Encrypted messaging recommendations.

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I got my mother on XMPP - if you set the person's account up, Conversations is as easy to use as Whatsapp or Signal, but doesn't have the central server dependence.

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The barrier to entry was intended to refer to others since it’s already installed on over half their phones to start with and most people are gonna be using a messaging program on their phone.

When there’s above a 50% chance the person you’re talking to is already using a particular encrypted messaging program that’s the lowest barrier to entry.

The barrier to entry always refers to other people because the hardest part of establishing private communications has always been convincing other people to actually do it.

If you really wanted to get on imessage for the least amount of cash out of pocket possible, the bluebubble bridge application random letters person mentioned is ~$100 for an old mac, and tbh that’s a high estimate in my experience. People are just giving those things away nowadays.

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Simplex for anonymity, You can download it, share chat and start talking without registration.

It ate my battery when I installed it. Do you use it on a daily basis? What's your experience with its battery consumption?

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But most people would be excluded because they don't have an iPhone or even funds to buy one! And would have no real way to participate! Maybe some older secondhand models would go below $300, I don't know, but it would be weird to expect a person to buy a second phone (and an older, more worn-down one at that) just to converse with you. Even $100 is also a pretty high price just to bypass an arbitrary restriction.

There is a reason the most popular messengers are cross-platform. So the aim must be that.

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Signal is the easiest with true end to end encryption with keys stored on the endpoints only.

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Sadly, I have no one to use with it, so I don't know about battery usage. I just like, that it doesn't require any external identifiers, unlike Signal.

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If you’re in america almost sixty percent of phones are ios.

If you’re choosing an encrypted chat and sixty percent of people are already using it then that’s the one you choose. The hardest thing is compliance and you’re almost two thirds of the way there if you just pay a hundred bucks (or scrounge up an old mac) and run the bridge app. Then you use signal for everything else.

I think we’re looking at this from fundamentally different perspectives. I’m not worried about a universal solution because I know I’m not getting to 100% compliance with any solution so I suggested the one that immediately fixes the majority of the problem. Having had to convince people to exchange pgp keys twenty five years ago, I’d pay a hundred bucks to not have to deal with that for two thirds of the people I know.

Think about it this way: if you were starting from scratch would you rather have to convince all your contacts to move their chats with you to signal or matrix or whatever or would you rather have to convince four out of ten to do that?

Obviously you’d pick the easier thing because no matter how committed you may be to not using proprietary software or big corporate apps or fragmented ecosystems you actually have to accomplish the goal of chatting with people using encryption and all the process compliance and wheedling and convincing and tech support for family members is time you could be spending talking about gardening, sharing baby pictures, plotting to overthrow the government or whatever you would normally be doing.

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Sixty percent still leaves about a half excluded and left without a cheap and conveniwnt way to participate. You think it is fair in any way?

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As I said, use signal for everything else.

If immediately getting sixty percent of your chats encrypted isn’t worth a hundred bucks to you I don’t know what to say. We’re looking at this from fundamentally different perspectives. I’m trying to meet a goal to solve a problem and you’re trying to find the fair solution.

It’s good to try to find the fair solution.

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Ah, you mean $100 just for you and then everyone in your family would be able to use it? Still a very steep price but at least you're not forcing anyone epse to pay it. I just thought about messaging not just between family members and you, but between other family members as well.

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signal or SimpleX.

I'm starting to move away from Matrix, primarily because its metadata is not encrypted. So you might have a message that's encrypted, but the emoji reaction like a thumbs up is not encrypted, and the time it was sent and received is not encrypted, and who it was sent from and to is not encrypted.

Not to mention that in Matrix, private key management for encryption in rooms and stuff like that is quite frankly a pain in the ass. Even I as a cryptocurrency user have trouble making sure that my keys are properly stored without fucking them up.

I would not recommend my friends or family members use it for these reasons.

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I'm in one room with 1,500 people and it uses about 7% of my battery. Mind you, that is a lot for a messenger. But I can deal with that.

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I just moved to Signal and have convinced most of my family and many friends to join. It is very secure, non-profit and doesn't share much personal data (the least of the main messaging services) and most of my luddite family has been able to figure it out.

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Deltachat 100%

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Appreciate the reply, but I don't mind some proprietary code. There are very few reviews of open code by respected bodies (I'm writing in generality here). I'm certainly not qualified to review code. Just being open is only the beginning of the journey.

As we've seen with some open software recently there are some active hackers successfully targeting open software because it is open. Such exploits are not always discovered in good time.

https://thenewstack.io/why-so-much-open-source-software-is-vulnerable-to-hackers/

https://thehackernews.com/2025/01/github-desktop-vulnerability-risks.html

Etc etc.

I place store by the warrant responses and action of government entities against some software.

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Never heard of Langis before

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Thanks. You're not wrong, and I appreciate the well-written response. Some might say you are defending/advocating proprietary software with this stance, but I don't think there is a clear answer either way that applies to every circumstance.

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Matrix, xmpp, simplex. Do not use Signal or any service with centralized servers hosted in a 5 eyes country.

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It seems like I’m not being clear. The goal is to get 100% on to encrypted chat.

Right now in America, about sixty percent of the phones are running ios. ios has imessage by default. The application which those people use to do imessage is called messages (very unconfusing!) and also does texts. When you’re using imessage in messages the text bubbles are blue, rcs and sms are green. Imessage is an encrypted chat.

If a person running android wants to use imessage they need to bridge it to their phone from a mac (messages and imessage are available on mac) using the bluebubbles application.

So three out of five of the people you know are already using encrypted chat. If you, the op, can get on their level then you only have to convince the other two to use some other chat thing that they can do. Maybe signal or something.

So the cost of running a mac computer as a bridge so you can use imessage through the bluebubbles android app is for you, the op, to get on the encrypted chat application those three out of five people are already on. You’d still need to use xmpp or something for everyone else but now you only need to worry about two out of five people.

I’m pretty poor and a hundred bucks isn’t a terrible price to pay for being sixty percent there. If I could have done that with pgp back in the day (when a hundred bucks was worth something!) I would have jumped at the chance.

Just avoiding having to explain to people that email was transmitted in plaintext and what that meant and not either have to talk them down from taking a pickaxe to their computer or convince them that it doesn’t matter that they have nothing to hide would have been worth it back then.

It’s also a completely hypothetical cost that assumes you don’t just stumble into an old mac and won’t trade your phone in for one running ios to save that cash.

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Yeah, I get your point. I just was pointing out that iPhone users would want to install some messenger for Android family members anyway - so that they don't get charged per each little message (although I've heard that unlimited SMS is common in the US), and have normal-quality media. Or you mean that they'd be still reluctant to install one more app, while the one they already use is bad, like Whatsapp? If we're trusting proprietary software anyway - why trust iMessage over Whatsapp?

Also I doubt a Huawei that cost $100 new would be traded for any iPhone anywhere, lol

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Encrypted messaging recommendations.