Is it (still) worth trying to switch my family and friends from WhatsApp to Signal? (Read all of it, please.)

You don't need to, as facebook, messenger , whatsapp, imessage, and Telegram will be forced by the EU to interoperate with Signal and other messengers in about six months. (for now only text chat no voip in sight)

If the people you know and care about use it, you don't need WA. Plus, it trains them in it. You cannot always change the world, but you can change your part of it.

I got my family and partner on Signal. I don't care if they use WA. I don't have to. They seem confident with it now.

I don't use WhatsApp since 2017 If someone wants to talk to me it must download Signal or no deal.

I think it's worth it.

Just simply send a link along with that's generally better and that lots of people are moving over. Watomatic could be looked into as a way to automatically remind people you are on signal when they go to Facebook you. It would then prompt then to install signal.

I take the attitude if they want to contact me either, phone, email or text.

I was in a similar spot and gave up before starting. This is due to several reasons: 1) My circle of relatives and friends, like yours, neglect their privacy and would not engage with me in a serious conversation regarding it; 2) educational institutions, businesses, organisations and even governmental bodies may rely on WhatsApp for communications; and 3) the two big telecom monopolies offer enticing mobile data deals for using WhatsApp.

While I am not saying you should give up, you should go for modest goals (e.g. converting your close family to signal when chatting together) and eliminate optimistic expectations so you don't get crushed.

I see a lot of people in this thread talking about an EU regulation that will allow interoperability between messengers. I'm an EU citizen living here and this is, on one hand, amazing, because we can finally ditch proprietary apps and still keep in touch with people that still use them.

On the other hand, I'm concerned about the privacy implications of this. Converting people to Signal is pretty difficult in most cases, however, once they download it and start using it, Facebook gets no messages and metadata from our chats. If this interoperability comes into play, most people will see no reason in downloading Signal, since they can chat with people on Signal anyway. This would mean, that Facebook would still get the chats.

To me, this looks like a desperate way for Big Tech to keep profiting off user data even though better alternatives exist, while making it even more difficult to get people on these better platforms.

What do you guys think about this?

I was a very early adopter of Signal. I was using it before it was called Signal, and the voice calls used a separate app. I had also been following Moxies's work for some years prior on a Firefox extension. I got almost all my friends and family to use it, and I use it everyday.

Now though, I'm looking for a good alternative and no longer evangelize it. I don't believe conspiracy theories about Signal, but the persistent phone number requirement and the recent dropping of support for SMS in android has me looking towards a future with a different protocol.

Unfortunately, I don't think there exists yet the perfect alternative. The closest I've found for my needs is Matrix, but it isn't smooth enough for me to pressure my contacts into using it.

I am using signal with my wife and 2-3 closed friends for 3 years now. The problem with signal is that you need a phone number. Now i am using SimpleXchat which is a decentralized messenger and i believe is the future of privacy chats. Its hard to convience people to switch their daily chat app, but if tou do it i would say go with SimpleXchat.

Your main concern I believe is to move your relatives/friends there. And for work, communication with strangers you can use your usual messengers. This way you don't lose opportunities in your career, but you protect the most sensitive information. You can tell your relatives/friends that you will not talk to them on the phone in other messengers. It is also an effective tactic.

You definitely should still mak every effort to get people on to Signal, even if they have both apps on their phone, so at least you can keep all of your conversations and phone calls 100% private and secure.

You must grant them the freedom to se Whatsapp with other people if they insist on keeping it or don't want to learn about privacy, but for contacting you, you do have a right to speak to them and say you are using Signal now for messaging and calling, and state that you prefwr or you decided to not use Whatsapp anymore, you can explain why if you decide to them.

I know someone who only uses Whatsapp with absoutely everybody, but for me, they csll me on Signal or message me through Signal.

About a year ago I got someone else on to Signal, and as soon as they installed it rhey saw how many of their contacts from back home are already on Signal but they never knew others were already using it.

You have no say what other people do, but you do have control over your own privacy and anybody that contacts you. The mission is not to get others to remove Whatsapp, the mission is for you to be able to talk privately, like through Signal.

I got my mom to switch. Well, made her to. Sent her a link to install it and just said "It's like Whatsapp, but no Facebook" along with "Keep Whatsapp for your old contacts".

Can i ask why exactly signal?

If they don't care about privacy you don't have any argument for them to switch. I don't think you can argue that Signal is better functionally than WhatsApp, it just has better privacy.

Here in the NL it's almost like some kind of privatized utility. It's used for sensitive things too.

A while ago there was an audit: Lo and behold the backups weren't e2ee. What ever happened to warrants?

Well I just told everyone I'm switching a few years back and that's that. And actually a lot of people switched because they preferred it over email and SMS.

It's best to avoid trying to persuade others. Just say how they can contact you and leave it at that.

As others have already mentioned, there will be EU regulation that comes into effect soon that will force messengers to be interoperable. Despite following the topic quite actively, it still seems to be quite uncertain how this interoperability will look like. I also have some concerns about companies making interoperability opt-in, requiring users to go to the app settings and manually turning it on or presenting them with a popup that makes it seem like interoperability is a security risk (a Meta spokesperson revealed that they were pushing for a solution like that pretty heavily). Either way, before trying to get other people to migrate to another platform I would first wait and see what the implications of this regulation are.

I think it is difficult for others to tell you whether it is "worth it", because that is very personal.

For me, personally, transferring my family and friends to Signal is not worth it because Signal requires a phone number. If I will invest such an effort, I would rather help them migrate to a service that does not require a phone number - such as Matrix or an XMPP server. But needing a phone number to register might not be a problem for you - in which case Signal could be a perfectly reasonable choice.

But... Even then - is it worth it? Again, it is up to you. I tried, but my success has been limited. The reality is that I still have a phone with WhatsApp that I leave at home and I check it every day or two. I tell people that if they want to reach me, the best is to use e-mail. And to my closest friends and some of my family I did convince them to use my XMPP chat so that we can be connected more often. No one really left WhatsApp, but at least we can have some fun conversations on our own server, which is nice.

But I am not going to lie, I am sacrificing a ton of functionality and convenience. For me, this is worth it because I think that it is GOOD not to be available through the phone all the time, and I am idealist when it comes to not giving big companies our data. But for some people these sacrifices might be unsustainable, and it might not be worth it.

So: I don't know. Maybe it's worth it?

for the cause yes it is worth it

Reis öncelikle ismine hayran kaldım. Ve hayır aileni ve arkadaşlarını signale gecirmeye calisma, denesende olmaz.herkes whatsapp kullanıyor, her türlü whatsapp kullanman ve kullanmaları gerekicek.

Ama belki matrix e bakabilirsin, yakin arkadaşların ve ailen icin bir server kurabilirsin. Gizlilik konusunda da daha iyi olur signale kıyasen. Hatta xmpp daha iyi olur ama fazla uğrastirabilir.

Bu arada turklerin takildigi bir yer varsa fediverse te, yazarsan sevinirim. Hayırlı geceler.

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/why_not_signal.md