Signal – An Ethical Replacement for WhatsApp

> and lost a couple og long-distance friends in the process

This is sad, but also a reminder that nothing that matters should be tied to proprietary walled gardens. All of those are ephemeral.

Anyone I care to stay in contact with, I communicate via email. An open standard owned by nobody, so it cannot go away. My email has been the same for 30 years and will be the same forever. If you knew me in the mid 90s or later, you know how to reach me.

I tried to stop using WhatsApp, but failed. I even promote Signal to my WhatsApp contacts (if they were to switch, Signal would be the most likely option). I succeeded with most of the people I talk to the most. Unfortunately, the majority of my contacts are still only on WhatsApp (and even less appropriate messengers like Telegram and Instagram). WhatsApp remains the lesser evil. I hope that one day I'll be able to stop using the last major tech service I rely on (at least those that don't allow anonymous access via a web browser), but today is not that day :(

I have mixed feelings about DeltaChat.

It's cool that it uses email, but it's also not. Email is a notoriously painful standard to run a server for. I have ran a Matrix and Mastodon server, and I'm still running a BlueSky PDS, but I've never even tried to run an email server, since I know I'll get blocked the moment I try it for having a residential IP, and that it's a lot of work.

So most people will be stuck with commercial providers, with the largest happening to be Google, which needs users to set up an app password for DeltaChat to work. You've already lost most users at that point. Other large providers don't work or require setups: https://providers.delta.chat/

Then there's ChatMail relays, which are supposedly interoperable with email, but from the documentation it's very unclear to what extent that is. Not to mention that the possibility of them getting blacklisted by mainstream providers is very high, as they do text message analysis which doesn't work on encrypted blobs.

At this point, I have to ask: is email the right tool for the job? With all these drawbacks, it seems it would have been better to go with another standard, written from scratch.

That's actually kinda sad you lost friends. I feel like that should be a priority?

I think this is by n0_computer, the same people behind iroh.computer . If you care about, or just want to learn about, peer-to-peer and a Rust library for p2p that just works then check it out! They have great explanatory videos on YouTube as well. I'm a big fan!

I believe Delta Chat is opportunistic PGP over email, so it's not comparable to something like Matrix or Signal. I suppose it might suffice if you have very basic privacy needs.

PS: I anyone wants to give DeltaChat a spin, follow the link on my HN profile and scan the QR with the DeltaChat app.

Signal doesn't let me synchronize my data between my phone and tablet.

I would strongly disagree (respectfully). I'm in the UK.

I've been using Signal for years, precisely because of WhatsApp and Meta and what they really stand for. Kids (adult) and family are all on it because of me.

Initially, I was the only person who used it, but I refused to used WhatsApp and got four of my friends (who were the only real group chat users I was interested in talking to) to use Signal. We all regularly use it, even though they are all on WhatsApp. They know my ethical objections to WA and Meta. Every Friday there will be a group call - even though we're all on iPhones now (I was on Android for many years).

One in particular takes the mickey out of me for it sometimes because he says "What difference are you making? One Person? Makes no odds."

But it -does- make a difference. A tiny one, maybe, but it's something that has been worth making the effort for. I think it's important to tread the right line between expressing why you're doing it and not making yourself unpopular but I think it's an important thing to try to do.

And now if anyone asks if I have WA I just say I don't use it, you can either text me or use Signal. I have probably 20 contacts on there, and anyone who I have meaningful connections with uses Signal. Once installed it's basically zero friction for them, they just find me there instead of WA.

I know network effects are massive, and it won't shift any time soon, but I think it's important to draw an ethical line in the sand, and it's something I decided to do a long time ago. One guy gave me a WA ultimatum and I just said "OK, but that's not for me, I'm not using it", and that was that for about a month. Then he installed Signal.

Any business that communicates via it I express my preference and if they insist that's how they message (had this with an insurance company!) then I say I won't use their business any longer.

I made that same experience. You can get individual people to install it, sure, you may even get a group to do this if you start it, but good luck convincing the other parents of your kid‘s sports team group, which btw you must be part of.

Unfortunately, we living beings tend to go with what costs the least amount of energy - this being thinking and going through extra efforts to achieve a goal. Hence, we‘re stuck with WhatsApp by a law of nature.

Yup. These apps are not used in isolation and I find it funny that the tech people argue which is better and why.

The one everyone uses is better.

If you dont have a way to move masses, it does not matter.

This article from Green Stars, whoever they are, is making the argument that you should switch away from Whatsapp because Zuck leaned hard into US conservative politics, and because of Cambridge Analytica and other ways that Meta has played fast and loose with its tracking of you.

I feel like that's all just wayyyyy too esoteric to the average person. I mean if those things (company founder has bad politics and too much invasive tracking) were a hard pass I would pretty much have to throw away my phone. We might care a lot about tracking here on HN but the average person really doesn't.

On the other hand, the big thing in the news right now is that Whatsapp will soon roll out ads. People don't really care that Zuck stole their data and kissed Trump's ass. But they do hate ads. I think the more ads Whatsapp shows, the bigger the opening will be for someone else to come along and convince people to switch.

Agreed. It's a weird open secret that your phone number is your UUID across all the tech giants. That Signal follows the flock here instead of an email/pass signup is never gonna win me over.

Signal is famous for their privacy as well as encryption. Moreover, the comparison is against WhatsApp, which requires you share all your contacts with facebook, and likely cooperates with governments to gain backdoor access.

Signal started out as an Alternative Android SMS app that opportunistically upgraded text messages to use encryption when both parties had Signal. It exclusively used sms for transport, so phone numbers were baked deeply into it in a way similar to Twitter's 140 character limit.

It's true that having to disclose your phone number to the service and especially to other users is now a significant drawback compared to internet-first services like WhatsApp that use entirely separate identifiers. Many people have raised this objection, and to their credit they've at last rearchitected to allow exchanging messages using user names and without your phone number being disclosed to the other party.

They still have the phone number at the core of account registration, I suspect for similar reasons to the use of a (one-time sign up) captcha: because they raise the cost to create spam accounts. I'd understand if that's not acceptable to you, but I don't think "unacceptably poor" is a reasonable assessment of their handling of user privacy.

Another example of their approach to privacy: they went to great lengths to design their Giphy search to avoid revealing your search terms to them or your IP address to Giphy: https://signal.org/blog/giphy-experiment/

>but acceptable.

There is no acceptable reason for an online service to demand your phone number IMO. There are a lot of other issues with signal though.

This is incredibly nitpicky compared to the low standard that Whatsapp is held to

> I checked Signal's Privacy Policy and there are no details data sharing

Okay, so they are not sharing data and your whole premise was wrong. That happens. But now how do you change your mind?

“Unacceptably poorly” describes what Facebook & Google do with your data, which is to (essentially) sell your personal information to advertisers.

Google captcha sends your data to Google? Come on. Not even remotely in the same ballpark.

Plausible they're anonymously proxying the captcha to google?

I've had a broken Signal account for like a year. I migrated from an older phone and the process didn't work because apparently the version of Signal I had on the old phone was "too old" or something? (why didn't the new destination phone's copy of Signal tell me this?) ... I've been waiting, hoping they fix the issue where I can re-register my phone without having to delete the app and lose all my message history with photos from family etc. For a while, I could receive messages but not send them (yes, seriously). Recently a "re-register device" button appeared, but when I try to go through that process, I get the SMS with the verification code, I enter it, and the app crashes. Now I can't even access the message history because the app forces me to resume the "re-register" flow, but it doesn't work. I'm holding out hope that yet another app update will eventually fix THAT crash and I may indeed one day be able to use Signal again. Not that I want to, I'm not impressed with my experiences with it. :\

I’ve been using Signal on half a dozen devices for years and haven’t experienced what you describe.

>Does anyone else find Signal quite hard to use?

In what way? I've found device sync to work fine now (better than messages on macOS/iPhone), and not lost sync with any of the other devices I'm using. Not had to sign in needlessly for over a year.

Unfortunately, while you're right, it has plenty of annoyances, there's no real alternative.

I’ve been using Signal as my main chat app on iOS and desktop for a long time. Yes, this happens to me every other month too. It’s annoying, but I can live with it.

people will give zuck control over their entire life over having to sign in here and there … wild

It’s always give me that Linux desktop feeling, where all the features are there, but it’s held together with spit and baling wire

I have, it's atrocious. Then missing parts of history.

Also fuck them for requiring a phone number.

Signal has many faults as a Whatsapp replacement and the export issue ranks also high for me. Other issues:

- Can't move from iOS to Android (and vice versa) without losing your chat history because backups aren't compatible.

- Can't send media with their creation timestamps. All photos shared with family/friends via Signal can't be used to build a photo album without manually sorting pictures.

- Can't automatically save pictures to Picture Roll, Google Drive, Dropbox for integration with your other pictures.

- Only one desktop/computer can be linked to Signal desktop.

- Many useful chat widgets such as polls or real-time location are missing.

- No transcription of audio messages (WhatsApp only has a few languages) and lot of issues with audio messages such as iOS users not being able to play audio messages created on Android but not with Signal.

I don't think they should strive to reach feature parity with Telegram or asian messengers, but why can't they try to at least match WhatsApp in core functionality?

I get the privacy focus, but most of us are not dissidents in foreign countries or journalists who could be killed over their picture metadata. Give us a mode for normal users.

I regret moving my family over to Signal because before I used to have all their pictures as part of my photo stream. Since switching I need to manually save pictures but they don't have the correct timestamps then.

You're looking for "chat backups". It's there.

IMHO the constant complaints about losing chats or needing conversation backups aren’t technical problems—they’re social ones. We need to reclaim the freedom to speak with others ephemerally. No one should want all their conversations recorded, yet we’re heading toward the opposite with smart glasses.

Ideally, we’d agree universally: chats saved for one month (the context we can actually remember from a conversation), emails for five years (for administrative control), and conversations never recorded. However, we’ve been manipulated into needing exactly the opposite. Worse yet, we think it’s possible to maintain privacy while transcribing and archiving everything in our minds, making it public.

It depends on your threat model. Since WhatsApp also requires a phone, Signal is the superior option and therefor a solution to using WhatsApp.

You will need a phone number, but you can make it work without a phone.

signal-cli lets you register from a computer. If you have a modem in your computer, you can use this to receive the confirmation SMS. A friend also managed to register a landline (I think the phone received a code through a voice message).

Then use Session:

https://getsession.org/

Signal has a desktop app. Unless you mean phone number, in which case I get where you’re coming from, though I think they allow just usernames now.

I have just learn about delta chat. Uses mail. Seems good.

*Riot -> Element

SimpleX is cool, but it has VC investors, so a lot of people won't trust it long-term (for exactly the same reasons we're talking about replacing WhatsApp now).

Some things that keep me away from SimpleX:

- No multi-device support.

- No group calls.

- Establishing a contact requires sharing a large link or QR code, which is often inconvenient.

- Message queues drop messages if not retrieved within a relatively short period. Last time I checked, it was 21 days, which is shorter than some of my off-grid vacations.

- I couldn't find clear information on who runs the message queues, so I have to assume most are controlled by a single organization. This makes it effectively a centralized service with respect to privacy and resilience.

- Funded almost entirely by venture capital, making its longevity questionable, and the likelihood of future exploitation relatively high. I'm not comfortable depending on such a service to keep in touch with people.

I've used SimpleX for seeral years. I do like the concept, and I have supported the project, but in my opinion it suffers from two weaknesses/lacks:

1. It cannot synchronize chats across several devices, so you need a separat “account” for each device. This can, to some extend, be mitigated by creating a group for each contact you communicate with, and then add all their and your accounts to that group.

2. Message propagation is somewhat unreliable: If you use the method described in (1), some accounts may not receive a given message.

But yes, you needn't disclose your phone number in order to create an account/profile on SimpleX.

When I last looked at this it had severe battery drain issues on Android, to where users with only one contact and just a handful of messages were experiencing it. Appears that pinned issue is still open and unresolved.

Otherwise it seemed like the most promising alternative I've seen that satisfied various requirements.

That's a great utopian ideal (and one that I subscribe to), but there is no way that is happening outside really nerdy circles such as we probably inhabit.

It is of course possible to create signal clients that are forks of Signal.

I don't see how this is an -ethical- issue though providing the ethics of Signal align with that of the user (they do with mine), and if they're doing something unethical then you should not be using them anyway (hence me not using WA)

Completely agreed. I want to be able to talk to people from any modern reasonably-secure operating system. Specifically, I found that there was no possible way to use Signal on OpenBSD natively. The only [poor] workaround was to create a Linux VM and use the Signal app for Linux in there. Frankly, if a communication protocol isn't usable on BSD it's not acceptable to me.

>I think we can only hope for regulation to keep it safe and force interoperability with other chat apps.

Never going to happen unless legally forced to. Which is not happening any time soon in the USA.

>WhatsApp's call quality is second to none. Never had a problem with Signal - in fact I've had situations where it's been a better option than anything else available to me.