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Comment by reacharavindh | Hacker News Reader

So, this happened and we have confirmed about the dark patterns whether consented or not. What are good alternatives in this "Network effect" age? Facebook - I hardly use anymore. It exists undeleted because it serves as a kind of Social ID. I don't have the App installed anywhere, neither do I access it from my regular browser.

The thing I'm struggling to get alternative for is WhatsApp. How could I talk to all my contacts in a cross platform way without annoying them about installing yet another app?

Text/SMS - costs money because of shitty carriers.

IMessages - Works great but only on iPhones. :-(

Signal - good on paper - still have to trust Moxie not selling out, and needs people to install to be any useful.

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I don’t believe Signal will be sold. Moxie (thanks to Brian Acton) just launched the Signal Foundation [1]

[1] https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/

Matrix (Riot is the app you would install) is federated, free software, isn't tied to your phone number, and has optional OTR-like encryption (it's based on Signal's encryption but has much more solid group chat encryption). Also messages don't go through a single server (only the home-servers that are involved in the communication), so the OTR-defeating problem that Signal has (that you can defeat the repudiation of the crypto by watching the server logs) is not nearly as much of an issue. It also has VOIP and video calls, that are also encrypted.

I use XMPP since a few years in the way it was supposed to be used:

- federated

- multiple devices with different client software

- own server

It certainly isn't perfect, as there are a lot of 'classic' clients which lack the modern extensions (e.g. OMEMO [1], Carbons, MAM).

Clients ranked by personal preference:

- Conversations: very good, Android only, Downside: no calls (neither audio nor video)

- Gajim: 'classic' client, requires a few additional modules (slightly better than Pidgin when is comes to pictures)

- Pidgin: 'classic' client, requires a few additional modules

- Dino: very good Desktop client on paper (XEP wise), sadly it is lacking a few important desktop integration features like a tray icon, but as those should be easy to implement that client has a lot of potential.

- ChatSecure: iOS, Downsides: I never really got it to work properly. Without server side Push Notification extension it only received messages when the app was open. With the extension it worked for a few minutes, but still not what I would consider usable.

- Jitsi: certainly could be a good client, but at the moment it has no OMEMO support and therefore I stopped testing it.

While I am not a particular Matrix fan, I can recommend their Matrix vs. XMPP comparison:

https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-the-differen...

It basically boils down to: In 2012 XMPP was lacking some basic functionality required for mobile use-cases, so they went to build something technologically very different (Matrix). In the meantime, XMPP has developed its own extensions to support those use-cases and now we have two technologically very different solutions, set to solve similar use-cases.

[1]: https://omemo.top

EDIT: removed the indention from the list

Thanks for the detailed information. Please don't use indentation to set of text, though. It makes it really hard to read due to side-scrolling, particularly on mobile.

Also: Facebook works on every platform, while at Signal they have a strange cellphone fetish.

I would love to use Signal, but I have to use Telegram. The Telegram desktop app is awesome, and it doesn't need a cellphone.

WhatsApp didn't work on every platform. Not really. The web interface is just a remote control for your phone.

good point.

Unlike telegram, signal supports e2e encryption on Linux, Mac, windows, Android and ios.

Signal has a desktop app nowadays and Telegram still requires a phone number to use.

While Signal's QR code pairing method is more awkward than Telegram's SMS one, it also prevents your account from getting hacked remotely in Iran by stealing your SMS messages: https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/49976/intelligence/tele...

But with Signal you still need a smartphone (i.e: very bad for privacy); while with telegram you don't. Also, with Telegram you can protect the account with a password, so you can use a burner phone, literally once, and then forget about it.

With Telegram you have no privacy - no one uses the e2ee (secret chats). Perhaps because the desktop client doesn't support the feature, and even if it did, secret chats wouldn't sync across devices.

it's not like the chats are in clear text, because they are not. They aren't encrypted e2e, but they are still encrypted.

Wire works on every platform (you don't need a cellphone to sign up, only e-mail), and they released their server code a while ago as well, and documentations on how to set it up is work in progress, which means that in the future (actually even now, but most people don't know how to set it up :P) you won't even have to rely on their servers, you can easily self-host one.

https://wire.com/en/download/

https://github.com/wireapp/wire-desktop

https://github.com/wireapp/wire-server

https://wire.com/en/security/

+ Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram and Vider cannot be used w/o phone number (or, in some cases, even without a working phone), which makes them all not trustworthy.

I can only vote for Matrix/Riot once again.

one thing that might make it easier to sell the idea of using signal is that you can also use it to send regular sms messages as well as private ones. that means you only have to switch between two apps, which is what you would be doing anyway

I highly recommend Telegram. The issue with having to install yet another app is still present, but me and my close friends have made the switch and haven't looked back since.

Telegram, while good software, is the worst of the messengers, because they're based in Russia.

The Russian government recently asked for the encryption keys and they have like one more week to comply.

CORRECTION: They're currently in Dubai and are relocating as needed.

Telegram founder often claims he has no links with Russia, apart from being born there. https://www.calvertjournal.com/news/show/9478/telegram-found...

As far as I know the team is in Dubai right now.

Telegram ftw

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