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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.
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There's another element to choice of communications apps, and that's the democratic vote that it represents as to whether you endorse a company and its ethics or not.
Facebook raises it's value from the number of users and interactions, reduce that and you reduce their value to advertisers and shareholding investors.
Full privacy is almost impossible - but portability and freedom of choice should be encouraged, and even one movement away from a tech giant is a small win against their mindshare domination aspirations the seem to presume in trying to become an essential utility for most.
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Thanks; this caused me to think of Mike Masnik's paper emphasizing endorsement of protocols instead of platforms, might perhaps be relevant / interesting.
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech
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@humptydumpty said in Best privacy chat apps:
@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...
I'm sure your right, and I'm fully for OpenSource and choose OpenSource by Default, simply, sometimes, some irrational thought are hard to destroy
@ianhyzy said in Best privacy chat apps:
@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).
So Imagine in a country run by a King who decided nobody could say anything bad about him, his family and his government
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@humptydumpty said in Best privacy chat apps:
other nations also use Linux like China and Turkey...
French Police also use Linux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement#Legislation_and_government -
Just randomly found this via GitHub: https://berty.tech
a privacy-first distributed messaging app. -
"Berty is still under active development and should not be used to exchange important data.
The current Berty Messenger implementation is not using the Berty Protocol yet, but OrbitDB directly. Which means the encryption is not safe, but the good news is that the current Berty Messenger app is already a P2P one!"
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Just stumbled across this, maybe interesting, well reviewed too:
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
yall should also check out Session (getsession.org) it's pretty sweet - a fork of Signal protocol with the backend using the Loki/Oxen network and in the table above, requires zero of the 19 permissions that Signal requires. I personally REALLY enjoy it.
The downsides are obvious here in the usability department. In order to get to chatting with someone, you HAVE to exchange keys. Signal makes that easier cause they generate QR codes but also integrate with your contacts.
One thing to note, however, as a plus to Signal, is they use confidential computing on Azure to hide all the contacts processing, which is a really great use of that particular tech.
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@doodlemania2 I did give Session a try, kinda felt primitive and like persuading anyone to switch from Signal would be at the expense of losing features for marginal additional privacy.
get that the metadata with Signal isn't private, and that's annoying, but the main thing for me is avoiding using Facebook/Google products.
I'm sure Session will continue to evolve, so hopefully they don't lose momentum and have the capability to reach feature parity with the current most popular apps.
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn yeah, a lot of alternatives to signal look neat but fail at being cross platform or easy for normal people to use
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I've had to ditch Signal. It has been a nightmare to use. Notifications on Android and iOS are both spotty. My mom had missed calls several times because it just never rung for her (I verified this). Also for video calls it occasionally decides speakerphone is not needed, and won't work.
0/10 somehow Element + Matrix is more usable.
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The frequent disconnections from Telegram and Signal are problematic.
It's like someone is deliberately disconnecting all sessions they can't intercept. Making it a lot less reliable.
Sometimes video calls are better, and you can always stop video sharing, keeping the voice channel open.
Same with GVoice calls, frequent drops, despite good networking on both sides.
One of the better things for longer lasting voice comms is Team Speak. But the lack of availability of free clients on mobile puts that in the 'only at home' category.
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I'v been testing https://cwtch.im/ it's quite interesting, since you can host the server home
and join other chats/servers or one-to-one over tor -
@rmdes Nice! Looks like the list here has been updated since I last posted it:
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Session
https://getsession.org
Session will soon support video over Lokinet.Berty
https://berty.tech/
Berty is based on IPFS (Inter Planetary File System), and near release. Keep an eye on it.Cwtch
https://cwtch.im/ -
@LoudLemur Thanks. Session I like, worth a follow: twitter.com/session_app Anyone can DM me for an ID to connect if you want to test anything.
Video calls will be the game-changer for that, at least if they can have a comparable quality to FaceTime/Zoom, which are currently the best-of-(non-open-source)-breed in my experience.
Berty & Cwtch I need to try, both also sounds very cool.
The original point of this post being "Off-topic", was for non self-hosted, or not being dependent on self-hosting. The kinda thing you could give your folks to use and they'd have a low friction experience, and it would work well enough for them to also like and recommend to friends once they were also onboard. (something I still even struggle to convince people that really ought to trust me on, because lazyness & what's the point inertia is a very real thing targeted by the spyware that has become ubiquitous with "social media" and "big tech".
