Just a moment...
www.bleepingcomputer.com

I really don't understand why so many people like Signal. It's an utter piece of shit in terms of UX, has questionable security practices, harvests phone numbers, and it's located on a central server in US.

  • porcupine@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    5 months ago

    What else is free, open source, end-to-end encrypted, has better UX and security practices, and isn't located on a central server in the US?

      • USSR Enjoyer@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        5 months ago

        Matrix (as a protocol) appears to be very strong end-to-end encryption and is federated/decentralized. It can do encrypted and unencrypted chats for any number of users, so it can replace discord (which is not at all private or secure) and do private 1:1 communications (which I'd say is the best use case for it). It also does not require a phone number like signal does (which is usually tied to your legal identity and can be used for geolocation).

        I wouldn't trust any electron apps, which is the framework the official Matrix client, Element, is built on. It's fully open-source so there are other clients out there which may be better. Of course, the biggest weakness is probably going to be the OS/firmware of device you run it on.

        Edit: The desktop element clients rely on electron (which is a webapp framework built on google chrome, which is spyware). If you're on android, the app also renders in chrome (which is spyware), but that matters a bit less because android itself is a massive pile of spyware. iOS is also spyware that openly just copies all your files to a server in the US where they are "scanned for very bad things", retained indefinitely and may be accessed by your favourite state agencies without warrant.

      • ☭ Comrade Pup Ivy 🇨🇺@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        5 months ago

        Session is, fine, but the app can get really laggy at times of you are in it for a long period of time, pr especially if you scroll to an older message, this is my experience using it

      • Imnecomrade@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        5 months ago

        Isn't Signal very similar to Telegram but focused on "security" and less features? Revolt is more like Discord. Matrix feels more similar to XMPP, and I see it as a compromise between Telegram style and Discord style. Matrix works well as a one to one chat as well as a team collaboration chat, but audio and video chats are very laggy. Self-hosted Jitsi would serve as an alternative to video and audio chats.

    • porcupine@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      5 months ago

      I genuinely appreciate everyone suggesting alternatives, but I'd humbly suggest that, from a normie perspective, "better UX" doesn't involve learning how to host or locate a server. There's a reason Reddit is still more popular than Lemmy. In my personal experience, getting a local org with some members that already had trouble using email and SMS onto Signal was difficult. Trying to get them onto an alternative that involved selecting a specific server or learning the technical details of different internet communication protocols would have been a nonstarter. I've gotten multiple Boomers to reliably use Signal, and they have no idea what encryption is.