Why you should delete WhatsApp and install Signal
52 comments
·July 9, 2025RainyDayTmrw
31337Logic
This comment makes no sense since you are a part of the "people" group you just described.
It's entirely possible to sway your group of friends from Whatsapp to Signal. I've done it myself. I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying your comment is logically self refuting.
cs702
Relevant background on Brian Acton's funding of Signal, after leaving Facebook:
"WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Gives The Inside Story On #DeleteFacebook And Why He Left $850 Million Behind" (https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive...)
alex1138
[flagged]
Kwpolska
> However, given that you can report messages to Meta for violating the terms of use, they clearly do have mechanisms to read messages.
That’s not a reasonable assumption IMO. The report API most likely takes the message your phone has decrypted (so that you can read it) and sends it over to Meta. This doesn’t break end-to-end encryption. Neither does me copying the message from a friend and posting it on Twitter.
tcfhgj
The point of e2ee is already lost anyways.
What does E2EE potentially give you? A promise, which does not involve trusting the service provider, that messages can only read by the recipient.
What does making the app closed source take from you? The freedom of requiring trusting the service provider = facebook
maqp
"What does making the app closed source take from you? The freedom of requiring trusting the service provider = facebook"
It does change the requirement of collection.
It's no longer "Well all this data is rolling in, what shall we do with it".
It's "Hey, if we commit THREE BILLION FELONIES of backdooring our every users' encryption, we can access all that data".
Surely you realize that's a leap.
Kwpolska
How do you prove that the Signal app you download from the Play Store is compiled from the source code on GitHub?
selfhoster11
If I care about binary integrity, I wouldn't involve an app store. https://signal.org/android/apk/ is a perfectly cromulent way to get your hands on the APK file directly from the source.
31337Logic
Compile it yourself and compare the hash.
maqp
pull the apk from your phone with apktool. Compile Signal reproducibly with their instructions. Use the diff.py tool they provide and check for the message that confirms the APKs match.
tcfhgj
idk, diff the binaries?
tcfhgj
Why the world isn't already using Signal is why Signal is the wrong tool to switch to.
The world will neither like the same messenger nor will it make the switch at the same time.
So you need to give people the choice to choose an app they like without needing to convince their social network to do the same (potentially x-times, because you are not their only contact).
This is why you should switch to a messaging standard such as Matrix, not a centralized messenger.
brikym
In Signal I miss 'send without sound' which Telegram has. Sometimes I want to send something unimportant and not disturb the recipient.
DigiEggz
I've tried Signal a few times and I always end up dropping it. It lacks many things from Telegram that I'd rather not live without. There's nothing I message to anyone that I wouldn't say in a public setting, so I don't see a need to forgo good features for privacy.
tcfhgj
would you be willing to share a backup of your msgs?
selfhoster11
What kind of statement is that? There's a lot of room between "I would say in public anything I message to my contacts" and "I am willing to dump all my messages and send them to an online rando to do whatever they please". Try engaging in good faith.
slaw
How much are you going to pay?
maqp
It's the responsibility of the recipient to mute their phone when it's unpleasant/awkward for them to have their phone make noises.
daft_pink
Really needs a chat history function across devices. I just find is unusable without it.
tenuousemphasis
For a while now it has synced your recent history when you link a new device.
alex1138
Whatsapp might have encryption but considering the very public fallout from the acquisition (not a mutually respectful handshake) it's both a prime target for antitrust and something people should reconsider using (as in, consider not using)
Eikon
I abandoned that idea as soon as they launched their weird crypto-coin stuff.
Also, can we backup our messages yet on iOS?
txr
Yeah, no backup on iOS is such a huge turnoff. What you live in the real world and lost or damaged your phone? All your messages and pictures you not exported one by one are gone, backups in 2025 no way, who has every been using such a thing? Maybe in 2035.
ValentineC
I'm another one of those that refuse to use Signal until they implement proper backups.
If people insist on me using Signal to communicate with them, these people probably have far-too-inflexible values concerning privacy for me to bother anyway.
conception
You can use imazing to do it and/or scripts if they are synced to macos.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t
Delete Signal and install Molly instead.
YarickR2
Tell that to my gardener I'm communicating with over WhatsApp regarding lawn. Or to general contractors ; we're discussing some remodeling there too. Or to a hair stylist, doing her business (managing appointments, collecting feedback etc) over the same WhatsApp for the last three years. Sometimes I wonder if privacy crowd is living in some kind of an impenetrable bubble, separating them from the real life and real people. Sometimes I'm very much convinced they are .
noman-land
Have you tried telling them that you prefer to use Signal for safety reasons or do you just silently go along with the crowd even though their ignorance puts you both at risk?
upofadown
>Crucially, it's run by a nonprofit organisation...
Sure, but for all we know it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA. See Crypto AG[1].
>...if we all start to do this, it will mean more people are on Signal, hopefully gradually making it more attractive to move across!
Signal is controlled by a single entity and is not federated. So it is only a matter of time before things fall apart. So it is not a good idea to promote it as some sort of messaging standard.
I mean, Signal is OK and is a fine replacement for Whatsapp, but all these rabid expressions of Signal fandom are starting to get annoying.
maqp
>Sure, but for all we know it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA. See Crypto AG[1].
This is such a sad propaganda tactic.
Signal's client is 100% open source. The Android client has reproducible builds. You can verify yourself the cryptographic primitives are used, and function correctly with test vectors.
E.g. Here's those for the key exchange X25519 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7748
Here's the test vectors for AES https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/Cryptographic-Algo...
>Signal is controlled by a single entity and is not federated. So it is only a matter of time before things fall apart.
It's backed by the Signal foundation, donations, and it doesn't suffer from bike shedding bigger federated systems struggle with. Take OpenPGP v5 fingerprints that are still, 15 years after SHA-1 was considered weak, not available in gpg, if at all. Federated systems and standards bodies with disengaged management are easy to subvert from the inside with tactics like these https://www.404media.co/declassified-cia-guide-to-sabotaging...
>So it is not a good idea to promote it as some sort of messaging standard.
The protocol isn't a standard, but its security properties are the gold standard. That's why it's being used in most networked TCB apps that take their security as serious as they can.
You're also not proposing a solution so I take it you're advocating for Matrix.
31337Logic
Thank you for being the voice of reason here.
Signal is the best messaging app in almost every meaningfully measurable way. (Source: me.) People's gripes seem mostly to be around "But my barber still uses WhatsApp"... Yeah, it's called the network effect. So do your part and go promote one of the best "free" apps we all have the privilege of using, before even this option is removed from us.
upofadown
>Take OpenPGP v5 fingerprints that are still, 15 years after SHA-1 was considered weak, not available in gpg, if at all.
Assuming you mean V5 PGP keys. There are 2 proposed key formats due to the standards fork which actually supports your argument. But since there is no actual weakness, it is safe to just stick with what people have been using since forever.
SHA-1 is only broken for collisions. Fingerprints do not require collision resistance. PGP used to use only 32 bits of the SHA-1 hash for the short form of the fingerprint. That became problematic because they could be straight up forged from an existing fingerprint so now 64 bits are used. Such fingerprints are trivially collideable simply because of the length. But, again, that is not an issue. You have to look at the security of the system when evaluating things like this, not just looking for particular primitives.
>You're also not proposing a solution so I take it you're advocating for Matrix.
Yeah, fans tend to assume that everyone is a fan of something... Just saying...
maqp
>Fingerprints do not require collision resistance.
That's what they're literally there for. To avoid situation where someone generates a key with matching fingerprint, and the person importing the key doesn't detect it's a forgery.
>Yeah, fans tend to assume that everyone is a fan of something... Just saying...
Yeah I'm a fan of adequate computational headroom where it doesn't cost anything.
jMyles
At risk of saying something utterly predictable (and thus, unnecessary) - and indeed, a sibling comment has already made such a prediction:
* It really seems like matrix is superior in every way to both of these.
It is much easier to backup, restore, and change devices (one of the chief complaints about both Signal and WhatsApp of course), has more cognizable (and yet less intrusive!) information displayed about the cryptological situation for any given chat, and is much more flexible. Also, it has clients which are just as stable (at least that's my experience with Element on both linux and android).
My only complaint about the current generation of Element clients is that there is, unless I'm missing something, no way to globally search across all saved chats. Which is really a blocker sometimes when using it for work.
But yeah, at the risk of sounding like I'm blinding emitting the cliche response of "why no my favorite app?!", I really think it's time to ask why we're always using and recommending signal rather than matrix.
tcfhgj
> hat I wouldn't say in a public setting, so I don't see a need to forgo good features for privacy.
People are already too deeply invested in convincing people to use Signal and they can't easily amend this choice because Signal is not a Matrix client -> sunk cost fallacy
Most people, by themselves, have very little say in what messaging apps the people that they need to talk to happen to use. They have people that they need to talk to, and they will use the same apps that those people use. Unless they want to be super hard liners about it, and are willing to stop messaging people who won't use their preferred apps. The people on the other side, who almost always care a lot less about the topic, tend to look poorly on this.