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Comment by tchalla | Hacker News Reader

> I am heavily against switching from WhatsApp to Signal,

I'm curious - what are your arguments against the switch?

I think the article sums it up fairly well. Signal to me does not solve the fundamental problems inherent to WhatsApp, additionally it suffers from some of the more serious ones I have with WhatsApp (tied to phone number) and brings some new ones (no web client).

And the places where Signal improves on WhatsApp relies entirely on trust which is what WhatsApp relied on until it broke trust.

I would prefer to use Matrix/XMPP instead of Signal and WhatsApp.

Signal has a desktop client, though? Not sure where that issue came from.

Recommend trying out https://www.airsend.io. It is not tied to phone and it has a web/desktop client.

I dunno about cheph, but I feel Signal and Whatsapp are identical. There is literally no difference between the products in any way. In fact Whatsapp has some extra features on it.

You are so wrong. Please read up on how far Signal goes to hide your metadata. WhatsApp diarrhoea-shits it's metadata to Facebook's hungry mouth. Signal goes to such lengths even gifs are implemented so carefully as to preserve user privacy and security.

Same for me. Yet another walled garden. A slightly prettier garden, but when I make a big app move I want to solve more problems than just the privacy one.

Asides what the other user said about metadata, Signal is drastically better at multi-device support. WhatsApp only lets you log in one non-phone device at a time, and this device syncs via your phone so it doesn’t work if your phone is offline, and it doesn’t have an iPadOS app. Signal has desktop and iPadOS apps, and they all function independently of your phone once set up.

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