I am trying to convince my group to switch from WhatsApp to Signal and we plan to vote on it soon. So, I plan to use the replies in this thread to compile a list of reasons to use as talking points. Preferably, I need something that can be understood on a personal level as some of my friends are deeply cynical and have no concern about escaping techno-feudalism and surveillance.
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This is the correct answer.
Signal does everything Whatsapp does and it aligns with my personal values:
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I can support a healthy, competitive market by keeping alternatives alive - lack of competition is the death of innovation. Entshittification is only possible because there isn’t enough competition.
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I help shield people who really need privacy (like journalists and whistle-blowers) by adding to the crowd for them to disappear in. I think of it a little as getting vaccinated - the chances are extremely low that I’ll ever really need privacy protection but I do it anyway, to protect the “at-risk” population, and to keep options alive in case my situation ever changes.
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Privacy is not about having something to hide but about the right to consent. I don’t need anonymity, I have nothing to hide. However there are still some things that I don’t want some random Meta employee to know about me, or photos that are for my husband only. Signal allows me to choose what I share and with whom.
Edit: a word
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They are not comparable in my view. One is owned by Facebook, known for MITMing smartphones via a VPN app and successfully intercepting and decrypting traffic from competing apps.
The other is widely regarded to be the best option for most people and most uses cases for privacy and security.
One is owned by a US tech corp whose primary income stream is building advertising profiles on users and selling advertising space to businesses while handing data off to authoritarian governments without warrants.
The other is a US non profit where the FBI admitted the only data they can get from them is when the user registered and when they were last online.
and recently they figured out how to use the OS’s notification database to collect some cache and read the notifications Signal sends
On one OS. You can tune Signal not to display the notification contents. Moreover, if you’re on iOS and actually expect privacy, you should probably reflect on your choices a little more.
Realistically iOS is more private than base android at this point
Definitely
But not Graphene. I’ve yet to hear about this exploit on Android. Curious if it holds true.
fortunately, most OSs now offer granular enough notification controls so they can be set to just notify users when messages are received and nothing more.
Everything by meta is spyware.
Signal is nonprofit
Whatsapp = Facebook (Meta)
thats everything you need to know about the striking differences of the two. One actually tries to respect your privacy while the other is exploiting you for using its product
The friend I mentioned actively uses Facebook and Instagram. I have tried to argue against it many times but I am getting exhausted. I just don’t want to be forced to use spyware because the majority said so
Your friend intentionally doesn’t care. Don’t bother trying convert them. Keep texts casual and be real in person.
You arn’t going to get them to end thier use, so you can only draw a line for yourself and decide not to participate if they don’t go with Signal. It sucks but if they value your presense then they will need to decide to branch out and use another app. And JFK if they use those apps, they can fucking install another and use a better one
Easy and insulting way of finding out how important you are to your friends is to tell them on Whatsapp “I’m done with being forced to use this spyware app, I’m moving to Signal, you can contact me there.” Then maybe reminding them a week later about this, then uninstall Whatsapp.
Either they think you are important enough that they go through the awful trouble of spending 90 seconds of their lives installing the Signal app, or they think thats too much trouble to keep in contact with you.
I did that, found out that my friends didn’t really care too much about me lol. A couple did and thats nice. You don’t need 735 friends anyway. Or at least I dont.
Meta and everything they do and stand for is why I chose Signal over Whatsapp.
It doesn’t spam your phone with photos, unless you decide to download them
It doesn’t backup your conversations to your already nearly full, Google owned Drive
Dark mode by default
Not owned by Meta
No frills, I couldn’t care less for “personal stories” or whatever bs Whatsapp has
Basically it is somewhat more respectful of your agency as a user.
…edit: yes you have a setting to toggle backup off. And to change background to whatever you want. And I’m sorry for you, because your deeply cynical friends (your words) probably won’t care about my points either. Because in essence, all my reasons rest on personal values. Which your friends already don’t care about, else they would be complaining about things such as no space on phone or being annoyed at having to change settings for things they don’t want or need.
I use signal but never managed to get rid of WhatsApp. It’s a default app nowadays and most people use it. I constantly deal with random customers and whatnot through it. Only family is on signal. Which is sort of nice, I see a signal notification and know it’s someone important.
Agreed. I can ignore my SMS for a day or two, but when Signal rings, I know it’s someone I actually want to talk to.
WhatsApp is a product of Meta, one of the most outright evil organisations in the world. Signal isn’t - the Signal Foundation isn’t perfect, but they do at least try to do right by their users.
If your WhatsApp loving friends need some convincing is switch to Signal I would tell them:
- Signal is more private than WhatsApp.
- Signal has a “stories” feature similar to Instagram or Snapchat… I think, I don’t use that sort of thing. They added it in the last few years and I’ve been wanting to try it but like you my friend group is mostly elsewhere apart from a growing few who have had enough of Meta’s BS. The Europeans and South Americans I know are extra embedded in WhatsApp because SMS stopped being used there much earlier than in the US.
- Nearly no spam! I can’t recall having ever received spam on Signal. WhatsApp is full of it.
- Signal is a simpler app. If you have anyone older, anyone handicapped, anyone with a traumatic brain injury, etc. in your friend group, Signal is much more sensical and easy to use. WhatsApp is cluttered and has some baked in AI slop.
- Built in scheduled sends. You can press and hold the send button and choose when your message will go out. This is great for a night owl like me who doesn’t get around to answering until everyone is asleep and also doesn’t want to wake anyone up.
Hope this helps, and let us know how it goes,many of us are trying to do the same thing. How big is your group? Can we help you make a slideshow presentation? :D
This is a good response.
I’ll add from an argument perspective, try to make Signal sound as similar to WhatsApp as you can, then highlight how it’s better.
Don’t bash WhatsApp, it’s an entrenched default (first man in advantage). At worst, highlight why you don’t support it. Humans love homeostasis, even if it’s not good for us (the devil you know) - ppl may actually like it and you have to convince them why your option is better.
Happy persuading!
In favour of whatsapp:
- You’ve already got it installed
Against whatsapp:
- It’s one of those tech platforms owned by and run for the benefit of evil billionaires
- The source code isn’t available, so nobody really knows if it’s secure at all
- The metadata probably all just quietly flows into the Facebook data maelstrom
- It never worked properly on my android phone that doesn’t have Google services
- It differs from Signal only in ways that make it worse
I’ll be curious.
It never worked properly on my android phone that doesn’t have Google services
Just properly or actually not at all? Currently, my android has Google services, but my WhatsApp isn’t linked to any Google Account. It runs as expected. I wonder what your experience was, as I’d like to own a google free phone sometime but I don’t think I’ll be able to remove WhatsApp from my life unfortunately.
It was a while ago so they might’ve fixed it by now, but I remember the problem being that notifications didn’t always come through.
I don’t have it installed. Never did…
What if I don’t like beans?
Plenty of report out there that even if WhatsApp is e2e meta is harvesting as much info as it can from it. Signal has proven to store as minimal as possible.
Separate from privacy, on WhatsApp I regularly got messages by spam accounts. Not daily, but pretty close. Have never gotten a spam message on signal
[>]I need something that can be understood on a personal level as some of my friends are deeply cynical and have no concern about escaping techno-feudalism and surveillance
[>]every comment is about privacy or evil business guys
I tried to move my friends to Signal. They are too lazy. So I’m still stuck using Facebook Messenger and hating it.
My family is too non techy and heads in the cloud, so I’m still using Whatsapp.
Not because I personally want to, but because I’m not a hikikomori.
