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Comment by eindiran | Hacker News Reader

I have noticed that since the protests began there has been a huge influx of my contacts onto Signal and I've gotten a few questions about how to use PGP. I'm glad folks are starting to take privacy in their messengers more seriously, but a lot of the privacy-focused messengers are pretty bad (with Bridgefy being a particularly egregious case). Unfortunately there seems to be a trade off continuum between user friendliness and privacy in all currently available offerings and for most people I think Signal hits the sweet spot. I'd be interested to hear what other tools people would recommend here, as I haven't used all of them (eg Telegram/Matrix).

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My money is on p2p matrix. It doesn't solve the immediate case Bridgefy does yet (I think it expects to have an internet connection), but it does solve the 'we have to trust central services like signal and or have incredibly difficult ux' scenario somewhat. Metadata resistant to a point etc.

Cwtch.im (pronounced couch) is an app I'm looking closely at but doesn't seem to have much movement in terms of shipping new releases or getting it going in apks or Fdroid. But I keep any eye there too.

> Cwtch.im (pronounced couch)

You can forget about this one. With a name like that, it isn't going anywhere.

It might be popular in Britain. Cwtch is the one Welsh word that non-Welsh people know. A bit like craic.

I can't wait to see more progress with p2p matrix. I hope there will be one flavor that will allow privacy/anonymity.

I mean I see the advantages of p2p for a more resilient network. Which is great when the internet is shut down but I also hope there will be some way to protect the people's identities.

Signal's disappearing messages will appear on your other devices such as the desktop app long after disappearing on the phone, and you still get group message asking if you'd like to join back the group you just left. Imagine these messages popping up right at the moment during police interrogation.

We're working on a PGP app called Safe Easy Privacy on iOS. Our idea is that if PGP was easier to use more would use it for private communications, we're still in the early stages and we know that PGP isn't the perfect solution, but it's better than nothing. We've noticed people saying they're using Safe to share keys with people who aren't tech savvy.

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