7d ago

Poster found on /r/BuyFromEU

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Signal is American
Opt for a Matrix or XMPP provider in Europe (magicbroccoli.de is a genuinely great XMPP provider)
- While Signal's home base is the US, they are a non profit org that doesn't operate in the same way as for-profit corporations. Also, Signal collects basically zero data so there's no incentive to sell out, and who would want to buy them anyway when they have no data and the server and client are open source.
  Matrix is great, but I wouldn't compare it to Signal. I use both for very different purposes.
  
  Chatgpt used to be a non profit. Now it’s almost half Microsoft owned. Sneaky! T&cs can change too (e.g. Firefox selling out google funds them a bit now apparently? ). Don’t give up just find European fully alternatives.
  
  Agree with the sentiment against signal. However, Matrix is terrible for anyone who doesn't want to bother with reading up on several hours of information just to use a text messenger. I will start recommending Matrix the moment someone actually manages to produce a feature complete client with usable UI/UX.
  
  +1 This is why I moved my family over to Signal, despite it being an American company.
  Another benefit is that it’s gaining some serious traction with a lot of people now moving to Signal. Makes it easier for family members to move as well.
  
  yeah been trying out matrix. Setup a server and tried various clients. They are all shit.
  
  XMPP is more comparable to Signal, yes.
  Signal does need (yes, need) a phone number, and most people only have one so that is identifiable info.
  This puts it at mostly the same level as some competitors, including WhatsApp which is often advised against.
  
  XMPP is more comparable to Signal, yes.
  XMPP allows unencrypted messages and leaks metadata - Signal does neither.
  Signal does need (yes, need) a phone number, and most people only have one so that is identifiable info.
  Signal is basically a privacy enhanced text/SMS/phone replacement. I can give my phone to someone in person and they can immediately start "texting" me on Signal - this is a feature (as well as a con to some people).
  This puts it at mostly the same level as some competitors, including WhatsApp which is often advised against.
  People advise against Whatsapp because while it uses Signal to encrypt message contents, they take no effort to minimize the collection of metadata - Signal's been compelled by court to present all data it has on its users various times and the only info they have is the day/time you signed up for their services and the last day (not time) one of your clients pinged their servers - Source: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
  I have yet to find any other free service that collects this little information and works just as well as a normal non-encrypted messenger. Even Signals sticker packs are end-to-end encrypted - Source: https://signal.org/blog/make-privacy-stick/
  
  What metadata does XMPP leak? AFAIK only when a message was sent, roughly (in large increments) how large the message was, the server of the sender knows from who to which server, the server of the recipient knows from which server to who.
  I find it strange that Signal somehow doesn't know when a message was sent, and from who to who; how would they ever make this possible?
  Also, you say you have yet to find any other free service that collects as little data... How about most e-mail providers? Not Google and Microsoft of course, but most e-mail providers only need a name which can be made up as well. You hm also host your own email server, then you are in control. All of this is true for XMPP and Matrix, as well.
  
  Signal will operate until Elon Musk decides that everyone has to use X to communicate.
- Also simplex is a good alternative, it's decentralized:)
  
  This? https://https/://simplex.chat/
  FWIW Matrix and XMPP are also decentralised, much like e-mail is, which is why I recommended it. I'm immediately skeptic about SimpleX's premise of having no user IDs; they'll likely need some unique field for each user, this might as well be a UUID or something like that... So what's the benefit?
  
  Since it's related, here's a good comparison:
  https://eylenburg.github.io/im_comparison.htm
  I think the other person here explained the thing about user ids. Matrix and xmpp are good too, they're just different.
  Simplex is more of a messenger, while xmpp/matrix are more of discord alternatives.
  Also simplex works with nodes. I can host a simplex server and it will be added to the network. In matrix/xmpp if I host a server it will be a new instance, like in lemmy (if I get it right). Simplex's approach is like tor's approach, each server added contributes to the whole network (they arent a separate instance).
  If you check their page they have some bery good features, to me it seems like its signal, done (somewhat) right. Signal doesnt even have a proper way to migrate accounts across devices.. not to mention the phone number requirement which might scare people who aren't gonna waste time hearing my explanation as to why it's not an issue or the fact that until recently signal would notify everyone in your contacts who had a signal account that you made an account, bruh
  There's also this comment here that throws some shade to matrix, havent looked much into that tho.
  
  Oh that is a great explanation, thanks a bunch!
  
  Each convo gets its own UUID, and the convos can be spread across different servers/companies too.
  That said the notifications don’t work consistently for me on iOS, so that’s a dealbreaker. Hopefully they fix that soon.

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