Free and Open Source Software

To be honest, while crypto is probably the closest we have to an actually private payment option (Monero etc), I'm generally not a fan of it for this usage because unlike the rest of the app, it has a much steeper learning curve AND is a common target for scams, which makes it much less approachable for the average user. I love Signal because my mom can use it and I can trust that she's protected, but I would not recommend she tries using the payment option within it regardless of what coin they use because the rigamaroll of going to some exchange to buy it is already a dicey proposition.

He was also unwilling to allow other apps to interact with Signal servers, even if they supported a platform that he wasn't going to support. Good riddance to him.

It's still the best messaging app

Not really, it's filled with random bugs. For example the call functionality is constantly breaking. You can watch the chat log, the other person calls you, waits untill the call times out, and then you get a message that you missed a call and nothing before that. Sometimes it doesn't even send that message, or the notification doesn't show up until you open the app.

I've never even heard of bugs that bad in other apps. Hell, even element works more consistently, and it's the current mascot of "it might become good in a few years".

It's because it's main feature is privacy. It's constantly being looked at by threat actors. All of the major nation states are constantly trying to compromise it. That's why features keep getting removed.

No specific indication, but as the organization matures and brings on new folks it's always a little uneasy to see the old guard leave. Only time will tell!

It is just closer to WhatsApp. What Matrix does, especially with regards to enabling true multi-device support, is quite complex overall and sometimes causes issues with keys for decrypting messages not arriving on all devices. Signal is more limited but it just works a lot better. Small but important extra: Signal supports fully encrypted voice and video chats.

Full disclosure: I personally also prefer Matrix because I use it with multiple devices. I don't want to install desktop apps for these services and Element runs in the browser while Signal does not.

Well for one thing matrix clients on mobile are...not the best. Element X is looking promising, but it's currently still in beta. Element misorders messages and crashes often, and most other clients are not as feature complete. Whereas in my experience Signal tends to just work. Plus for the average person it makes for a dead simple drop in replacement to WhatsApp or iMessage. Yes, the phone number requirement has led to issues with governments just blocking the sign up SMSes, but that is a tradeoff they make for convenience.

Matrix also leaks more metadata in comparison to Signal (this is just how decentralization works). Not to mention that the recent vulnerabilities seem to suggest (in my opinion at least) that matrix cryptography is not as battle tested as the Signal protocol.

Besides the observed implementation and specification errors, these vulnerabilities highlight a lack of a unified and formal approach to security guarantees in Matrix. Rather, the specification and its implementations seem to have grown “organically” with new sub-protocols adding new functionalities and thus inadvertently subverting the security guarantees of the core protocol. This suggests that, besides fixing the specific vulnerabilities reported here, the Matrix/Megolm specification will need to receive a formal security analysis to establish confidence in the design.

Real world example: The university I study at promoted matrix as a way for students to chat at the start of the semester, and pushed them to use Element. Practically no one uses it, but I've met a few people who do chat with Signal.

You can sign up for telegram with a throwaway phone number, and you can add people with only usernames without ever sharing or exchanging phone numbers.

That's really impressive. I live in the land of wall-to-wall WhatsApp

I run on a rented VPS but I guess you could do it in a home lab just for your family too or whatever.

Personally I think is better to redirect you to the Synapse docs, they are pretty well written and if you have any sysadmin experience it should be pretty easy to setup, they are even packaged by many Linux distributions:

https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/latest/setup/installation.html

I followed an old and possibly outdated video guide.

I don’t very limited Holman stuff, but I was able to buy my first domain, vps, and host this all for the first time in about a solid day of work.

I’m guessing if I had to redo it I could possibly do it a bit faster.

Sorry in advance I don’t have a link to the video, but it was done by the guy who is the main guy behind it or the main guy behind element.

I would also recommend the Matrix-Docker-Ansible-Deploy playbook for setting up a Matrix server. It supports Synapse (the "mainline" server implementation), Conduit, and Dendrite as the actual homeserver backend.

It does take a while to go through the sheer number of options they have available, but it makes it incredibly easy to spin up a Matrix server, as well as update one. I haven't setup any bridges with it, but its nice to know that it also supports a great deal of them, and can just be toggled on through the playbook settings.

The documentation is also fantastic, and there's a massive community in case you run into any trouble with it.

I was only able to get my Android friends to convert. Now they aren't using it either. Truly a shame.

Basically a privacy policy change that wove them tighter into facebooks's ecosystem and made it clear that Facebook would in no uncertain terms be collecting WhatsApp user data.

https://www.dw.com/en/whatsapp-controversy-highlights-growing-fears-about-data-privacy/a-56266093

https://signal.org/blog/keeping-spam-off-signal/