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Comment by dmos62 | Hacker News Reader

This might not be obvious to some, like it wasn't to me, but Instagram chat history is used for profiling. I noticed when I chatted with someone about something on Instagram, and instantly reels with the subject of our discussion started appearing in my feed.

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Failing to connect those dots is (unfortunately) what keeps many, many people from moving their otherwise private conversations to a more private channel. I think you're right that it bears mentioning.

What's a sufficiently private/secure messaging platform? Signal comes to mind, but I'm open to alternatives.

GPG-encrypted email.

Hard to convince others that are less knowledgeable and/or involved to use this over a typical mode of communication like Signal.

GPG doesn't support forward secrecy, which is table stakes for encrypted messaging these days. And that's to say nothing about the slightly suboptimal usabilty...

True, but you're not trusting any corporation to do what they say they are doing, or not changing it out from under you. I guess you're trusting the Gnu people though.

A few people gave some input on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47945392

Signal and Threema seem to be known for good UX and viability as everyday messengers.

There was this table: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html

Definitely Signal. It strikes the fairest balance between industry-standard end-to-end encryption ('E2EE') and usability.

Get as many of your contacts onto Signal as you can. Disable the displaying of message text within device notifications from within the Signal app settings (for both Android and iOS).

Many people are absolutely convinced that their phones are listening to their in-person conversations already, yet seem ok with continuing to use them.

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