Hacker News Reader

Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

It's been slow, but I've noticed a slow trickle of users towards Signal, at least in Europe. I was happily surprised when the owners of a house we viewed defaulted to reaching us via Signal instead of whatsapp.

View on HN

Most people I know are on Signal here (Germany), that includes older relatives.

Alas, for group conversations or bad connection situations (e.g. at a festival), everyone uses WA. Not sure why groups are always WA, but Signal (and actually any other messenger) sucks for bad connections.

In my experience, Telegram excels at speed and bad connection situations.

and at unsecure communication. Their chats aren't e2ee by default, making it worse than Whatsapp. Also, videocalls in telegram are much worse compared to said messenger

I could have sworn WA isn't true e2e. As in it's encrypted over the wire, but the Meta servers decrypt the data during relay.

No, WhatsApp is truly e2e encrypted and uses the same Ratchet algorithm in Signal, IIRC. That's why tptacek and moxie were generally positive about it.

I think there's something about key rotation and a default setting where it doesn't notify you if the keys change, or something like that, at one point.

It's most likely e2e up until the moment LEO requests information on a particular user and then Meta updates your app to a trojaned version, that just APPEARS E2E.

It also heavily encourages you to “back up” your messages to them in an unencrypted manner. It will bug you literally every time you enter the app if you opt out of this “feature”.

Can’t confirm, it’s disabled for me, and it has never again asked me to. It also offers the option of encrypting my backups.

I guess that could be, I only know one person using it, though, a US American who also uses WA. Everyone else is Signal/WhatsApp, and maybe Threema.

For what it's worth I have a few Signal group chats going. We had our video call to talk to the owners (we're moving to the Netherlands from Ireland) over Signal and it worked well, but that was on a strong wifi connection

Didn't mean they don't exist, just that everyone creating groups in my circles uses Whatsapp, even if they otherwise use signal.

Everyone I communicate with uses Signal now. In Europe using Signal costs the same amount as using WhatsApp, if not less because of the missing bloatware (backups etc).

In a lot of the world, WhatsApp is free (I assume some kind of payment from Meta to the telecom). There's no way Signal will compete with something that is bundled with every phone contract for whatever reason.

In Australia both Signal and WhatsApp are free, aside from using the data service rather than the "telephone" service, and we pay for a monthly or annual data quota with our phone plan.

Do you have separate charges for Signal and/or WhatsApp?

Yeah I guess I confused a lot of people: the charges are for the data, not the app. They are tiny, but if you use the app heavily and rely on it, you don't want to be disconnected when your data runs out.

You pay for signal? Which bit of Europe are you being ripped off in?

I read this as a phone contract having a bundled: unlimited whatsapp, Spotify, Facebook bundles where data usage is not counted towards your total data allowance in the contract. For example in my country in the middle of Europe you have bundles with unlimited traditional communication and 20 50 80GB of mobile data.

When you WhatsApp all day sending videos, gifs, messages, voice messages, pictures, documents..I can consume up to 12GB per month, this costing me an amount of my 20GB data plan. While a other provider I can choose has a 20GB data plan with a unlimited WhatsApp bundle. Sadly they don’t offer eSIM and 5G so it’s a no go for me.

Not sure where in Europe you're from but in the Netherlands WhatsApp and the likes are just considered Internet usage, no special costs.

Wait… in Europe it costs money per app somehow on a phone? Or for data?

In the US I get similar benefits with YouTube and T-Mobile. The soft data cap doesn’t count YouTube at 480p in the data usage calculation.

Without net neutrality many providers favour the incumbents.

Is it still impossible to use Signal without phone ? That's the biggest stopper for me

Yes. You are identified using the phone number.

This has been a big downside for years, I'm surprised it hasn't been fixed yet. Your account has to be tired to a phone number (though you can use voip) and only their mobile apps act as a primary that can register the account.

The social-media business is neither trustworthy for me as a consumer nor more fulfilling than a real conversation with a real human somewhere. I don't want a relationship with social media.

But I'm not going to be delusional about it, if literally hundreds of millions of people are depending on social-media business for their social happiness, I can see that it works for them.

I want a secure, trustworthy, minimally-viable telecommunications channel for some contacts. I support Signal, it has characteristics that I trust, including being open source.[1]

I also have shown other people how to enable Google's RCS messaging.[2] It's better than SMS.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

[2] https://support.google.com/messages/answer/13508703

(UK) I got rid of signal when they dropped SMS support.

Using an alternative sms app that sometimes upgrades messages to signal was nearly zero friction.

Keeping an alternative messaging app for one contact is borderline-charity.

I'd do it to help with network effects if I wanted to support the company, but the attempt at crypto integration already cost them my good will.

The crypto integration put me off as well. Not because I'm opposed to crypto currencies in principle, but integrating them into a privacy focused chat app is plain idiotic.

Crypto disposals are taxable in the UK and I believe in most other countries as well. So tax authorities have a legitimate reason to look into what's going on there. There is no right to privacy when it comes to buying and selling securities.

As European, I don't know anyone that uses Signal.

Meta Messenger, Skype, Whatsapp, Viber and Telegram? Tons of them.

In Eastern Europe Signal is very popular.

As someone else in Eastern Europe, 99% of people I know communicate over Messenger, Instagram (if more hip), or Viber (if 40+). I believe that the messaging app situation varies a lot from one city to another or even one "group" to another.

Interesting, my contacts are mostly in Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, and mostly IT savvy (as users, not programmers), so the latter could well be a factor.

For me it's been telegram. Even my in laws are on it. Cutting old social media never impacted my life much though.

Telegram is getting almost as common as whatsapp for my social circle, including friends, co-workers and family. Most people I interact with are on either platform.

I moved my parents to telegram and I can't complain.

same for me, but thinking of moving them to signal due to privacy concerns and ads

Thought something similar, but for my personal network of friends and contacts. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised to learn, that yet another person I know has or is willing to get Signal.

We need to build and keep asking people whether they have Signal or would please get it.

I don’t see much adoption of Signal, but Telegram is inching forward in the UK and UAE, in my circles at least.

My whole extended family is on Line. It does it all really, and no ads or intrusion. It has only one single drawback - one device only (or one, plus a Windows PC, which is not an option for me).

That seems to be contained in the German-speaking side of Europe. But even Germany is 50-50 Whatsapp.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com