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Signal – an ethical replacement for WhatsApp
(greenstarsproject.org)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
230 points (97.5% liked)
Privacy
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Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
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PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !selfhosting@slrpnk.net / !selfhosted@lemmy.world
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !drm@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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It’s centralized but I consider it the baseline for privacy.
You are definitely right but it's probably almost right at the sweet spot. Decentralization/federation is great for privacy, but think about what most non-technical people can handle. With federation alone, practically all non-tech people would even fail (or be confused by) the first step, namely to find an instance.
So are there more privacy friendly options than Signal? Definitely. But are those user friendly enough most people could use it? I can't think of one, but would live to hear some alternatives that are simple enough my mom could use it.
Your Mom could use https://simplex.chat/ I bet.
I'm pretty sure she couldn't. She would wonder why she couldn't contact anyone from her contact list. Sending individual links to probably hundreds of people without knowing if they use Simplex is completely unfeasible. Signal and WhatsApp you just open the app, immediately see who else uses it and can start texting. No multiple profiles, no meeting to scan QR codes or sending links, which is especially ironic because she would probably send that via Signal or WhatsApp 🤣