Please Signal, use this opportunity. I really want to be on Signal AAAAH
They have already announced that they will not be interoperable with insecure messaging apps unfortunately.
Signal absolutely should not interoperate with other data-mining software.
And they won’t, for the same reason they removed SMS (no insecure messaging options).
That’s so short sided. Signal is useless if all your contacts only use WhatsApp.
It’s not useless. It has a very specific use that does not coincide with interoperability with data-mining corporations.
It also does not coincide with most people
It doesn’t have to. It does, however, have to remain private.
It’s up to us to sway them over!
Yeah I believe this to be a fallacy. If all your contacts use WhatsApp, they still haven’t grasped the concept of installing two applications side-by-side. Or they don’t fully understand why people are using signal over WhatsApp. If you fail both of those, congratulations, you’ve failed to be a self-aware tech user and you’re now demoted to a braindead consumer.
I know, mind blowing right? Point is, society in general should not accept others forcing you to keep the WhatsApp monopoly in tact, which is exactly what’s happening here.
It will take some time but eventually adoption will spread, even among your contacts. It’s just a matter of critical mass, and there are some pretty compelling features within Signal that make it a worthy replacement.
Most people are indeed technically not savvy and don’t understand why they would need more than WhatsApp and Instagram on their phone.
Why not convince people to use Signal as well? Even my family has a group chat on Signal. Of course, it’s a slow move with most people sticking to non-open chats. But it’s worth the effort I would say.
Yeah after two years even my parents and brother are on signal plus most of my close friends, the rest I just use regular sms
The inability to use it on two different phones kills it for me.
You can. Up to 7.
Is there a guide to this? I still can’t use a different phone as a linked device, only on desktop or iPads.
https://faq.whatsapp.com/1317564962315842/?cms_platform=android
This worked for me!
I don’t think that’s Signal haha
Aw man, I missunterstood everything :(
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I really don’t expect anyone would listen to me.
How could they, they aren’t on signal
It might work with people you know but is harder to convince people you just met, that’s the reason I still use Whatsapp and recently opened an Instagram.
Yeah, but you can still chat with them on the insecure messenger. You can have both on your phone.
What would be the win if signal would support sending messages to WhatsApp? You’d still be putting your trust into meta.
I do have both.
I didnt say anything about the interoperability. I can imagine some wins… but nothing game changing tbh.
It depends on whether they get a fair offer, or a bullshit one that has to work through the courts and be officially ruled bullshit before they’ll offer anything better.
I dislike when they say in news clips that Signal represents the “current gold standard” for E2EE chats, it doesn’t, Signal is a helluva lot better than the commercial stuff that mines user data but there’s stuff like SimpleX Chat that doesn’t leak even metadata because it doesn’t have it.
Still, this is a good thing, these megacorps have their iron grip on people because they have raised walls around their services making it painful for people to move to a different service, tearing down those walls can only help us all.
A standard is also about broad adoption though, so I don’t think you can call SimpleX a standard yet.
The standard is about the protocol, not every bit of the implementation. 3DH / X3DH and double ratchet, etc, are among the best for E2EE.
Thanks for the tip about SimpleX, that looks interesting! I could never use Signal due to the way they operate and force you to rely on their and Google’s servers, actively blocking forks from their network. So much for FOSS…
They do provide an apk outside of the Play Store, that uses a Web Socket for push notifications. Not he best way of going about it, but hey, it exists.
SimpleX is very neat. But it cannot do multiple devices unless you count shutting down, exporting database to new device replacing existing database as a sensible workflow. Using the database on two devices at once will break encryption and cause all sorts of weird problems.
@jherazob @Mysteriarch Though great with some worthy competition for Signal!
It appears SimpleX is not even available for me (Android 8).
Signal encryption can be taken out of the app and applied elsewhere, because it has been already done. SimpleX is nice but this is single app single implementation thing.
Does this mean third party apps will be able to interact with whatsapp?
only when the service specifically requests it and agrees to Whatsapp’s terms.
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Meta says that it will only allow third-party developers to use another protocol besides Signal, “if they are able to demonstrate it offers the same security guarantees as Signal.”
If matrix finally finishes implementing MLS, maybe they could convince meta to use it.
Last time they touched an open chat protocol, they hung it out to dry. That was XMPP. That’s why more than half of the fediverse is reluctant or outright hostile to federate with anything meta.
maybe they could convince meta to use it
I think he/she meant convincing Meta to use MLS, not Matrix.
Now that I read it again, you may be right.
XMPP is used in many, many places. It’s just not usually explicitly known that the backend is using that protocol
You are underplaying the damage Google and FB did to XMPP. It wasn’t supposed to be relegated to an obscure backend protocol. The involvement of those companies ensured that it didn’t become a popular user-facing protocol.
What is the advantage of this over olm/megolm?
Why MLS?
In most cases, MLS has better performance in large groups than Olm/Megolm.
Would this mean I could finally ditch what’s app and use only Signal?
No, Signal announced they won’t implement interoperable messaging.
kind of dumb they could get huge market share
Yeah, this worked so well for XMPP when everybody federated with Gmail chat.
Well, it worked out for Google when it federated with Jabber, who first open sourced XMPP.
It’s not. There is no privacy if you send your message to Whatsapp servers.
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Would it not be E2EE? Isn’t that one of the reasons for using the Signal protocol?
Yes, the “delivering” part would be E2EE. Do we really know the afterwards if they can read their users’ messages? They probably can.
Whatsapp CANNOT read messages when e2ee is enabled, this client-side snooping was discussed when the protocol was first implemented. Whatsapp collects a ton of metadata and social graph info, but not message content.
Well you type messages in in plain text and they decrypt it to show you the messages at the other end. So they can do the nefarious processing on the client side and send back results to the mother ship. E2EE is only good when you trust the two ends, but with WhatsApp and Messenger you shouldn’t trust the ends.
Sure, but any messaging app (including Signal) could have these backdoors in place. Heck, there’s even vectors for unrelated apps on your phone to read this data once unencrypted.
Signal clients are open-source.
That’s actually true. We don’t know the real-time server code of Signal. Though other apps cannot read what’s written inside Signal, that’s the good part. I prefer private server + Matrix but Signal is the easiest for regular people.
if i remember correctly, it would be E2EE (WhatsApp and Messenger are too) but Meta stores the encrypted message on their server
Signal does not care about “market share”, they’re a non-profit.
Not if signal doesn’t want to support WhatsApp, and I don’t think they’re going to unfortunately :(
Is there a reason this requirement doesn’t apply to iMessage as well?
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To be fair here in Europe I know no one who uses iMessage.
Kinda true in Europe though. Don’t know anyone who uses iMessage, it’s pretty much irrelevant. I know the situation in the US is quite different, but ultimately they don’t regulate for the US market.
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I don’t think it’s ever happened to me that anyone told me that it was inconvenient for them that I didn’t have iMessage, compared to pretty much weekly exclamations of “But why can’t you just use WhatsApp like everyone else!?”
@aberrate_junior_beatnik @penquin I found a nice page with statistics about the different messengers: engage.sinch.com/blog/most-pop…
It seems that only in the US more people are using iMessage than WhatsApp.
Apple would still feel pressure to add interoperability if all other big players do. iMessage would have a competitive disadvantage if it’s the only one where users are unable to message the rest of the world.
Have you met Apple and their walled garden of “IDGAF”?
Yes. Still, it would be harder to not give a f if others walled gardens open up, and iMessage get disadvantaged by that wall.
It’s as if iPhones were only able to make calls to other iPhones. Whereas all other devices where able to make calls to any device from any other vendor.
It’s as if iPhones were only able to make calls to other iPhones
Don’t give them ideas!
@Mysteriarch I deeply hope that there will be some connection to Matrix in the future.
Wake up Neo. Follow the white rabbit
At least we know that this won’t be open federation. But still maybe some company could bridge them or at least could become a JMP.chat like service for WhatsApp.
Element wrote a first look summary on this: https://element.io/blog/the-eu-digital-markets-act-is-here/
