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The downside of that attitude is that if a chat program is only used for what governments consider subversive activities then it will be targeted to be shutdown. It is much better to have a general-purpose, secure chat program that IS mainstream making it more difficult for oppressive regimes to target.

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Or we can use a number of different programs for different purposes like I do:

- exchanging passwords? encrypted mail, Signal or something else E2E-encrypted

- work: whatever work says. Mostly slack.

- discussions with friends and family: Telegram

- online shouting competitions: twitter

- showing off: Instagram

- telling Facebook who my friends are and how often I talk to them: WhatsApp ;-)

But this is just annoying. People don't want to juggle more chat apps unless they provide clear value, and for many Signal just isn't very compelling.

- exchanging passwords? Matrix

- work: Matrix

- discussions with friends and family: Matrix

- online shouting competitions: twitter

- showing off: Instagram

Does Matrix support keeping a local log/backup of chat history, like others are discussing in this thread?

Oh worse, just nobody except the around-Hacker-News crowd plus reporters would ever use it.

I don't get why I or anybody should switch to Signal. It's not a good app.

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