How have others gotten friends/family to make the switch? I’ve been doing a cleanup of my digital life over the last year or so and am trying to move to using more privacy friendly alternatives where possible.
example: I’d love to switch to Signal only but everyone I know only uses WhatsApp. I’ve mentioned switching to people in the past but it’s always the same response (I don’t have anything to hide)
I have gotten tech minded friends to switch with some success. Getting my wife to switch to privacy friendly communications with me was easy in that I did all of the leg work. I setup her accounts and installed the apps. As far as she was concerned the phone came with XMPP, Matrix and Tuta.
The only reason I got Signal to catch on with friends & family was that it made group chats between Android and iPhone just work for everybody. Although if they had already been using Whatsapp it may have been a harder sell. But Signal was easy to use to figure out.
It still incredibly hard tog et even one person to agree tho. And even then they’d likely give up since most of our contacts are going to keep using WA
Great! Then I guess they don’t mind giving you their bank password, credit card pin, details of all the medicines they take, information from the work they do, their detailed weekly activity schedule, their browser history, their investment portfolio and assets, etc, etc… I’m salivating at the thought of the hundreds of different ways in which I can make money with all that info!
Funny thing is that a lot of people actually do give pins and shit. I know more than a few people that straight up gave me their card and the pin number to buy shit when I was a kid.
Besides, giving embarrassing information to a faceless billion dollar company does not feel as bad as giving it to someone who judges you if they find that info embarrassing. It’s illogical but that’s how a lot of people think.
Why everybody is talking about signal? Isnt a matrix also a good alternative? It requires no phone number + has almost the same feature set. For chatting with family and friend it scales enough good. It is fully open source.
personally, signal is a lot easier to set up for a family member who doesnt care about privacy. its just a sms replacement basically, just need a phone number (which is also a downside, of course)
In Matrix all u need is username, email and password and ur ready to go. Homeserver is configured automatically to matrix.org (which is a problem, but nvm)
The downside of matrix is complexity of choosing a client though. And in general understanding a concept of matrix is not easy for regilar person.
For example u can say: “Im on Signal”, but u cant say: “im on FluffyChat”, or Element whatever, it sounds wrong, cuz these are only the clients and everything is working on matrix. But the regular person needs an object: telegram, signal, whatsapp - these all are just single entities. On the other hand u have matrix with clients, homeservers, spaces and all of this complexity, and that is not easy to understand.
Yeah, i hope in future this problem will be resolved.
Either they’re okay with a switch and it’s easy or they are not open for that and it’s impossible to change their mind.
Pretty much nobody I know wants to switch to Signal or any other messaging app. So it’s SMS communication with them because I definitely won’t install WhatsApp.
It’s worse for me in my country, 90% of people use Viber. Which not only has the same lack of privacy with other popular messengers, it’s also ugly, filled with ads and company bots, and it’s obviously targeted to teenagers. It’s so weird to me that people use this app, but I guess most people’s choice is always “whatever my most contacts use”. I’ve been trying to introduce my friends to something better, I would prefer Signal but literally zero of my contacts use it. On Telegram on the other hand, I found 4-5 of my contacts already using it so I started from there, added my family too, and I’m slowly trying to add more friends. Until then, like others said, I’ll use whatever for a casual message, and I’ll just call the person for anything more personal or private.
Viber is really very annoying, constantly nagging me about their “newest stickers” and other crap. When I open it, it’s like times square on my phone with all the garbage ads…
Yeah that’s what sucks about this. But you don’t have to really call for intimate messages. WhatsApp cannot read you message since it’s E2EE but they do store and use the metadata. So a casual message and an intimate messages are the same in a WhatsApp server’s eyes.
Of all the privacy-related changes I’ve made, Signal is the only thing I’ve managed to get anyone else to use.
It was a matter of saying “I don’t use WhatsApp anymore” and that was that. Some friends didn’t make the switch, but they know where to find me.
Quitting Facebook lead people to believe that I was in need of help, though. They thought I was crazy. Still, today, people ask me why they can’t tag me on FB or why I unfriended them. When I tell them I stopped using FB they’re shocked and say things like, “but you’re such a techy computer nerd guy.”
I have a few friends and family on Signal. Pretty much everyone uses other services too (including myself) but Signal is installed on a few
I talk to some friends / family on Signal exclusively. They either already cared about it, or they’re close enough that they trust my recommendation / still don’t care but want to put in the effort
I talk to some friends / family on Signal only when we want to have a more private conversation
Some people won’t ever be convinced, I talk to them on other services or in person when privacy is important. I set up boundaries to protect myself, and people usually respect that.
This way I protect myself while respecting other people’s choices.
For you I’d recommend focussing on the second option. When you need to talk privately, ask the person to install it and give a short explanation for why it’s better. If they do, then great it’s installed and it’ll get used once in a while. Maybe they will see other people and build up the network. If they don’t install it, then suggest an alternative like talking in person
I tell everyone that messenger is not installed on my phone and I check messages once a week. So if they contact me there, expect a one week response time. (Or more.)
Just start using Signal. Don’t push it for a reason for people who don’t care, just let people know “Hey, message me here”. The more people that use it - the better for everyone - whether they benefit or not.
The second part of that is use things like WhatsApp less or not at all, but you can always start with the first part. Maybe you already have folks on signal, and you can just start messaging them there until more folks come over.
You’re not going to convince anyone to suffer inconvenience for something that has no tangible benefit in their eyes. The best you can do is give people the option to contact you on Signal and explain (briefly) why you prefer it. After enough experience, you realize there is no argument you can make that will convince people to care about privacy. The people who join you on Signal either already care about privacy (but maybe didn’t realize it) or value your comfort over theirs.
Personally, I would rather send unencrypted SMS instead of using a Meta-owned service. I don’t want to be part of the network effect keeping people on Facebook. Everyone with a SIM card in their phone already has access to SMS, but few use it if they can help it, so I don’t think I’m contributing to a network effect by doing this. The only MMS client I use is Signal, so anyone can contact me over there if they want more functionality. That’s the only tactic I use, and so far, it has been unsuccessful.
Signal is not much better than WhatsApp or any other walled garden messenger without provider choice. Don’t waste your time and energy to move people to walled gardens. A better idea would be to use providers and apps that support the federated internet standard XMPP: https://joinjabber.org
Despite being around for a while, that project is incomplete and/or insecure depending on which encryption protocol you want to choose (the best one is still labeled with a warning that it is just experimental). And then you have to hunt down a client that supports the features you want, which is another headache…
Yes, the XSF has a very high bar what a standard is and what not, so the many protocol extensions are labeled experimental. However that doesn’t mean implementations are “incomplete” or “insecure”. OMEMO has good support nowadays and the implementation in Conversations has been independently audited.
The Conversations Independent audit casually mentions forward secrecy was broken, and that the documentation itself was out of date… And that was at the time the audit was released. The website doesn’t mention if Conversations took these recommendations into account, either.
And that’s just if we assume users only want to use one device at a time, and they won’t touch a desktop.
It’s been 8 years, how regularly should I check back to see if OMEMO is accepted as a standard draft?
Privacy does not necessarily mean interoperability. XMPP is trapped in the past because it cannot roll out changes, including privacy enhancements that Signal has delivered
Start sending invites to Signal. Setting up group chats can help too, as invitations to those create mild FOMO in the mind of the invitee, then once they have the app they can use it for things besides group chats.
There’s a balance between principles and practicality and for a lot of people it just hasn’t tipped yet. I’m kind of in that boat myself.
On principle, I’d like to eliminate Google from my life entirely.
In practice, there is no good alternative to Google Maps. I’ve tried a bunch of OSM-based apps and they’re just not there yet. So I use Google Maps. Not happy about it, but I still use it.
I use osmand in conjunction with gps-coordinates.net so I can get the GPS coordinates of addresses to put into osmand since it has a serious lack of addresses
Open street map data is created by volunteers. Where I live, you can practically put in any address into OsmAnd and it’ll know it. Maybe you live too far out. Or there aren’t enough people contributing in your area.
Putting in the house numbers is a tedious task.
Ah, okay. Different continent, ~500k people here. More if you count the neighboring cities. I’ve programmed in a few house numbers like 10 years ago. But generally speaking, OSM knows most hiking routes and illegal mountainbike trails in the woods. And it rarely does silly mistakes while routing me in the car. Something it used to do regularly when I started using it. Guess the experience heavily depends on where you live, then.
Ironically I found the best way to watch YouTube on the TV was to pay Google for a “Chromecast with Android TV” (or whatever it’s called) and install SmartTube on it. I could have spent a while tinkering around with my Raspberry Pi to create some custom solution and given Google no money, but this cost less than 2 months of YouTube premium and now I’ve got a device I can do whatever with.
I’m paying for the convenience of a tv-optimised android device. It’s relatively versatile in that you can install most android apps, but much more robust than trying to build something myself. And all I use it for is watching video so there’s not really much it can data-mine compared to something serious like my phone.
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I have gotten tech minded friends to switch with some success. Getting my wife to switch to privacy friendly communications with me was easy in that I did all of the leg work. I setup her accounts and installed the apps. As far as she was concerned the phone came with XMPP, Matrix and Tuta.
The only reason I got Signal to catch on with friends & family was that it made group chats between Android and iPhone just work for everybody. Although if they had already been using Whatsapp it may have been a harder sell. But Signal was easy to use to figure out.
“I don’t have anything to hide”
I prefer to suggest a different mindset - “It’s not that I have nothing to hide. It’s that I have nothing I want anybody to see”
It still incredibly hard tog et even one person to agree tho. And even then they’d likely give up since most of our contacts are going to keep using WA
I got no one to switch. Eventually I just gave up as people were getting sick of me always recommending alternatives no one else uses.
Great! Then I guess they don’t mind giving you their bank password, credit card pin, details of all the medicines they take, information from the work they do, their detailed weekly activity schedule, their browser history, their investment portfolio and assets, etc, etc… I’m salivating at the thought of the hundreds of different ways in which I can make money with all that info!
Sacrificing privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you’re ok giving up free speech because you have nothing to say
Not even gonna name the source where you got that from? :P
Funny thing is that a lot of people actually do give pins and shit. I know more than a few people that straight up gave me their card and the pin number to buy shit when I was a kid.
Besides, giving embarrassing information to a faceless billion dollar company does not feel as bad as giving it to someone who judges you if they find that info embarrassing. It’s illogical but that’s how a lot of people think.
Why everybody is talking about signal? Isnt a matrix also a good alternative? It requires no phone number + has almost the same feature set. For chatting with family and friend it scales enough good. It is fully open source.
personally, signal is a lot easier to set up for a family member who doesnt care about privacy. its just a sms replacement basically, just need a phone number (which is also a downside, of course)
In Matrix all u need is username, email and password and ur ready to go. Homeserver is configured automatically to matrix.org (which is a problem, but nvm)
The downside of matrix is complexity of choosing a client though. And in general understanding a concept of matrix is not easy for regilar person.
For example u can say: “Im on Signal”, but u cant say: “im on FluffyChat”, or Element whatever, it sounds wrong, cuz these are only the clients and everything is working on matrix. But the regular person needs an object: telegram, signal, whatsapp - these all are just single entities. On the other hand u have matrix with clients, homeservers, spaces and all of this complexity, and that is not easy to understand.
Yeah, i hope in future this problem will be resolved.
I’ve started using Matrix instead of Discord (not that I really ever used Discord).
Why are so many people comparing discord with matrix instead of revolt
In my case, I’ve seen a lot of Discord groups linked with Matrix. As well as it being mentioned a whole bunch online
Either they’re okay with a switch and it’s easy or they are not open for that and it’s impossible to change their mind.
Pretty much nobody I know wants to switch to Signal or any other messaging app. So it’s SMS communication with them because I definitely won’t install WhatsApp.
It’s worse for me in my country, 90% of people use Viber. Which not only has the same lack of privacy with other popular messengers, it’s also ugly, filled with ads and company bots, and it’s obviously targeted to teenagers. It’s so weird to me that people use this app, but I guess most people’s choice is always “whatever my most contacts use”. I’ve been trying to introduce my friends to something better, I would prefer Signal but literally zero of my contacts use it. On Telegram on the other hand, I found 4-5 of my contacts already using it so I started from there, added my family too, and I’m slowly trying to add more friends. Until then, like others said, I’ll use whatever for a casual message, and I’ll just call the person for anything more personal or private.
Viber is really very annoying, constantly nagging me about their “newest stickers” and other crap. When I open it, it’s like times square on my phone with all the garbage ads…
Yeah that’s what sucks about this. But you don’t have to really call for intimate messages. WhatsApp cannot read you message since it’s E2EE but they do store and use the metadata. So a casual message and an intimate messages are the same in a WhatsApp server’s eyes.
Of all the privacy-related changes I’ve made, Signal is the only thing I’ve managed to get anyone else to use.
It was a matter of saying “I don’t use WhatsApp anymore” and that was that. Some friends didn’t make the switch, but they know where to find me.
Quitting Facebook lead people to believe that I was in need of help, though. They thought I was crazy. Still, today, people ask me why they can’t tag me on FB or why I unfriended them. When I tell them I stopped using FB they’re shocked and say things like, “but you’re such a techy computer nerd guy.”
Quitting Google was confusing for others too.
you’re a techy nerd and thats why you definitely use 1984book and give your soul to the zucc :D
that’s the reason why
if only they knew how not-so-techy I really am…
I have a few friends and family on Signal. Pretty much everyone uses other services too (including myself) but Signal is installed on a few
I talk to some friends / family on Signal exclusively. They either already cared about it, or they’re close enough that they trust my recommendation / still don’t care but want to put in the effort
I talk to some friends / family on Signal only when we want to have a more private conversation
Some people won’t ever be convinced, I talk to them on other services or in person when privacy is important. I set up boundaries to protect myself, and people usually respect that.
This way I protect myself while respecting other people’s choices.
For you I’d recommend focussing on the second option. When you need to talk privately, ask the person to install it and give a short explanation for why it’s better. If they do, then great it’s installed and it’ll get used once in a while. Maybe they will see other people and build up the network. If they don’t install it, then suggest an alternative like talking in person
I tell everyone that messenger is not installed on my phone and I check messages once a week. So if they contact me there, expect a one week response time. (Or more.)
Just start using Signal. Don’t push it for a reason for people who don’t care, just let people know “Hey, message me here”. The more people that use it - the better for everyone - whether they benefit or not.
The second part of that is use things like WhatsApp less or not at all, but you can always start with the first part. Maybe you already have folks on signal, and you can just start messaging them there until more folks come over.
You’re not going to convince anyone to suffer inconvenience for something that has no tangible benefit in their eyes. The best you can do is give people the option to contact you on Signal and explain (briefly) why you prefer it. After enough experience, you realize there is no argument you can make that will convince people to care about privacy. The people who join you on Signal either already care about privacy (but maybe didn’t realize it) or value your comfort over theirs.
Personally, I would rather send unencrypted SMS instead of using a Meta-owned service. I don’t want to be part of the network effect keeping people on Facebook. Everyone with a SIM card in their phone already has access to SMS, but few use it if they can help it, so I don’t think I’m contributing to a network effect by doing this. The only MMS client I use is Signal, so anyone can contact me over there if they want more functionality. That’s the only tactic I use, and so far, it has been unsuccessful.
Signal is not much better than WhatsApp or any other walled garden messenger without provider choice. Don’t waste your time and energy to move people to walled gardens. A better idea would be to use providers and apps that support the federated internet standard XMPP: https://joinjabber.org
Despite being around for a while, that project is incomplete and/or insecure depending on which encryption protocol you want to choose (the best one is still labeled with a warning that it is just experimental). And then you have to hunt down a client that supports the features you want, which is another headache…
Which encryption protocol is labeled with a warning? The link I posted makes choosing a client very easy.
The good one, aka OMEMO, which is mentioned on the site but not in the app recommendations
Yes, the XSF has a very high bar what a standard is and what not, so the many protocol extensions are labeled experimental. However that doesn’t mean implementations are “incomplete” or “insecure”. OMEMO has good support nowadays and the implementation in Conversations has been independently audited.
The Conversations Independent audit casually mentions forward secrecy was broken, and that the documentation itself was out of date… And that was at the time the audit was released. The website doesn’t mention if Conversations took these recommendations into account, either.
And that’s just if we assume users only want to use one device at a time, and they won’t touch a desktop.
It’s been 8 years, how regularly should I check back to see if OMEMO is accepted as a
standarddraft?How regularly should I check if Signal has become an interoperable internet standard?
Privacy does not necessarily mean interoperability. XMPP is trapped in the past because it cannot roll out changes, including privacy enhancements that Signal has delivered
Start sending invites to Signal. Setting up group chats can help too, as invitations to those create mild FOMO in the mind of the invitee, then once they have the app they can use it for things besides group chats.
I’ll give that a try!
The unfortunate fact is that most people don’t care about their privacy until it’s violated. It’s weird.
@hperrin @governorkeagan Until they *realise* how much and for how long it’s been violated.
I’ve seen people complain about companies like Meta and Google but then not make any effort to try and change…people can be weird sometimes.
I suppose there are a lot of factors at play, but still 🤷🏻♂️
Well, at least you know how to approach the people who complain about Meta and Google.
There’s a balance between principles and practicality and for a lot of people it just hasn’t tipped yet. I’m kind of in that boat myself.
On principle, I’d like to eliminate Google from my life entirely.
In practice, there is no good alternative to Google Maps. I’ve tried a bunch of OSM-based apps and they’re just not there yet. So I use Google Maps. Not happy about it, but I still use it.
I use osmand in conjunction with gps-coordinates.net so I can get the GPS coordinates of addresses to put into osmand since it has a serious lack of addresses
Open street map data is created by volunteers. Where I live, you can practically put in any address into OsmAnd and it’ll know it. Maybe you live too far out. Or there aren’t enough people contributing in your area. Putting in the house numbers is a tedious task.
I highly suspect it’s a lack of contributors since I live in a small city in the United States (~50k population).
Ah, okay. Different continent, ~500k people here. More if you count the neighboring cities. I’ve programmed in a few house numbers like 10 years ago. But generally speaking, OSM knows most hiking routes and illegal mountainbike trails in the woods. And it rarely does silly mistakes while routing me in the car. Something it used to do regularly when I started using it. Guess the experience heavily depends on where you live, then.
Yep. And YouTube on teevee, just got to pay for it. I can’t suffer these ads.
No real replacement as of now for either.
Imagine paying and they are still mining you.
Wtf sort of dystopian bullshit time line is this.
Stop using them for everything else.
Ironically I found the best way to watch YouTube on the TV was to pay Google for a “Chromecast with Android TV” (or whatever it’s called) and install SmartTube on it. I could have spent a while tinkering around with my Raspberry Pi to create some custom solution and given Google no money, but this cost less than 2 months of YouTube premium and now I’ve got a device I can do whatever with.
Didn’t realize that was possible now you ate running on google controlled device…
I cant swallow that.
Hate paying them too tho
I’m paying for the convenience of a tv-optimised android device. It’s relatively versatile in that you can install most android apps, but much more robust than trying to build something myself. And all I use it for is watching video so there’s not really much it can data-mine compared to something serious like my phone.
Apple Maps is a good alternative if you have an iPhone. Apple may not be a whole lot better, but at least they aren’t an advertising company.
How sad it is when “at least they aren’t an advertising company” is one of the better alternatives!
I just switched to Petal Maps, though it doesn’t warn me if a place is closing soon.
I’d like to give Petal Maps a serious try, but for some reason it doesn’t work with CarPlay. So it’s a no-go for me.