this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
767 points (98.4% liked)
Privacy
46745 readers
1787 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Opinion: I think painting in Signal in such negative light is more harmful in the practical sense. Having fragmented messaging towards the public that does not care about many of these aspects just makes them a lot more hesitant to change, from my perspective.
We as a community should, in my opinion, pick a "good enough" solution for the majority of the people we interact with. That in itself is a market force to show interest and demand for private solutions. Most people I know don't have the tools or knowledge or time to understand nuances and all they'll hear are conflicting messages.
For us more technically inclined people: hell yeah, let's figure out the ideal model and bring it up to maturity so others can join when it's fleshed out. E.g. when lemmy came to my attention in the reddit 3rd party app fiasco, I was really confused on how to sign up and use it. And I'm no stranger to tech.
Edit: spelling
I'd probably suggest Deltachat. It's decentralized and has always on encryption, but is so incredibly simple and easy to onboard and use, and doesn't require a phone number or even an email. It also works on all platforms with a single app.
wait, doesn't it rely on the email system?
I would rather have signal possibly collect my social graph than google through gmail.
It uses a subset of the email protocol (which makes it very difficult for governments to block) but it no longer uses an an actual email address to function by default.
Even if someone did use a gmail exclusively for this (you can't use it with an email account you use for normal emails too), everything would be entirely encrypted, and only the app itself would be able to decrypt it (google would not be able to decrypt the messages). But again, no normal user is going to use an actual email address.
You can read more about how it works in their FAQ. But the short version is once you pick a username, it just gives you a QR code or link to send to people, which connects you immediately in an encrypted chat room with no faffing around with emails.
There are plenty of good enough options like SimpleX Chat out there that don't have this problem. The whole argument that people should just ignore the obvious issue with Signal is frankly weird.
Accept defects != ignore
My original comment that you replied to was explaining the defects. People are free to decide whether they want to accept them or not. Your comment is saying that it's harmful to discuss these defects which implies that we should just ignore them.
I was talking about the "educating people" part. I interpreted as "let's steer them away from Signal towards a better solution". If it's not the intent then my comment is irrelevant
Again, I think people should be aware that there are alternatives to Signal, and be able to make an informed decision on the trade offs that matter to them. My personal view is that there are absolutely better platforms than Signal, but if people understand the potential risks with Signal and use it because it's convenient or their other contacts use it, etc., that's entirely up to them. It's just not what I would personally recommend if people want privacy.
Fair enough
You think we’re living in an ideal world, but we’re not. Most of our family and friends use WhatsApp and other big tech messaging apps. You make valid points, but they’re just a dream if messaging means people and if there aren’t people, it’s not messaging.
No, I don't think we live in an ideal world. I repeatedly said you ultimately have to use the platform that your contacts use. I'm merely pointing out that you should understand the trade offs.