this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
176 points (98.9% liked)

Privacy

47418 readers
1715 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

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It has been a long journey.

I have been gradually convincing my family, close relatives and friends to make the switch to Signal for over two years. I am already the "tech support guy" in all my circles so most didn't really question it. Most of my friends are quite tech-savvy, and some even did use Signal before I talked to them about it.

This also filtered out some "friends" who were never that close to me to begin with. So, that's a bonus, I guess.

Overall, my recommendation to others interested would be to tell people how much you don't like Meta's business model instead of the privacy aspect. I already ditched Facebook and Instagram many years ago, and this helped defend my point a bit better.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AnUnassumingStick@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Lucky, my social circle's technologically illiterate AND doesn't care what happens to their personal data so I'm stuck with both Facebook & WhatsApp :/ One saving grace is that I don't have either installed on my "main" phone.

Signal's not great for privacy either tbf - Meta is just a very very low bar to be better than.

[–] dwt@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Signal is way, way better than what you currently have

[–] AnUnassumingStick@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What I currently have for privacy is SimpleX - not needing a phone number alone beats Signal - but I've also got only a single contact there so it's not replacing WhatsApp anytime soon 🤷‍♂️

[–] dwt@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

Yep. That’s why we privacy sensitive people keep coming back for signal and matrix.

[–] AcornTickler@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Signal's not great for privacy either tbf

Why do you think so? Yeah, it is not anonymous due to requiring a phone number, but all media and metadata are end-to-end encrypted.

[–] AnUnassumingStick@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ended up having to do some more digging on Signal as I was under the impression more metadata was getting left unencrypted than there is.

My bigger concerns are with whom Signal employs and the very questionable decisions the company's made.

Their VP of engineering was at Facebook managing Onavo VPN when that was spying on teenagers using Snapshat. Then, Signal had known their desktop encryption keys were stored in plaintext for six years and only fixed it after public outrage.

To the best of everyone's knowledge, Signal's netcode is solid, but leadership with a history in privacy scandals & negligence towards clear privacy holes is very iffy IMO.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Could you be mixing it up with matrix/element, which leaks a lot of metadata.