3d ago

Is there an authoritative BEST secure messaging app for my phone? Is it Signal? It's hard to keep up?

It seems like I constantly see "X secure messaging option is actually bullshit because it was purchased by Dr. Evil and Y is actually just e-mailing your messages directly to Xi Jinping."

Is there an authoritatively "best" one I can just...download and setup easily? Is Signal good? Or do I need to solder a Raspberry Pi to the flux modulator of my home Linux NAS GUI, etc...?

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Only downsides of Signal are 1. It’s centralized 2. You have to sign up with a phone number.
It’s secure, cross platform, and easy to set up and use.
Probably most importantly, it’s a similar experience to using other popular texting apps and the set-up experience is familiar to anyone singing into any big-brand-name app, making it a relatively easy sell to non-techies.
- To add to this:
  It's also owned and operator by a non-profit in the United States (unlike Telegram and Whatsapp which are operated from the UAE and a for-profit company respectively).
  
  WhatsApp is owned by Meta (FaceBook), which is notorious for stooping to the level of borderline malware to steal data.
  
  Look at openAI trying to switch to a forprofit. It's hard to imagine signal surviving for longer especially that it is hemorrhaging a shit load of money and donations aren't enough to keep it afloat
  
  Signal is actually trying very diligently to pioneer a novel financial model for a sustaining long term. Here’s a lemmy post from a few month ago about a Wired interview with Signal Foundation’s president covering it in some depth (and a current archive link to the article). They seem to be one of the few actually good entities left in a world of surveillance capitalism and pervasive domestic government espionage.
  Whether they succeed or not in the long term is certainly still unclear, but I expect they have many years of financial runway remaining.

60 comments