I've been thinking about this a bit, and I'm going to stop short of asking people to switch, and just try to get them to install it (and maybe even get them to casually suggest their friends do the same, if the opportunity arises). It's a hopefully small, risk-free step to take, and the more people that have installs, the more likely it is that "no one is there" will start becoming not true, even if not immediately.
Like many people, I'd definitely prefer having just one messenger, but now I simply use Signal with everyone that's on it and only have to open WhatsApp a few times a week. This entire thing has to be seen as a process IMO.
Pidgin with a shitton of plugins. If the only problem is the migration, that still works as a single client, albeit with drawbacks and hiccups. (I collected them at https://github.com/petermolnar/awesome-pidgin-plugins and yes, it'll need to be compiled, even Pidgin itself for some of the solutions. There's nothing user friendly about it, sadly.)
On the other hand... the only system I never had to migrate off is IRC. The funny bit of IRC is that it's not private in terms of security at all, but because it's anonymus, it still feels like it.
And so I keep thinking about needs when it comes to privacy: what do I really need in the context of internet communication? Anonymity, privacy, or both?
I don't have a definitive answer.
Still waiting for that to be the case. After 6 years of using Signal, I have a whopping... two... people in my contacts who also use it.
The most common response is still "Why don't you just use Whatsapp?"
Pretty much the only way we're going to see critical mass with Signal is if someone like Google were to make it their default platform for messaging.
Because in the end normal users think about the functionality and price first, everything else second. Privacy? Just a neat-sounding bonus you can feel good about if your favorite app includes it and don't care about if it doesn't.
I think the most important factor here is network effects.
Only way to really take power back is make an app better than what's on the market, and have it respect your privacy. A very, very tall order, but I think it's the only way we can really take power away from big tech and give it back to the people.
I don't think you can win by just having a better app. Marketing plays a big role. So something like Signal is going to be a major underdog because OSS and freeware don't have the same cashflow to do marketing. What I'm trying to say is that we need to be that marketing. Talking about data and privacy _is_ that marketing.
- scrolling contact list is slow and stutters - opening Signal displays empty frame far too long - it's not possible to add/invite a person during the call, you need to define groups for group calls - forwarding message from chat to chat is not working - messages in a chat take too much space. If a person sent three consecutive messages, don't display his name on all of them, just on first one.
And the worst thing is those polish fixes don't have to do anything with crypto and privacy. It's purely client side issue, but Moxie & Co. decided their priority is adding MobileCoint inside a chat app instead of polishing existing clients.
I wonder how quickly they would switch if WhatsApp started requiring a monthly fee to use it. I get the feeling that big sense of helplessness would suddenly vanish.
If they claim to care so much about online data privacy, let them prove it. They've already proven they care a lot about price.
Everyone has time and ability to make their own choices with like-minded friends. They do it for everything else, that's how they started using WhatsApp and co in the first place. Their claims to caring about privacy are as convincing as a friend who keeps telling you "sorry, I'm too busy", "another time then?", "maybe", repeated ad nauseam. Then you see them at another party with someone else confusingly named "WhatsApp" and you realize they just couldn't make time for you, who is named "Signal".
Again, look at how quickly users switch when a service requires payment (IIRC WhatsApp did try to do this once and a lot of users chose to leave instead of paying). They're just too busy & helpless, right? How much proselytization did that take?
This was a process, not a 1-day switch from skype to whatsapp. The network effects are real, and if you don't understand how difficult it is to get people to join a chat app, you won't win.
Of course it's difficult to get people to join a chat app, and it should be. At a minimum you should need to provide something that users want and didn't have before. WhatsApp offered something new, it was an effective price tag of zero with phone number contacts. Skype offered something new and desirable (until it didn't). Snapchat offered something new and desirable. All of them had predecessors with network effects and still succeeded by giving users something they really wanted. They didn't throw their hands up and blame users.
Surprisingly though, Signal is gaining a bit of traction, so I think "Privacy" is still something people do want. But it has to be better defined.
And to be completely honest I don't believe in Signal. The current messenger wars kind of feel like a parallel universe's email wars "yahoo vs gmail vs hotmail vs live" or something. Coming up with a new messenger is easy. Most of them have the same featuresets. The underlying protocols should be compatible instead of this sorry state of affairs.
Matrix will probably win out in the end but it's going to be long-drawn and unnecessarily annoying for users in the mean time. It shouldn't matter if you're using instagram's UI, or messenger's, or signal's, …. You should get access to the contacts you want, and be able to cross-talk.
Some are very loyal to the Zuckerberg offerings. They ride or die with the Zuckster.
Most of them have been busted, multiple times.
It comes down to risk exposure, gotta make a deal with one devil, but you don't want a dozen bad actors ganging up on your data.
"we" care, up to the point of "it's too much effort", and "we" have tried to do a grassroots movement to get people to use more privacy-focused apps.
But these apps, in the end, are still owned by companies who are not charities; they want to earn money, and digitally, it feels like you can only make money by selling subscriptions, ads, or printing a cryptocurrency - and subscriptions don't work because of (sponsored / investor funded) free alternatives.
Anyway, if you put legislation in place like in Europe, the companies will have no choice. In theory anyway; in practice they find and abuse loopholes soon enough, or just do things covertly, hope they won't be found out, and just pay the fine if something does come up. Which they can easily afford by then, not so much from the money they earn from their monetization method, but stock market value.
I think there should only be legislation about stuff people care about.
What makes you say people don't?
I like the sites and apps that accept my data as currency so that I can use/browse them without getting out my wallet. Plus I like seeing ads for products that I might want to buy. Win win.