So here’s the thing, every time I try to move away from Facebook messenger I run into the same problem, nobody else in my friends or family actually want to use a secure, private messenger app like signal or telegram, my wife, my parents, my in-laws, my friends they’re ALL on Facebook and they will never take signal seriously enough to actually use it, it really bums me out that there are these far superior options but without anyone else using them they’re pointless…
Anyway what apps do you use to stay in touch with people?
Element/Schildichat/Matrix with Bridges to Signal, WhatsApp, Discord, Teams, Slack and a few more, all selfhosted.
You can, more or less easily, bridge Matrix to other messaging standards - e.g. Signal, WhatsApp, etc. either via selfhosted bridges or a external service like Beeper. The former is much more secure (as the bridge host will be able to read the messages in theory), but the later is much much easier to use.
Signal is actually decently popular in my circle of friends. Whatsapp for the few that still don’t get it and Threema with a small circle of others.
Almost all of my friends and family use signal. With a very technical friend I use element (matrix). For general communication with friends, sadly discord has proven to be most useful (even without Wayland support).
I keep WhatsApp for family mostly, Telegram for 90% of my communication and Signal for the very privacy-focused friends of mine and more sensitive personal messages. Personally prefer Telegram for the great functionality and usability. Since I’m in a tech bubble, we host a few Telegram bots ourselves and are having a blast on there. It wasn’t hard to convince tech-minded friends to switch. Back when I made the switch, I turned off WhatsApp notifications and just told people “if you need me ASAP, contact me on Telegram, otherwise you need to wait until I give enough of a fuck to check my WhatsApp”. Those who tried Telegram and don’t have too many contacts left on WhatsApp enjoy it because of the superior user experience. Signal is another story, I’d really like to like it, but it just looks and feels worse all-round, so I can’t see myself convincing anyone to make a switch that I’m not 100% convinced of.
