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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My understanding is that Briar is ethically the best, but no one uses it. Signal is the best if you actually want to use it to communicate. Telegram is where the pirates and drugs are.
Here's the long version: when a dev is making a messaging app, they eventually have to make a choice: do I integrate SMS/MMS? If they want to make this app a daily driver messaging platform to help you ungoogle your android phone, they have to integrate SMS/MMS, which has security vulnerabilities and limits how secure they can make their app. More importantly, people do not tolerate ads on their messaging app, so they flat-out cannot monetize it without losing their entire userbase. If they don't integrate SMS/MMS, they are creating a closed ecosystem, and a closed ecosystem can be profitable. If leadership changes, the new leaders might decide to turn their users into either cutomers or products.
- Telegram is not a secure messaging app.
  
  Is that the one Amazon purchased?
  
  No, Telegram is a Russia controlled service not using encryption at all unless you specifically turn it on - and never for groups.
  Being Russia controlled they put out a lot of disinfo and so way too many people and news outlets still include it in the "secure messaging" category.
- My understanding is that Briar is ethically the best
  I'm out of the loop, what does this mean?
  
  Meaning they haven't had any big scandals and seem like a good company
  
  I thought Russia owned it
  
  Ethic pertains to the morality of ones action. Think of murder, as a generally agreed unmoral act, or sharing freely as a generally moral act.
  Think of it as the market growing or falling, but in a context where this does not really benefit you personally.
  I know it sounds really convoluted but believe or not, that's what humanity used to run on.
  (Also Briar can make a completely decentralyzed network relying on connecting phoner directly and boucing the messadge around, It's almost a must have if you are, like, trying to organyze when the government shut down the internet and stuff.)
  
  I think that the person you're responding to is asking for the specifics of why Briar is ethically superior. Do the other options have ethical issues? Or does Briar have a specific characteristic that makes it ethically superior (e.g. its p2p nature)?
  I'd also like to know. It's never occurred to me to look at the technical nature of secure messaging systems through the lens ethics so I find the idea intriguing.
  
  I know it was a great attempt at humour on my part.
  From an ethical standoint any earnst attempt at upholding privacy is equally valid. Past the technical necessity, you should probably look at those tools from any ulterior motives standpoint, or path toward a potential future monetization.
  On this front, Telegram is clearly shit, Signal is centralized and nothing prevent it from turning "evil" and starting to charge money.
  Ideally you'd need complete open sourceness to start getting your feet into ethics, possibly also some political statement beyond some bland "free speech" stance.
  
  Ahh, gotcha. Apologies, I haven't had enough caffeine yet, so it went completely over my head.
  That makes sense to me. I also prefer Briar on that basis, although I currently don't use it at all. I've had a hard enough time getting folks to switch to Signal, so I don't want to try to push them to move once again. If Signal starts enshittifying then I'll probably start the Sisyphean push to switch again.
  edit: ugh it's Sisyphean not Sisyphusian
  
  I'm 100% pushing nothing but Signal. It's the easiest one that brings with it a genuine mental switch. I like to assume that after such a transition it will be easier to look at anything else down the line, say if Meta buys it or some other dystopian shit.
- Briar seems like meshtastic but with no additional hardware at the expense of significantly less range when offline.

61 comments