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
SimpleX Chat, no phone number or e-mail registration needed. Truly a privacy pioneer.
As is the highest up vote, Signal. However, if you refuse to install WA (you should) and they refuse to install Signal (scold them for being dumb), a backup is to bridge WhatsApp with Matrix and use Element on your phone. Way more complicated than Signal and I still strongly recommend they use Signal.
Yeah but IMHO bridging whatsapp misses the point. We need people to start being aware and choosing conscious ethical pieces of software for the sake of humanity.
Does this work with WhatsApp groups chat?
Yes, here’s the supported features for the recommended bridge: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/whatsapp/
This is cool, are there downsides? Like will messages be strangely formatted or anything for my contacts?
Also, are there bridges for other apps? Signal, telegram, messenger? I’d love to have one messenger app to rule them all
Works great for me. Only oddity is “quotes” in Discord sometimes dont show the content unless you tap on them. And yes, look at the bridges page for more. https://www.beeper.com/ is a hosted version of this with a custom app.
a backup is to bridge WhatsApp with Matrix and use Element on your phone
Any recommendations on where to start learning how to set up a bridge like that?
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.
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?
not as an alternative to Whatsapp, I mean not bothering with an alternative to texting. there is no need for something like Whatsapp because everything it does is already part of just texting normally. Whatsapp is a texting alternative, and as such is pointless.
Texting doesn’t do end-to-end encryption though, which is a dealbreaker for many.
sure but if Whatsapp was in consideration security clearly isn’t.
Otherwise you don’t get all operators being able to read your messages, all the vulnerabilities of SS7 (so not only your operator, any random dude with experience can read your messages)
So many advantages!
But it is compatible with iMessage that it is what really matters, really 😂
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. 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
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.
Telegram’s 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. I would never suggest Telegram, even for cleartext communications.
Agreed, I will edit the comment
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.
Here goes to hoping that EU massages Whatsapp third party compatibility actually works. It would be great if Signal decided to enter the program, so that I could start recommending it to friends and family as a full on replacement, while not losing the ability to communicate with those who use WhatsApp.
I understand Signal stance, but it would honestly be better to have a mainstream alternative to Whatsapp that actually cares about privacy, rather than a niche product nobody uses
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
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.
Bruh, this is a privacy nightmare! Worse than Meta! No worse than everything! I am betrayed! I am bamboozled! I have said many things that can’t see the light of day! This is blacknail! What should I do now? Where do I go? What do I use? Who do I trust? If Lemmy isn’t secure than what does that mean for free speech within the rules? What does that mean for the transfer of ideas? What pressidemce does this set for the rest of the fediverse?!?!121 I must search my souls for the answer, maybe Anom I heard that they don’t spy on you.
Federation is the opposite of privacy
Lemmy is not a WhatsApp alternative
Signal
Seconded - it even has a much better way of dealing with media attachments.
Just make sure you configure a PIN and backups.
