Last I heard Signal wasn't interested in federating with WhatsApp so that initiative basically died before it was born.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
35 points (90.7% liked)
Technology
67921 readers
26 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It would go against their principles and the mission of the non-profit that runs Signal. They don't store any message data on their servers (unlike WhatsApp), and WhatsApp mines as much data as they can from its users.
How much and to what extent, I can't say, but allowing Signal to federate would essentially let Meta start mining and storing Signal user data. Fuck that noise.
I wasn't aware that it was only about Signal. Thought messengers in general must be able to communicate with each other.
Federating would mean handing off chat metadata to Meta and other for-profit companies in the future.
I don't see how anyone excited to use Signal would like that. It very much defeats the purpose of using Signal.
Signal declined, despite the EU bending over backwards and handing them the chance on a silver platter to become relevant.
IMO it's a mistake, like getting rid of SMS support was (which is far less secure than WhatsApp yet Reddit/Lemmy seem to be angry about that but glad about lack of WhatsApp interoperability?? I guess it's because Americans don't really use WhatsApp so it's not a big deal to them, whereas SMS is).
It would have been an amazing opportunity to help those that want to use Signal actually use it.
Yes, I'm aware Meta scrapes what metadata they can from messages, but if you make this clear in Signal when you talk to a WhatsApp user then I don't see the issue, after all it's what they did for SMS chats yet everybody loved that feature!
People trying Signal because it's compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that's a good thing.
The Signal foundation seems to care more about being ideologically pure for its 10 users than they do about making a small compromise that leads to far more users and far more Signal-to-Signal chats. It seriously disappointed me, and I stopped my £10 monthly donation hearing that bad news. I was so invested in Signal because I thought it was a great app, but there's no point of financially supporting the growth of an organisation that vehemently rejects growth, I was throwing my money away.
I went from having 10 contacts on Signal down to just one after the SMS purge. I want to use this app but it's pointless. Nobody wants to use an app that nobody uses, and Signal doesn't seem to want any users either.
Frankly, I don't buy their excuse. If they were truly that ideologically pure about absolute privacy, they'd never have added SMS support in the first place! And they wouldn't have tied accounts to phone numbers either!
I think the reason they ditched SMS was down to development costs. Maintaining that functionality, as well as building RCS support, is far more expensive than simply cutting the feature out and trying to salvage some "it's about privacy!" PR. I think the same is true for WhatsApp integration.
People trying Signal because it's compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that's a good thing.
75% of my signal contacts would delete signal and just use whatsapp if interOp happened... I've already slowly lost 1 or 2 contacts a year because i'm the only one they know on signal and they either gave up or forgot to reinstall when they got a new phone
People trying Signal because it's compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats
would it, though? why would anyone move away from Whatsapp if they could talk to Signal users without switching apps?
would it, though
Yes? 100% it would?
A fair amount of people don't want to use WhatsApp, but they have no real choice because it's practically a requirement for living in modern society.
If you make it so they can still chat to people on WhatsApp, they can go to Signal without worrying about that.
why would anyone move away from Whatsapp if they could talk to Signal users without switching apps?
Why would anybody play games on Linux via proton if they could just stay on Windows? Because they don't like Windows.
Like I said above, plenty of people don't like Meta, they use WhatsApp because there's no real choice. Offer them a choice, and more will take the plunge.
And why would anybody move to Signal if they can't talk to anybody?
The massive drop in users after getting rid of SMS support shows that people are willing to use Signal if they can still talk to people, but aren't willing to use it when they can't.
why would anybody move to Signal if they can’t talk to anybody?
why would anybody move to Signal if it's no different in terms of privacy anymore? That'd be the consequence of interoperability.
Yeah I also found that decision to be really disappointing. Before you could just use Signal for all your messaging and it would smartly use its own protocol if you both had accounts. Now it's relegated to dedicated Signal users, which yeah I've got like 4 contacts left.
I doubt it would lead to more signal-to-signal chats. With interoperability, they would be handing off their data to Meta, at which point users will just keep using WhatsApp as most are today.
If getting away from Meta and other for-profit companies is no more, what will be the selling point of Signal?
Signal declined,
Signal's management is similar thing that Google did to mozilla.
They are there to keep freedom enjoyers occupied and feeling like we are sticking to daddy and owner class but in reality is a psyop. As long as edge lord are busy jerking them selves off, it is working.
Current signal management is there to ensure that signal never goes mainstream.
Obviously still use them as that's they the best current offering once balanced for ease of recruitment.
We need something better though and I am always on look out.
Matrix and SimpleX are on my radar but let's what market decides.
it requires Whatsapp to open up interoperability with other services if they request that. Signal has already mentioned in the past that they wouldn't be interested.
Just delete it now. Tell your friends that you're moving because of all the tech oligarchs that just got handed the keys to the government and the economy. Tell your friends that Signal is run by a 501(c)3 nonprofit and actually cares about privacy.
I left Meta products in 2010, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. You deserve not to "be the product" anymore.
Unfortunately this doesn't actually work. Even if people do try Signal, they see they only have one or two contacts, and they go back to WhatsApp.
And you should call them whiny, scared little babies for doing so. But I digress.
Other people have succeeded in getting friend/family groups to switch to better E2EE options, so I believe that most people who say it can't be done haven't actually tried.
So they either keep Signal around and be able to talk to you, or they don't. They don't need to stop using WA to use Signal.
If they don't want to do that, it'd mean that you would have to keep WA around for the one or two contacts you have there (and only there), which is somewhat comparable, actually, if you disregard the "but meta is short for metastasis, actually" bit.
Which one of the two it ends up being is between you and your contacts.
If I understand this document correctly, it would mean that the entire connection somehow gets routed through Meta's servers. I can fully understand the reluctance of other parties, including Signal, to do that, and I wonder how this is actually compliant with the DMA.
I have no idea, but I'm also interested. Thus said, remember that's only inside EU. I remember that Meta said they won't apply this outside EU.
I don’t know. I’m having a much better time getting friends to move to telegram than signal.
I prefer signal, but they all seem to prefer telegram as an alternative.
Telegram is actually worse for privacy and security than Whatsapp.
Really?
I mean I understand whatsapp has E2E encryption but they sell all your metadata and account data and stuff dont they. Does telegram do worse?
Telegram is well known bad https://soatok.blog/2024/05/14/its-time-for-furries-to-stop-using-telegram/
telegram doesn't even do e2ee by default
Telegram can read all your actual conversations (since almost no one uses encryption on it).
It's run using a complex web of shell companies in various countries like the British Virgin Islands, Dubai and a lot of others.
They say they don't sell your data, but it is a for-profit organisation and no one can really know what they do.