this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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Signal gets some things right, but others wrong, such as phone numbers and centralized architecture. As such, it doesn't fit the "everybody wants to use" part.
WhatsApp uses phone numbers and a centralized architecture. Remind me how many people use it?
Seeing how the dumb community feels trapped now that Meta stopped supporting KaiOS, I can tell there are a lot of people that wish they could leave the service. A lot of spaces make you feel like you have to use it, not want to use it. I used a few months while I was in the UK, but after that I’ve been lucky enough to delete my account as the service was useless elsewhere where other places I lived, no one used it.
…That said, I now have issues with LINE as a defacto chat option locally that gets in the way. My account was crushed after they canceled LINE Lite which was 10× smaller with no bloat or trackers & I refused to “upgrade” (where like WhatsApp & Signal, one is forced to have a mobile device as a primary device). Largely I can inconvenience everyone by making them choose a different means of communication (with email be largely the only common denominator) but if I were dating again, I would inevitably be forced to use the unsafe app putting myself in the position a lot of WhatsApp users feel they are without effective choice.
"some people use" ≠ “everybody wants to use”
(And are you sincerely suggesting WhatsApp, which is run by one of the largest and most aggressive privacy invaders the world has ever known, as a privacy friendly application? I would suggest re-thinking that position if you want to be taken seriously.)
The guy I replied to is saying that not everyone wants to use Signal because it's centralized and based on phone numbers. But billions of people use WhatsApp despite being exactly that. Signal nails the privacy stuff but obviously people don't give a shit because they're using WhatsApp anyway.
Plus the arbitrary requirement of a mobile device as a primary, so it would be either inconvenient Signal-cli or something like Waydroid.