Moving from WhatsApp to Signal is an important action, right now. WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, has been involved in several cases of election interference: America in 2016, Trinidad and Tobago …
After Trump was elected and inaugurated, Signal has finally been gaining some steam here in the Netherlands.
It’s still an American company, so it’s not ideal. But it’s still significantly better better than letting a tech giant like 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 that. We can worry about the American elephant in the room later.
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 Whatsapp
FYI, while Threema front-end clients (apps) are open-source (and offer reproducible builds, which is surprisingly uncommon in open-source land), the server component, though supposedly audited, remains closed-source.
EDIT: for comparison, the Signal server code is mostly open source, but things like the spam filter are closed.
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.
After Trump was elected and inaugurated, Signal has finally been gaining some steam here in the Netherlands.
It’s still an American company, so it’s not ideal. But it’s still significantly better better than letting a tech giant like 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 that. We can worry about the American elephant in the room later.
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).
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 Whatsapp
Until Facebook buys them like they did with WhatsApp…?
Wrong.
https://threema.com/en/why-threema/open-source
That’s just the client, the server architecture is what really matters.
Thanks, yeah someone else said similar here.
FYI, while Threema front-end clients (apps) are open-source (and offer reproducible builds, which is surprisingly uncommon in open-source land), the server component, though supposedly audited, remains closed-source.
EDIT: for comparison, the Signal server code is mostly open source, but things like the spam filter are closed.
Thanks.
And I didn’t know Signal had spam filters. It makes sense to not make that open source.
In my circle of 20 there has only been one instance of spam over several years. 3 of us got the same message.
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.
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