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@marcusquinn said in Best privacy chat apps:
I think any app requiring a central server will remain niche.
Did you mean apps not requiring a central server? Looking at the current abysmal state of the internet, apps requiring central servers dominate.
Signal took a long time to persuade people to switch with very low signup friction.
User experience is as fundamental to security as shoes are on gravel.
If the experience doesn’t factor in user onboard IG time and friction, the it becomes a security issue in discouraging critical mass adoption to be more useful than the ad-tech alternatives.
I think this is a good ol' agree to disagree situation. I'm of the opinion that if someone needs to be coerced into caring about security they may as well stick with selling their soul to Sundar Pichai and Zucc. As far as I'm concerned the best privacy chat app is the one that best protects privacy. Simple as that.
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@atrilahiji The family reeeeeeallly resisted the push to Signal for months, these are people that care, and I care about, but the "why should I?" brainwashing runs deeper than personal and relationships nowadays.
That's the power of user experience and trust in exchanging effort for that.
For business and professionals, sure, we have some influence, but for personal, I'm afraid the user statistics speak for themselves.
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@atrilahiji Moral hypothetical; mental health is an issue, I think we can agree on that?
How do we reconcile having capabilities to improve user experience and adoption, against having people we care about unnecessarily unhealthy in mind because they "sold their soul", or more likely it was bought and sold for them?
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@marcusquinn I mean yeah, for a number of people the security aspect is something of a non-issue. What moves them is the UX. But I'd argue that most, if not all, open-source chat apps that allow for self hosting simply cannot compete with Signal because people move to the shiny thing. You and I know that there are better options if privacy is the concern, but for the majority of people privacy truly is not a concern. If it was, we wouldn't even be having this discussion and everyone would use Matrix.
But where I'm coming from here is solving the core issue of the best privacy chat app, which I still argue is Matrix. I would not say it is the best chat app. But again its a matter of what one prioritizes.
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@atrilahiji Well, you also don't really need to compete with Signal if you can use it as a trojan horse using e.g. https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/python/signal/index.html. Of course, this comes with its own set of challenges: making a good experience with many moving parts is not easy - and bridges are inevitably another moving part, often of questionable quality since they aren't a primary focus.
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@atrilahiji Yeah, it's a compromise step I feel. Secure enough to be better than ad-tech's conflicts of interest, but still aware that the metadata for who's chatting with whom and when still has some potential value that one wouldn't want to share if given an assured choice.
Matrix I love the ideals and successes of. Element seems the best of the bunch. So for this audience, certainly the best we have.
For my entire social circle, well I can't see it happening but would be happy to see otherwise.
I guess the original point of the post was non-Cloudron specific, and potential for mass-market.
I guess we have to wait and see what Elon Musk shills next
if Signal's MOB payments sour the new kid capturing mindshare. -
The Very Best Encrypted Messaging Apps:-
- Signal
- Wickr Me
- Dust
- Telegram
- Apple iMessage
- Facebook Messenger
App to avoid: Google Hangouts. Despite being available for free on both iOS and Android, Google Hangouts is riddled with privacy and security concerns. Though it does encrypt hangout conversations, it doesn’t use end-to-end encryption — instead, messages are encrypted “in transit”.
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@atupuxi said in Best privacy chat apps:
The Very Best Encrypted Messaging Apps:-
- Signal
- Wickr Me
- Dust
- Telegram
- Apple iMessage
- Facebook Messenger
Wickr was just acquired by Amazon (!) of all companies: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/25/22550361/amazon-wickr-aws-secure-messaging-encryption
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@necrevistonnezr IMO I'd remove anything that is owned by big tech OR is closed source from that list. How can we ever ensure a closed source application is secure?
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@atridad said in Best privacy chat apps:
@necrevistonnezr IMO I'd remove anything that is owned by big tech OR is closed source from that list. How can we ever ensure a closed source application is secure?
Or in other words, just refer to the great infographic I posted earlier.
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@jdaviescoates This is perfect.
IMO with the Spaces beta Matrix (using Element as the client) is very good in terms of usability. I use it with family and friends now and its been effortless.
Now we just need Dendrite packaged for a server... unfortunately I know next to nothing about packaging federated apps so I'm hoping someone else will try before I hack something awful together.
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@atridad The example package is there with Matrix server no?
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@atridad right, other than the language difference, the 'federation' packaging should be the same, yes?
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@atridad said in Best privacy chat apps:
@necrevistonnezr IMO I'd remove anything that is owned by big tech OR is closed source from that list. How can we ever ensure a closed source application is secure?
Personally, I don't like Signal, for it is just another WhatsApp were you could be tracked by GPS/Beacon and meta-data. I saw too much anti-government group using Signal and being intercepted simply by correlating the high level of exchange in Signal (metadata) and movement tracking (GPS).
For the fact, saying Close Source is not secure by default, it is simply a point of view. Few companies with whom I work do business with the military and don't want to use anything Open Source because for them Open Source sound full of flaws and weaken their defence.
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@jodumont I read somewhere that the biggest user group of linux is the US military. I'll try to find a source for you. Open source is seen as a positive, not a negative. The military from other nations also use Linux like China and Turkey...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/the-navys-newest-warship-is-powered-by-linux/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-air-forces-secure-linux-distribution/
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@jodumont SIgnal is by far the most secure digital messaging app usable by normal people at this point and this isn't a controversial point among security folks. No matter app what you use, law enforcement can subpoena your phone's cell tower connection records, among other things(at least in the US).
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Yeah... I'd never be inclined to believe that a chat application is secure unless they are willing to reveal all of the source code. I still use some, like discord for instance simply because I have friends I cannot get off of there. Element with their new Spaces feature has made it usable enough for me to recommend to anyone. Maybe I just don't see the issues because I am used to janky UIs? But I think it is very slick and easy to use at this point. But regardless, I don't want to confuse the conversation about what is easy to use with what someone is used to.
