Edit - y’all are awesome! I’m gonna check out all of these - thank you!!
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A family member is moving out of country and convinced the best way to keep in touch is with WhatsApp. I really don’t want to install any Meta shit on my phone.
Any recommendation for a FOSS or other alternative from a company that’s less of an ethical dumpster fire?
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Signal
Signal. Also see https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html
Signal then SimpleX. SimpleX is really cool and new but you can’t have groups larger than 50 people. It was recently smeared by Wired as being a haven for neo Nazi’s but that’s bullshit unless you want to accuse Monero of being solely for illicit deeds and money laundering.
Also, there’s Matrix which is like a federated Discord and NOSTR which is also being smeared but is a quite promising technology that Jack Dorsey was looking into and Edward Snowden uses.
Written press and the internet as a whole can be a haven for any kind of malicious groups.
Privacy is a paradox in that way.
Signal
Seconded - it even has a much better way of dealing with media attachments.
Just make sure you configure a PIN and backups.
For my family member who moved out of country, signal’s voice quality was not very good. WhatsApp’s quality was better than a regular phone call, very impressive.
Also, outside the US WhatsApp is some kind of standard the way rich Americans think iMessage is. Companies will ask her to contact them on WhatsApp, so she’ll have to have it regardless of your personal involvement.
There’s also jitsi.
Also, outside the US WhatsApp is some kind of standard the way rich Americans think iMessage is. Companies will ask her to contact them on WhatsApp, so she’ll have to have it regardless of your personal involvement.
That really depends on the country that the family member is moving to, and is not an absolute thing world-wide.
Do you think signal’s voice quality is not as good as whatsapp? It might be because they have less servers than whatsapp
Whatsapp and telegram calls are P2P for contacts by default. P2P might reduce call issues which i’m not sure signal does that or not
XMPP. Oh, wait, company based.
- Signal if you want phone number based signups.
- SimpleX Chat if you want to experience full privacy.
- Threema if you want basically the same as SimpleX Chat, but want to give them money first.
But XMPP would be the best option. Snikket is recommended for easy setup.
Signal or XMPP are good option
XMPP may be a bit overwhelming as you need to select a provider and a client. Doesn’t require phone number.
Signal is private and easy to use like whatsapp. Needs phone number to use.
Telegram is cool but encryption isnt enabled by default, would like to avoid it for this. Cool for public groups.
Edit: Teleram isnt good at all, dont use it. Look reason in the replies
MTProto has, to my knowledge, never undergone any security audits. It’s a roll-your-own-encryption, which is always dubious when you’re unwilling to have it audited.
Are telegram’s secret chats using MTProto? Also i have seen many claims saying it have been audited. They do public bug hunt contest with huge sum as reward to test this afaik
Agreed, I will edit the comment
Signal. Though SimpleX is growing as a superior private messenger.
Signal, Matrix/Element, Wire
Maybe not wire, it’s not very widely used and the app is a bit meh
I’d recommend just regular texting, but if for whatever reason you can’t/don’t want to the. matrix should work, it’s basically foss discord.
Why would you recommend texting as an alternative?
Lemmy
Hey do you want to go get some pizza after work? BTW I love this new messenger called Lemmy, I feel so much safer that we’re not being spied on! C ya
How? What? Why?
Comment sections and DM. Because you can and you should
Lemmy isn’t secure and that’s OK because it has a different use case. The owner of your instance has acces to all your messages.
Lemmy is not a WhatsApp alternative
Federation is the opposite of privacy
