I really want simplexchat to evolve and get more features. If they ever make a lot of mod tools and the possibility to make giant servers with thousands with chatrooms like discord I could see it having mass appeal due to the ease of "signup"

yeah it definitely has some promise

You answered yourself.

The problem is that you just have to trust them because only people who actually operate the server know what they do or do not store. Trust me bro, is not a viable security model. As a rule, you have to assume that any info an app collects, such as your phone number, can now be used in adversarial fashion against you.

Damn near everyone was making a coin at some point. Again, why would they remove or get rid of a feature they spent time, money, and energy to develop when it doesn't hurt anything by being there. In fact, they'd have to spend more time, money, and energy to remove it than if they just left it in place.

Yes, it's not good. We're talking about if it is worse than telegram though. Not if it's simply good or not.

I thought I was pretty fucking clear on that in my original comment?

Supported by US nasty agencies.. They do NOT care about any-ones 'privacy' and would only support if they have another purpose or a way in..

Nothing federated is private, mind. Even with E2EE on in private rooms for specific messages, Matrix still relies on a constant information feed during use that can be used to deduce who is messaging whom and when, even if the content of the message itself is encrypted.

Look for other comments in this thread that back up this well-known fact.

Exactly. Meta is fine with What'sApp having E2EE, because they can still spy at the endpoints

Ahh yes. The anti-vaxxers "do your own research" defense.

Tbf, there's options that are just as secure and don't require a phone # to register, but that doesn't make Signal bad

Try harder if you're trying to troll or offend, your attempt is pathetic.
It's not "do your own research", it's "use the fucking scroll wheel".
\0

Yeah, you can make payments with MobileCoin. 🤮

Luckily, Signal does give you the option to completely ignore it. I only see it mentioned in the settings and I have not enabled it.

Same with stories, you can enable/disable them. Although, if I want to convince my normies friends to look at Signal using stories probably helps that. 🤷

And that is the problem with anything you don't write yourself. And for anything you do write yourself: Are you smarter than the three-letter agencies?

If I had a personal sauna, I'd invite everyone. But I'm not from puritan central (USA) so that might be a foreign concept to some readers.

Signal does not require a phone number to register anymore, afaik.

It's a sauna on a boat. She's out in the middle of nowhere with some dude she barely knows. You know, she looks around and what does she see? Nothin' but open ocean.

No one told OP to make that claim. The onus is on them to back it up.

it's the D.E.N.N.I.S. system working

Because of the implication...

Remember when they arrested the creator of Telegram and forced him to hand over chat logs? Yeah, nothing to see here 🙈

They say the trick to public speaking is to picture the audience naked, but I actually prefer to do my interviews in a sauna so the audience pictures me naked.

inb4 matrix fanatics say you are wrong and spreading false info

What, are you talking about? "Information feed"? Where? By whom?

No need for that when self hosted open source projects exist

it does at least on android, you don't need to share it tho, there are usernames now

Signal still requires a phone number. What was added is usernames for contacts, so you no longer need to give other people your phone number for them to contact you. It is a step in the right direction, but it would be great for them to get rid of the phone number requirement all together.

it's useless, signal fanatics is unbearable

Somehow all these years I thought that Marlinspike is either Swedish or Finnish, so the sauna would be on brand.

Ah thank you for the clarification!

I think WhatsApps biggest risk is the metadata. They know every group you are in and who else is in that group. They know when messages are sent and to who. They know where you are at all times, and probably have access to your libraries as well if you didn't specifically restrict that. It's a huge trove of data, which one would assume is freely shared with governments on request.

There’s no such social graph to speak of. Signal does not know who is speaking to whom.

The only people who know this are people operating the server. Period.

Three-letter agencies have served them legal subpoenas many many times and they never turn over anything more than the above information.

See the link I provided above.

Filter for…what, exactly? The hundreds of millions of people who value private and secure communications?

Yup, that's precisely what it's a filter for.

We do, because they publish them publicly.

Trust me bro is not a viable model for anybody who actually gives a shit about their privacy.

The reality of the situation is that Signal asks users for information it has no business collecting during the sign up process, and this information can be used in adversarial ways against the users. People using Signal are making a faith based judgment to trust the operators of this server.

You don't have to trust anybody when you run your own server, or you use a server that doesn't collect information it has no business collecting.

Opinion:
I think painting in Signal in such negative light is more harmful in the practical sense. Having fragmented messaging towards the public that does not care about many of these aspects just makes them a lot more hesitant to change, from my perspective.

We as a community should, in my opinion, pick a "good enough" solution for the majority of the people we interact with. That in itself is a market force to show interest and demand for private solutions.
Most people I know don't have the tools or knowledge or time to understand nuances and all they'll hear are conflicting messages.

For us more technically inclined people: hell yeah, let's figure out the ideal model and bring it up to maturity so others can join when it's fleshed out. E.g. when lemmy came to my attention in the reddit 3rd party app fiasco, I was really confused on how to sign up and use it. And I'm no stranger to tech.

Edit: spelling

Worse with an asterisk.
For making contents encrypted - no, anything else - yes

I have a credible source that says they're scanning media being sent. They have a CSAM or related department. No idea how that works but I heard it exists. Can't find anything about it on the internet however to confirm

E2E encrypted messages in Matrix contain more user metadata than alternatives like SimpleX, nothing scary but a MitM is able to see origin points, destinations, and times of messages. Server to server, if you're using E2E encryption, it relies on trust that the other server is not compromised.

And it seems Matrix.org is not the best at security disclosures: https://soatok.blog/2026/02/17/cryptographic-issues-in-matrixs-rust-library-vodozemac/#matrix-response

No one I know uses it for secure chat per se

They use it for piracy, group chats, channels, stickers and other cool stuff it offers

That's fucking awesome

How I hate that saunas are associated with porn and sex. It's not supposed to be sexual and more importantly it's an awful, just terrible place to have sex

Raising money for Signal with OnlyFans

SimpleX is the most private of the big three. No phone number or account needed. Able to self host.

There are plenty of good enough options like SimpleX Chat out there that don't have this problem. The whole argument that people should just ignore the obvious issue with Signal is frankly weird.

Pardon my French but what the fuck is SimpleX?

The answer is Simple!...

oh here https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/15/faq-data-subpoena-investigation/

Better than American big tech chats. It may not be private but its a very good chat app. Definently the best designed one from a user interface point of view.