According to friends in the cryptography space and from a cursory reading of wikipedia, Telegram is a shitshow compared to Signal.

It's one thing not to trust Signal. It's another to recommend alternatives that are far worse.

(Totally unrelated, sorry, but about a month ago you and I had a brief exchange about the placebo effect.[1] I got distracted and missed your last reply and never responded. Sorry about that. It's too late to reply on the original thread, and I don't want to hijack this one, but while looking for an old comment I saw your reply and felt compelled to mention it to you. It was a good exchange IMO and I didn't mean to "ghost" on it.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17457085

I appreciate the apology, but I don't feel ghosting on an online conversation should require an apology.

People have other lives, most often online discussions go way past their due date (I actually like the fact that HN doesn't give you a notification when somebody replies to your comment).

It was a good discussion though, the placebo effect is fascinating.

Yeah, I almost let it go but then I figured, what's the harm? It was a good discussion. Well met.

You suggest Telegram over Signal? Now we know you're spreading FUD.

I don't actually endorse any of the alternatives, just listing them. I haven't had time to research them in depth. I have worked with Tox before and I know some of the guys behind it, though, but I think it's dead in the water.

We've banned this account.

Why would you rely on others for recommending those, but not for Signal? Just don't recommend anything then, or don't criticise Signal. What's the point of convincing people to move to worse alternatives?

I personally reviewed Matrix before recommending it on my blog. The other alternatives I listed here are not endorsements.

Then why would you recommend a solution that hasn't even enabled end-to-end encryption by default?

When did I do this?

You recommended Matrix in your blog which, according to the first comment in this thread, is not end-to-end encrypted by default (which you acknowledged in your first response). Why would you recommend that instead of Signal?

Oh, I should have caught that and addressed it in my earlier response. Matrix is end-to-end encrypted by default on clients that support it. The valid criticism is that some clients don't.

Because for some that's not a show-stopper.

In the context of this article, framed as an alternative to Signal, I think it should be.

Why?

Let's compare it to F-Droid: He isn't saying that Signal should be distributed via F-Droid by default, just that there should be the option. So the article doesn't seem to say that the defaults are what matter.

But in the article he's saying not to use Signal because he doesn't consider it secure enough, and to consider Matrix as an alternative. His criticism of Signal has nothing to do with defaults, and everything with security.

Let's also not forget XMPP+OMEMO.

I really like Wire, for a large number of reasons - privacy and user experience among them. I've talked about it in the past[1].

If you get the time, please give it a proper whirl. With the recent open-sourcing of their server and proper E2EE by default[2] (but abstracted away from the "regular user"), it's shaping up to be a really solid application. As far as I'm aware they use the same double-ratchet protocol as Signal, but you don't need your cellphone number to register (a big thing for some people - myself included).

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655743

2. https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper...

I'd say Wire is a good substitute.