Ask HN: Alternatives to Signal?

hayst4ck · on March 24, 2023

There are no reasonable alternatives to signal. Investing in signal despite reduction of ease-of-use in exchange for a better privacy stance is probably the best thing you can do for privacy. Messengers benefit greatly from the network effect. Every person who refuses to use other platforms is a person who brings others to the messenger.

Telegram is both owned by Russians and run out of an oppressive country.

Apple has shown a desire to scan all your stuff. Google is google.

Facebook/whatsapp are obviously corrupted by corporate interests and un-trustable.

LINE/Kakao/WeChat/etc probably aren't much different than FB.

Matrix is not operationalized and they have a security/privacy model that is a bit too complex for me. I'll start believing there might be something to matrix once it's referred to as element (how people use it) rather than the protocol (said affectionately: what nerds care about).

Signal is the lowest effort required to use app that does the right thing. Signal optimizes for low effort and that is a major competitive advantage. Signal is still the best.

Forcing people to use a different app for non private messaging is good from a security and privacy point of view. Expectation: Using signal is private. Reality: Using SMS through signal is not private. This change makes expectations better match reality.

jay3ss · on March 24, 2023

These are the problems that I've noticed with the messaging apps that you just mentioned. There are other problems that are driving the people in my circle away from Signal, so if no one else is using it then I don't see how it will benefit me. I'll keep the app because a couple of people in my circle are still using it, but its utility has diminished now. Thank you.

AHOHA · on March 24, 2023

I said it in a previous discussion and got downvoted and I’m saying it again, don’t trust anything for privacy if a phone number is still required as an ID/2FA. As of alternative, there are several ones, Session, SimpleX, element, Wire among others.

Here’s a comparison: https://divestos.org/pages/messengers

jay3ss · on March 24, 2023

Yeah, I've never been happy with the fact Signal requires phone numbers as an ID. Beyond the privacy issues, there's also issues that I've encountered when someone used Signal (on iOS) and then stopped using it. Once they stopped using it, others who were still using Signal weren't able to message that person anymore outside of group messages. Honestly, the whole thing is a mess. Thank you.

padmabushan · on March 24, 2023

Do you think there is demand for such thing? Can we have some example use cases where we need as those layers and aspects of security/privacy end to end?

jay3ss · on March 24, 2023

Is there a demand for such thing? At least in my circle, yes. Other than that I'm not sure.

przeor · on March 25, 2023

Threema