.0 would be available in a few months, VC could be pushed out of elements AND they could mandate more transparency.
The issue with funding is relevant for all NGOs and especially in tech. Running servers costs a fuckton of money.
Signal has a respectable amount of backers but is a centralized protocol and when Trump does something shady moneywise their infrastructure,money and possibly even people will be gone within 24 hours.
Threema has a more sustainable business model but Switzerland is,well, difficult, in terms of privacy and intelligence services overreach, especially towards traffic pointing to foreign servers or hosts.
Revolt is a centralized service with no federation,limited selfhosting capabilities,with unclear funding(we are waiting for a financial transparency report for ages now).
Polyproto is still not quite there feature wise and funding, etc. is unclear.
Delta Chat is indeed an option but has massive technical limitations.
That leaves XMPP as the sole big competition if you want non-centralised, non-US based, privacy friendly, messaging.
Netrunner@programming.dev 9 months ago
For now anyways lol
DesolateMood@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
What does this mean
hansolo@lemmy.today 9 months ago
It’s ethical because it runs on donations and has a non-profit business model.
Meta likely spends at least $1 billion a year running WhatsApp.
Please donate to Signal of you use it.
Humanius@lemmy.world 9 months ago
After Trump was elected and inaugurated, Signal has finally been gaining some steam here in the Netherlands.
Its still an American company, so its not ideal. But it’s still significantly better better than letting Facebook have control over the most commonly used chat app.
WhatsApp needs to go and Signal is the most likely way in which we can achieve thatuniquethrowagay@feddit.org 9 months ago
Signal is based in America but it’s a non profit organization, not a company. Important difference
Humanius@lemmy.world 9 months ago
But being based in the United States it is still subject to American laws, and any potential American spying and embargoes.
ZMoney@lemmy.world 9 months ago
America is not a monolith. Signal’s developers are very much aware of the risks of operating there and probably already have several escape plans given recent developments. I also think five-eyes probably has access but getting it might be computationally expensive.
viking@piefed.ca 9 months ago
There is threema, a Swiss messenger that gained some popularity earlier since they had end to end encryption before whatsapp.
Unfortunately the source code is not open (even though they do get annual audits with public reports), and the client costs 3 EUR or something (once).
sqgl@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Venator@lemmy.nz 9 months ago
Until Facebook buys them like they did with WhatsApp…?
philpo@feddit.org 9 months ago
And Switzerlands records in terms of privacy sadly is far worse than most people think - even with the last attack being repelled.
Matrix (preferably on a non-matrix.org instance) currently is the preferable non US and privacy friendly way.
Humanius@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, but Threema has basically no momentum behind it at all at this point.
I’m putting my social capital behind the option that currently stands the most chance of beating out WhatsappRollForInitiative@feddit.org 9 months ago
They also offer Threema Libre on F-Droid for all us folks who degoogled their phone
Kualdir@piefed.social 9 months ago
Sadly many still don't want to switch. My most active chats are in signal now but the large majority of chats are still on whatsapp
tux0r@feddit.org 9 months ago
If you leave WhatsApp, your chats will usually follow.
kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
[deleted]pheonixdown@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Signal used to be the best answer to this conundrum, since it would use its own internal protocols if it could or fall back to SMS if it couldn’t, unfortunately they decided to drop SMS support a few years ago, citing users that sent sensitive information not realizing they were using SMS (that always felt kinda flimsy). I really disliked this change, because it raised the difficulty of adoption, from just getting people to replace their default app with Signal to making them manage multiple apps.
Now though, you basically need to advocate socially for the change you want to see in the world. Anecdotally, I started using Signal when they still supported SMS to talk with 1 friend group, and eventually convinced most of my closest family groups to also use it, many after SMS support was dropped. Apart from 1 tech illiterate elderly couple and 1 extended family member, I haven’t received any personal (non-company related) text messages in like 5 months.
dustyData@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The sad truth is that the majority of people are treating WhatsApp exactly as a social network. It is there to send memes and stickers. See what others are up to without having to interact. Then mindlessly scroll through reels. Ocassionally purchase something via chat with a corporate bot.
Chronographs@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
If you quickly uninstall it because you don’t know anyone using it sounds like you’re part of the problem, if someone you know installs it to try it out that’s one less person they see as well. Personally I got the vast majority of my friend group to move to it years ago by just saying like “hey Facebook sucks we should move to signal”. If you don’t want to do that should at least leave it installed it’s not like it’s taking up much space
vividspecter@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Signal has been a good option because you can get “normal” people to use it, which hasn’t been true for many of the alternatives (except Telegram, but that’s a mess).
pycorax@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The problem is that it was easier to get people to move to Telegram since it had an abundance of features compared to WhatsApp which was compelling for the average person that doesn’t care about encryption. Signal doesn’t have any of these features that make it enticing for the person.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 9 months ago
i dont use whatsapp that much anyways