I can’t use them because I can’t convince anybody to switch with me. I talk to most people on discord and I’d rather move to using Matrix, but I can’t convince any of my friends or family or anyone I know to use anything else.
You have to negotiate.
They: Do you have whatsapp?
You: No i hate that app but we can use Rehnijobuboba, heard of that?
They: No and there’s no way I’m installing something I can’t even speak.
You: Ok, you dont want to install that and I don’t want whatsapp, lets meet halfway and use Signal together!
They: Fine.
Tell them the reason they keep getting creepy ads for stuff they’re talking about in the car is FB messenger.
That creeps enough people out.
“I could add you to our group chat. Do you have Signal?” Just that. No questions asked. No convincing to anything. Either “Yes” or “Let me just download”. Surprised honestly how many people either have it already or at least know it. Obviously might not work if you ever talk to the person 1-1, but starting a group chat only takes 2 people 😉
If they don’t want to use private communication then just leave it. If you want privacy you have to get used to having a less social life, at least online. That’s the key really, if you want a social life, you have to start going offline, out into the real world and meet people. Get to know your neighborhood a bit or join some outdoor activity or club or something. I know it’s weird at first about going outside because we’re all basement computer nerds but you will find freedom without all the online surveillance when you leave your home.
JK, because next challenge is to convince everyone you meet that they should leave their phones are home and if you thought getting people to use Signal is hard you have no idea because that’s just step 1.
Become unavailable on non-private messengers. Explain your reasons if asked, but stay stubborn. (And yes, it will turn out that a subset of people you know don’t give a shit about staying in contact with you.)
I bought everyone in my family a drink to get them to use Signal. Worked great and we’re still on it.
Don’t bother trying to sell people on privacy etc, for the most part. Show them Giphy integration, stickers, Stories, etc and show them that it’s fun. Signal has done great work there, in making it “noob-friendly”
I use XMPP whenever possible. Requires many fewer resources to run on just about any hardware & I can hand out accounts if needed.
I don’t care for the centralized or de facto centralized alternatives. I regret along with my uncle convincing family onto Signal several years ago.
I got my family to switch to Signal a while ago after a high profile data harvesting scandal with WhatsApp. Some were looking at telegram and I showed them how that had dogshit security by just finding another high profile case.
People like to be able to send documents, bank numbers, etc. with ease. Remind them that’s not really possible with SMS or WhatsApp or whatever. (Technically Signal still is centralized and is vulnerable to shenanigans, but the fact that it’s open source and truly E2EE mitigate that. And has the least friction of all the options.)
None of the alternatives are good enough yet. Either the UX is bad, or they are missing important features, or both in most cases. There is too much focus on privacy and encryption and not enough on being easy to use, and having the features people are used to.
Asking friends on Discord to switch to Matrix which is missing most of the features and bots they are used to is not going to work out. Same for Telegram to Signal or Matrix when they’re used to group chats, channels, stickers, bots to handle moderation of new users, polls, forwarding of messages, stories, and so on.
None of the Discord ‘alternatives’ that come up seem to support game streaming with low latency, some don’t even have voice rooms yet, they’re just a text chat with a meeting room feature tacked on.
Mumble is perfectly fine for low-latency VoIP for gaming—I think it was the first to even use the Opus codec everyone uses now. Mumble uses a ton less resources than an Electron app. You will want your main chat on another protocol, but this is hardly a barrier.
I have convinced two of my friends to join signal but we don’t talk that much
- https://lemmy.world/post/21620691
- https://lemmy.world/post/20950542
- Never say privacy, say (anti-)libre software.
- Never tell anyone anything, make them ask you.
- Make others really want to talk with you!
What does libre mean?
Libre software? Libre software means we control it.
Did you search it? Literally the first result:
Free software, libre software, … is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions.[3][4][5][6] Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program.[7][2] Computer programs are deemed “free” if they give end-users (not just the developer) ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.[5][8]
I only have a few privacy-focused friends on Signal and Matrix and I talk to them that way. I have a few friends who use my personal Nextcloud and just use Nextcloud Talk to chat with me. For all others, I still use the mainstream platforms and just take care to not post any info that I don’t want public and I make sure the apps have limited info and app permissions.
I think it is tough to convince others to switch until they themselves see the need, at which point they’ll start asking you for advice on what to do.
With new contacts, I’ll usually ask if they have Signal first and if they don’t then I don’t really push it. I think just getting the name out there every once in a while is the most you can do.
Don’t try convincing anyone. Make yourself visibly more available in one place over another.
I just told everybody that I only reply on Threema and don’t use anything else.
My thought process was - if they can’t be arsed to use another app (which is an extremely effortless task to do) then they are probably not worth staying in contact with.
The 3 people that were most important in my life at that point got the app immediately.
After over a decade with threema I now have over 40 contacts there, mostly friends, some colleagues, multiple hobby centric groups etc.
I guess just start and don’t compromise and be patient
Me too. My Fam is on Signal now.
I just told everybody that I only reply on Threema
if they can’t be arsed to use another app (which is an extremely effortless task to do) then they are probably not worth staying in contact with
So if someone said you have to use their messagee of choice - Signal, Whatsapp, Matrix, FB Messager, Discord - you’d have no problem meeting them there because it’s effortless, yeah?
You left out two important real world aspects from your thought experiment.
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one person cares about a specific aspect of the messenger - privacy - and the other doesn’t care, they are just on whatever their peers told them to be on. So if their messenger happens to have the aspect I care about I’ll do it. Since they don’t have any such criteria I expect them to do it as well.
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If that person is important enough for me and doesn’t budge I’ll call or E-Mail them. Which is less private than an e2ee messenger, but more private than data harvesting companies.
Exactly this. I use Signal for people close to me and SMS or Email for those who don’t use signal, who I don’t have coversations with often anyways. Dispite it’s many, many flaws, I will use SMS before I use a Meta messenger.
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