It’s called “network effects”.
For every 100 people I know who use WhatsApp, maybe 10 use Telegram, and maybe 1 uses Signal.
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Haven’t tried it yet but Synology has a messaging application for its NAS products. I have a NAS at home so I’ll check if I can set up a family conversation on this app instead of Whatsapp.
Ooh interesting, I have a synology Nas aswell. Please let me know how it’s working out for you.
For all interested in all sorts of alternatives.
This is in my opinion a super overview.
Might not cover all, but a lot.
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Nice list. I think.you should create a special post for it for better findig. I fear here in this post itvwill get lost
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There is a working group hammering out an open interoperability standard for IM called MLS Messaging Layer Security.
https://protocol.messaginglayersecurity.rocks/
As per their idea, any one msgr can communicate with a different msg client, just like it is with email at present, but with e2e by default.
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Personally I wish / hope that Matrix gets more attention.
- Free
- Open source
- Federated
- Several clients: Riot.im for many platforms(iOS, Android, /e/, Linux, …), alternative clients, Web access.
- e2e encryption
- chat, calls, video, file transfer
There was recently a security problem on the reference server for Matrix(and only there) and that was an server administration problem, not a matrix protocol problem and replied to and fixed (as far as I understand).
Other concerns about the architecture and Matrix setup were raised and addressed.
Ultimately this is how you want security sensitive open source solutions to work. Many people rightly scrutinize the security aspects, they find issues and raise them and then the community sorts them, one by one.
I think choice is a good thing but I also feel that it is a bit of a lost opportunity that /e/ does not champion one good messenger like Riot.im or Wire or … This would instantly move the /e/ community to that platform in a way as many /e/ user still use Telegram, partially because this was the initially preferred messenger.
It also provides users which do not/cannot review all the alternatives for usefulness with a good starting position and helps to avoids that undecided user fall back to WhatsApp because they have to install something them self anyway and then they choose WhatsApp.
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Something to try from NoGooLag
Using WhatsApp with an Open Source Client
-
Whatsapp to Telegram Bridge:
https://ibcomputing.com/whatsapp-telegram-bridge -
WhatsApp to Matrix Bridge:
https://www.matrix.org/blog/2019/02/26/bridging-matrix-with-whatsapp-running-on-a-vm -
WhatsApp CLI:
https://pypi.org/project/whatsapp-cli
@NoGoolag @Libreware
#whatsapp #telegram #bot #messaging #alternatives
EDIT: But when I understand them right, There bridges are only working on PC not on phone.
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And …? Have you tried it?
I have, it works but, ur messages still go to synology servers first. So I stopped using it
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I think the best alternative I agree with is telegram but from F-droid.
As F-droid builds everything from source, its better than signal from the Play Store as we don’t know which build is compiled over there and distributed.
More over the telegram version in the F-droid store is stripped of the proprietary bits that’s available in the Play Store.
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I’m curious abour Wire. Snowden has been mentioning both Wire and Signal. Checking the Wire website, my impression is that it is more for work. It’s also a paid-subscription service. Anyone tried it?
I tried wire about 1.5 years ago. Back then it looked more fancy and had few more features than signal . But all my friends use signal and only 2 or 3 persons I know use(d) wire. Federation like with xmpp always seemed more attractive but few friends using it. Just saw a second opinion about federation from Moxie Marlinspike (from signal) at 36C3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8
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Telegram is not properly (end-to-end) encrypted unless you specifically ask it to do so (which afaikt next to nobody does). So the Telegram provider has theoretically and practically access to all the data shared across the platform and it’s highly unclear what they do with it.
Quite frankly, apart from the open-source aspect, even Whatsapp is better on that front …
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I completely agree with you. I recently found about Briar, I think its the most secure alternative out there albeit for text only.
Ok, but you can’t really call something an alternative which only works on android like Briar.
Telegram claim that they split the decryption key between the various site, so no one can access to the cloud chats, neither them self. They have been expulsed from Russia for this reason (they didn’t gave the key to the government) and also in other countries telegram is banned.
So, personally, I’m quite confident of them.
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Hi!
Don’t you think Signal is a good alternative?
Best regards
Absolutely!!! In fact I use both, even if here in Italy Signal is not so common as other countries
yes go from one bad to another. Synology is also known to phone home and storage many of your data. If you want to be secure then use Signal or Tremor.