First, signal doesn’t come anywhere close in feature parity.
Second, the CEO (disingenuously) stated they dropped SMS support because of engineering costs - , I don’t trust them.
There are free SMS apps, because your app hasn’t handled SMS ever, you just use the SMS API. Android itself handles it all - as of about 2012, all apps were required to use a single SMS database.
I thought they removed SMS so as to not give the impression that SMS is at all private or secure
SMS? Outside the USA it’s used for almost nothing but 2FA codes at this point.
Or just don’t use either.
what’s the beef with signal?
It’s centralized but I consider it the baseline for privacy.
You are definitely right but it’s probably almost right at the sweet spot. Decentralization/federation is great for privacy, but think about what most non-technical people can handle. With federation alone, practically all non-tech people would even fail (or be confused by) the first step, namely to find an instance.
So are there more privacy friendly options than Signal? Definitely. But are those user friendly enough most people could use it? I can’t think of one, but would live to hear some alternatives that are simple enough my mom could use it.
Not everything has to be federated anyway, it’s not inherently better for privacy by default, because you are putting your trust in more people. Signal can be audited easier than 1000 people hosting their own servers.
Signal isn’t perfect, but it’s the best option we have that everyone can understand to use.
We get no privacy when the only server rug pulls.
Then we move on. There’s always a fork or alternative waiting.
Your Mom could use https://simplex.chat/ I bet.
I’m pretty sure she couldn’t. She would wonder why she couldn’t contact anyone from her contact list. Sending individual links to probably hundreds of people without knowing if they use Simplex is completely unfeasible. Signal and WhatsApp you just open the app, immediately see who else uses it and can start texting. No multiple profiles, no meeting to scan QR codes or sending links, which is especially ironic because she would probably send that via Signal or WhatsApp 🤣
