What app you americans use for personal conversations?
What app you americans use for personal conversations?
Here in South Europe people mostly use Viber. Edit: I was very unaware about situation in Southern Europe as I've learned from this post... Most people in Croatia use Viber!
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As an American living in Germany, I have:
- Signal
- Matrix
- Discord
- Telegram
- SimpleX
- SMS via Google Voice for some very stubborn Americans
Everyone I know in Europe uses Signal or Whatsapp, often both. Sometimes when I suggest to Americans who live in the US that they should use one of those, they counter that I should buy an iPhone and use iMessage.
As a fellow American, fuck iMessage. I wish we were more like Europe in that regard.
I've even seen technically-sophisticated adults exclude people from group conversations for not having iPhones. The resistance to using anything else is weird. I'm even willing to add to the above list if somebody has a different preference that isn't the one thing not everyone can use.
With the Digital Market Act in the EU they’ll soon all be speaking to each other. Vestager is about to tear those messaging monopolies a new asshole!
That sounds good, until you realize that your data will then end up with Meta after you specifically left all of their services.
That’s a GDPR request away from deletion, at least in the EU (and for a while at least, the U.K.)
I don't want them to have my data. It doesn't matter how easy it is to delete them. And basically every time someone scans their contacts I might get re-added to allow this cross functionality
Its so weird how standardised the use of Apple Phones is in the US
How ya liking SimpleX? I'm just rocking Discord, Matrix for internet ppl WhatsApp and Telegram for RL ppl. Used to use Signal, but Telegram replaced it a while back for me. Way better feature set.
SimpleX is interesting. Its complete lack of server-side profiles would be promising if I had something really secret to discuss, but I don't. It doesn't have a way to get timely notifications without keeping the CPU awake and draining the battery, so it's kind of a non-starter for general use.
What features do you prefer in Telegram? Few people I know use it and I just keep it around as an alternate because why not?
I like the fact that my messages are on in sync on all my devices. Yeah, it's not E2E, but it's good enough for just chatting with friends and family. I like how easy it is to send photos on it. Also being able to edit messages is nice for when you fat finger stuff.
And yeah, SimpleX seems like some spy level shit, neat though. I used Signal for a few years, back when it had SMS support.
Signal does stay in sync between my laptop and phone, but I think if I wanted more than that it would not be easy to achieve. Message editing was added in a recent update, and it seems to be as easy to send photos via Signal as any other messaging app (I can't remember if it was ever difficult).
I've become more insistent about E2EE for anything I rely on lately because big platforms have been scanning "private" conversations for content some computer program guesses violates their policies. Someone I know recently got a suspension from Facebook (yes, they're probably worse than other platforms) for a joke sent to a friend in chat years prior. That took it from an abstract they could to a concrete they do.
Yeah, fuck Facebook. I don't trust them for shit.
No doubt they're the worst, but will Discord do the same thing? I wouldn't be shocked. Will Telegram? If they get enough pressure from governments because of people talking about doing bad things over Telegram, they probably will.
So now if I'm using anything that isn't E2EE, I find myself thinking about whether dark humor or hypothetical self defense scenarios will get my flagged by some algorithm. People act differently when they're being watched.
Are you using Telegram for its privacy and E2EE or just for the features. Because Telegram sure is not private nor does it have any E2EE unless you specifically select to be in a "secure chat" with someone.
Nah, just for the features. It's secure enough for just chit chat. I only use the secure message chat when I need to send documents to family. I just like that they have clients on every platform, including Linux.