Comment by exceptione
14 hours ago
Thanks for clarification. Anything first party from Big Tech is a lost cause privacy wise. At the same time, nobody uses it (maybe that is different in the USA, don't know). So for me this would be ultra-low prio as I (and I expect almost every other GOS user) will never use it. But I believe GOS knows what it is doing.
Nearly everybody uses it in the USA. It's very common to text people through the default messaging app on your phone there (probably an outgrowth of the popularity of iPhones and iMessage), and backup options would be Instagram, Snapchat for a certain demographic, or Facebook messages. Whatsapp is only for messaging foreigners, and Signal/Telegram are for messaging your drug dealer.
Yep, I have never used anything other than the stock messaging app that came with the phone. Whether that's SMS, iMessage, or whatever has never crossed my mind
TIL. My deepest condolences. I thought that we, from this side of the pond, were upholding the honor of being the dumbest with our Whatsapp subjugation, but alas.
I was really disappointed when Signal went away from being used as an "everything" messenger, including regular SMS. I onboarded all my family and now because it's not a default messenger, nobody is using it.
Give them 2 channels, be clear about your terms of service and that your intent is to become exclusively available on Signal after one year:
- Signal. high priority channel, checked daily
- $PrivacyHazardApp. low prio, checked with steadily increasing intervals.
Make sure you communicate those intervals in advance, have them in the footer of every message you sent on $PrivacyHazardApp. Average Joe needs lots of patience and lots of education.
But that's the same situation as WhatsApp, and everyone uses WhatsApp.
I assume many people would use it due to SMS concerns and difficulty having people move to other platforms. I would personally use it as a fallback to Signal since my current fallback is SMS, which I dont like.
If the protocol is properly e2ee, it does not matter who backs it or hosts it. GrapheneOS would be in control of the client which is what matters in an e2ee system.
GrapheneOS would be in control of the client which is what matters in an e2ee system.
Not really... You will be communicating with other people who don't use GrapheneOS and if you are e.g. communicating with iPhone users who have iCloud backups enabled (most iPhone users) and did not opt in to ADP (against most iPhone users), the chats are only encrypted at-rest in the iCloud backups and are accessible by Apple and law enforcement.
Signal is way better because it opts out iCloud backups (and Android backups) in favor of truly end-to-end encrypted backups.
In the US everyone with an iphone uses RCS, so you'll often have family group conversations on it and so on. Whatsapp or signal are comparatively rare (although more common for anyone with overseas family naturally)
No, in the US, everyone with an iphone uses imessage. (Basically all my family's messaging goes over imessage) It's only when non-iphone users are on the chat that RCS comes into play.