Why is it so hard to get friends to leave Discord, WhatsApp, Instagram, and others? Anyone else feel this?
from autonomoususer@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 07 Sep 18:55
https://lemmy.world/post/35580750
from autonomoususer@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 07 Sep 18:55
https://lemmy.world/post/35580750
I’ve been seeing this more and more in comments, and it’s got me wondering just how big this issue really is. A lot of people feel trapped in apps like Discord, WhatsApp, and Instagram, but can’t get their friends to leave.
It’s really annoying when you suggest trying something new, whether it’s a different app or just not using these platforms so much but sometimes it can feel like no one wants to go first.
So I’m curious, what apps do you feel most trapped in? And have you tried convincing your friends to leave them? What happened? Is it an issue for you, or are you just going along with the flow?
Looking forward to hearing if this is as common as it feels!
threaded - newest
I had my wife and best friend using signal until they dropped support for sms. Switching between apps was too much for us.
I’ve heard this from a few people, but I have trouble understanding it. Perhaps its because I’ve never had the experience of being able to send text messages to all of my contacts in one place, but the effort required seems pretty insignificant to me.
different people act differently but that move by signal deff had a cooling effect on signal adoption. as if on purpose.
It was definitely on purpose, because privacy is more important to Signal than line-go-up adoption number statistics.
SMS is dangerous and insecure and everyone should stop using it immediately.
Sure...
Different strokes.
Honestly, I’ve just made new friends. If I had to drop friends and family because they refused to move over, that’s fine. I can just make some new friends.
It’s Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp for me. I ditched the Facebook app a long time ago, but Messenger and Whatsapp remain on my device because no one wants to leave them. I try to keep my chats there as superficial as possible.
Also, this is my first comment ever on Lemmy, so hi everyone!
Welcome. A reminder for in case you don’t know, if it starts to feel stale, then it’s probably because of your viewing settings. If you switch it from Active (ironically, the least active), to Hot, 6 hours, Scaled, etc. after you’ve gone through all of the new to you posts, you’ll see a lot more action.
Thanks for the tip!
All your chat history has been published to the fediverse now. Welcome to Lemmy.
Welcome to lemmy!
No one wants to leave because nobody is leaving.
You’re still on WhatsApp and Messenger, they can still contact you that way, so why would they bother changing?
Pick a date, a week, a month, whatever, from now. Tell those you message regularly that you will be deleting all Meta apps on that date. Make it clear that that includes WhatsApp and Messenger. Explain why. I just linked some articles instead of having a long explanation but it still made it clear why.
Let them know they can contact you via Signal/SMS/email whatever you use after that date.
If the informed don’t take the leap, the ignorant never will.
Welcome!
Some tips:
You can block other users, other communities, and other instances yourself; you don’t have to wait for the mods or admins to do that for you
If a mod or an admin of an instance choose to block certain things that you disagree with, you can sign up for another instance with your same name, assuming nobody’s taken it; you won’t be able to transfer your comments, votes, or posts though; there’s been feedback given to the Lemmy devs about this
Search by Everything and Active to see new posts show up in your feed daily
There’s lots of diverse opinions on Lemmy, but they tend to concentrate around politics and tech; maybe consider starting your own community or instance if there’s something here you want to see!
To use the Discord analogy, Lemmy instances are Discord communities, Lemmy communities are Discord channels, and users are just users; we’ll often write c/Whatever to refer to a community, but due to the Federated nature of Lemmy, you may find a community like c/Politics on multiple instances (like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml); not sure if the Lemmy devs have a fix for this
Cory Doctorow refers to this as the Anatevka problem.
Network effect and the path of least resistance.
People usually resist change until there’s a net and obvious gain, or when thing don’t work as expected anymore.
And you need to consider that what’s important in a messaging platform for someone, might be vastly different for another.
Networking effect
People use whatever is most popular even if its the shittest thing such as Facebook.
Only time people will care is when it personally and tangibly affects them.
For Facebook/whatsapp watomatic can be used to remind people you are leaving or such.
I remember when Snapchat was extremely popular for messaging. One of the worst apps I’ve ever used. Just an absolutely atrocious UI.
The inconvenience of switching and learning a new thing is the largest deterrent. People complain but don’t care enough due to those reasons to switch.
I only text people on Signal, except the old grandparents or potential new friends that I will in time get to switch to Signal.
Honestly, oftentimes it’s not evem that, it’s the perception of learning being difficult.
I have some friends decided to pay hundreds of dollars to hire a plumber for something pretty simple to fix. As in, it’d take $50 and an hour once you factor in learning and practice runs. And they’re always complaining about not having money, yet they got mad when I told them how easy it was
People are lazy
Asking people to leave things means they’re losing a line of communication to friends, family, and interest groups who still use those things. It’s probably more productive to ask people to add the services you prefer rather than leave the ones they’re used to.
I’ve encountered some resistance from Americans who use iPhones and hate the idea of adding a third-party messaging app. None of them seem very interested in justifying that position.
Companies like Apple spent a lot to create a switching cost in almost every product. The “bubble” color is also a HUGE thing in the US, and is often times the sole reason for not wanting to leave iMessage.
Certainly, but installing additional messaging apps on a phone has almost no cost on either iPhone or Android. It’s interesting that iPhone users seem to dislike the idea more.
The having to do something is the cost, because they have a perfectly good messaging app already, “why can’t you just use that?”
And that cost is more on Apple’s platform because Apple has been designing it that way since the beginning. It’s the whole reason android users got a different color bubble, not because they had to, but it was a way to identify the person that wasn’t using an iPhone and make them stand out. Making it almost unimaginable to switch to Android for youth who care so much about not being “out” of the group.
And Google has identified this, and put a lot of cringe-worthy effort into addressing it at their Pixel event this time around.
Only running on one brand of phone would be the obvious reason here. Installing an additional app seems like a slightly smaller ask than buying a different phone.
As someone whose only apple devices are ipads, the big lockin isn't imessage vs an SMS client. It's FaceTime vs, Zoom/GMeet/Jitsi. Mind you, it is nice being able to use iMessage with my wife when I have internet, and then swap over to SMS quickly. Sure, my two devices don't have a persistent conversation, but her device does.
Is the advantage availability among your contacts, or something about the UX?
Holistically it's UX.
If my wife or others in my life who use Apple want to contact me, they don't have to go into a specific app and hope that I'm looking at it. They can go into iMessage, click the camera, and poof, a video call starts up. The only software I use that does that otherwise is Discord, and that's not integrated with SMS/MMS. It's the connection too (which is just as much part of UX) - I've had problems with Zoom or others due to connection strength, but not with FaceTime.
The fact that it's a "just-works" solution is important.
Do the others not ring your phone? I don’t video call often, but when I do it’s usually with Signal, and that definitely rings my phone.
No, my phone (Android) usually has notifications/ringers muted
This sounds like a pretty unusual configuration. I don’t imagine most people can be reached more reliably using an app that only runs on their tablet than apps that run on their phone.
Literally all of that UX is the same and better in other apps though.
For example, every single part of your description applies to video and text conversations with my SO and friends, except we all use Signal. It “just works”, and better than Facetime because it doesn’t matter what device my SO and friends have.
With Facetime it doesn’t “just work” at all with the large number of people I know who don’t have Apple. That’s a huge disadvantage which means that Facetime UX sucks.
You just said what they said but the opposite. Both are wrong. Being in the same ecosystem is not UX. It’s not something that anyone can design around.
So you don’t consider it an impact on the experience of using a product when it either does or doesn’t function on your device? Sounds like a most basic concept of UX to me, but I dunno what you mean, maybe.
That’s because you’re taking an extremely literal interpretation. “UX” has to do with design, and as I just mentioned, this isn’t anything to do with design.
I’m interpreting the term in the way it’s defined according to Wikipedia:
Facetime being intentionally limited to a single platform absolutely negatively impacts it’s UX by reducing utility, ease of use, and efficiency.
You can do the exact same thing with any of hundreds of different messaging apps. The only advantage is that they’re using the same messaging app, because it comes installed by default, you can’t remove it, and they don’t allow you to replace SMS with anything else. If you use an Android phone, it most likely comes with Google Messages pre-installed, which does the exact same thing.
In other words, it’s nothing to do with “user experience” and everything to do with being in a particular ecosystem.
On Android, I prefer QKSMS, actually.
I use Arch BTW
Cool. My spare OS is Archbang.
It’s not the bubble color. It’s what the bubble color signifies. ie: no rich communication services, no high quality video or audio calls, no stickers, no videos, low quality images, etc.
It’s not just that. I find SMS to be slower in terms of call and response vs iMessage. It’s like my android friends take longer to reply.
Very possible this is just latency intentionally introduced by Apple to make the experience worse. They’ve been known to do things like that.
They also intentionally degrade the quality of video feeds from non-Apple users, and intentionally degrade the quality of received MMS images.
Well pre-RCS they routed android users differently because they were not compatible. Google did something similar, but in reverse, adding back things like reactions, etc. to make android users not feel like they were getting a 2nd rate experience.
Yeah well imagine what it is when you are old yourself… having a majority of like aged friends and even older family… no one is ever leaving FB before they are ded :-/
Honestly, when or if eu chat control happens I’ll just delete all of those applications and never tell anyone, I am not gonna use sms either
These are just opinions, but here are the two I know about (I don't use WhatsApp)
Discord: It's not just you. You would have to get their other connections, all their servers, and all the connections from those servers to switch. Frankly speaking, Revolt isn't ready for that to happen. You are one person. I'm sorry, but if I have 1 friend vs. all of my servers and friends, I'm not going to make a meaningful change for the one person. And tbh I'm more likely to be the one than the many. What I would suggest is to try and put yourself between the two services, help to build the communities you want to see, then invite people over.
Instagram: Same issue as Discord. The fediverse doesn't have the variety of content, the wide range of users, or half the stuff to engage with.
Because everyone else they know is there. If the people they follow and interact with moved to Mastodon or switched messengers to Signal, you’ll see how quickly they will move. It’s hard to convince someone to sign up or install a new app if it’s only you they’ll find there. I was able to switch my family over to Signal and they literally use it only for family group chats, because they don’t know anyone else who uses it. And they were a little easier to convince because they’re family. I won’t be able to convince people with less close ties to me like friends, acquaintances, and neighbors.
I mean the reason is usually summed up with a single word when I make the suggestion: “Why?”. People don’t know and/or don’t care. You try and explain it and they mock you and act like you’re a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
Geeze, you name it. Right now I need a new job, and if you’re not looking on Indeed, you’re severely limiting your options. You can’t see anything on Indeed without creating an account and turning over ALL of your personal details, much less actually submit an application. Not to mention the site itself is just horrendous to use. If we had some sort of technological standard protocol for submitting resumes ( so you could send them the same way you send contact info via .vcf), or even OCR that actually worked, it could be a lot easier, but we don’t, so the alternative is going and typing in all of your information for every individual application, which simply doesn’t work when you’re submitting a couple dozen every day, on top of their meaningless personality quizzes and chatting endlessly with AI bots, and aptitude tests and video response interviews and and and…
I make a good % of my money for my business using FB and IG. Not through ads but just through networking. Although I’m about to close my doors (due to unrelated market circumstances), at which point I’ll delete them. But then I will mostly lose access to all of the events that are shared exclusively on these platforms. I ask them to share them elsewhere but it’s more of the same, mocking and asking why.
When it comes to open source, Discord and Reddit seem to be the platforms of choice. Usually this means I simply ignore otherwise-promising projects.
Fortunately almost no one has ever asked me to use WhatsApp. Usually only international travelers. I usually just decline and/or ask them to use Signal.
Chasing the hot new app that was created by some one-person dev team for “privacy” reasons is a little like chasing amy. You are looking for an ideal app that doesn’t exist, so you can’t really suggest a better alternative. Instead you are just nagging people for using discord or imessage even though those apps are perfectly fine for 99% of people. Even privacy focused people. imessaage specifically is great for privacy and unless you have strong evidence of an apple installed backdoor for the p2p imessage encryption I’d question why your are against it.
The downvotes around anything suggesting iMessages is always ridiculous to me.
It really is the safest app I know for messaging. Is there some privacy issue of which I’m unaware?
The answer is very simple: iMessage fails to include a libre software license text file, which is the standard that ensures we can maintain control over the software we use. Without this, we’re banned from forking the app, meaning we’re unable to ensure it stays aligned with our privacy values. We need the freedom to fork the software to ensure it meets our needs, not just rely on buzzwords like encryption or P2P.
Without the ability to fork the code, we’re trapped in every decision of its owner. Non-libre software bans us from maintaining the control needed to ensure it meets our privacy standards.
While in the ideal world a non-opensource app would be a deal breaker, in the current world, there is no indication that imessage has any privacy concerns associated with it. It’s not just taking Apple at their word, there have been a lot practical analysis of how the protocol works. Plus the underlying cryptography is sound.
…apple.com/…/Security_analysis_of_the_iMessage_PQ… <- hosted by Apple.
www.douglas.stebila.ca/blog/…/imessage-pq3/ <-original author
usenix.org/…/sec25cycle1-prepub-595-linker.pdf <- Independent analysis of the protocol and implementation.
Sure you could claim that actually Apple is lying about how they are securing imessage, but that is a lot of effort when they could just take the Facebook approach and straight up admit that they have the ability to read your texts, much easier, and safer legally.
I never once wrote ‘open source’. I was never writing about that.
Moreover, iMessage requires iOS or similar. Any operating system, iOS, has complete control over its apps, iMessage. iOS fails to include a libre software license text file.
The dangers of this are explained above.
lemmy.world/comment/19262111
I’m using “open source” colloquially. The point is that your specific nitpick about imessage not having some specific text file and license associated with it, isn’t important in a world where there doesn’t exist an alternative that is nearly as robust and supported. Ultimately you are upset that imessage is run by a corporation (a valid complaint) but there is no indication that the corporation is lying to you about the privacy of their messaging service.
Again, I never once wrote ‘corporation’ or ‘lying’. You have completely mischaracterised what I have written.
I am no tech pioneer so a lot of these phrases mean nothing to me. That doesn’t mean I can’t learn, however.
I’m curious, which specific messaging app allows any of what you’ve listed?
Which phrases?
Because it’s unavailable to the vast majority of people?
So because some people can’t use no one should use it? I don’t understand the complaint. Is the hot new 1-man privacy focused app that requires side-loading more accessible?
If it does not require an iPhone yes, side loading is just a few taps away.
But what is this mythical app that needs side loading? There’s matrix apps even on Apple’s app store.
Partially, it’s because the incumbent platforms are just much better… Discord is really good.
I have got some people to move to signal though. I don’t touch Facebook messenger.
Yeah, this is so fucking annoying. I’ve been banging on about Signal for years, but everyone except a small handful of my wisest friends insist upon using WhatsApp and Discord.
Almost everyone I know also uses Instagram, and no other social media. I am yet to meet someone in real life who even has Mastodon.
I have told people about Lemmy for a year now.
Not really. I have none of those apps or alternatives. and I don’t know anyone I want to chat with on Discord, WhatsApp, Insta, or other. Not that I’m antisocial, I just have no interest. Lemmy is about as close as I want to get to anyone. Before, it was Reddit, but they have tanked as a place to search for knowledge.
so refreshing to find likeminded people here.
Also, it’s so refreshing to find real people here.
I’m also older than Methuselah, so that might be a factor. Back when the internet was young, it was interesting talking to real people. However, in today’s timeline where I have to slog through all the bots, all the assholes, all the individuals with an agenda or ax to grind, I just find it tedious.
I think they are out there, it’s just that there are so many bots, anonymous assholes, people with agendas and axs to grind, that the real people just get swamped.
Discord is a hard one because it has some uniqueness to it.
It has bots, text channels, voice channels, and hundreds of thousands of people can join it if you need to.
A lot of my college clubs use it and there are a few thousand students in our biggest ones
It’s not unique, it’s just XMPP + Mumble.
I used to play with a large community and every time a new game would come out we’d always setup forum software, an XMPP (chat software) server and a Mumble server for that game. This was pretty easy to get done because we were all working in tech, but if you were an average gamer it wasn’t something that you could handle.
Discord packaged the text, voice and forum software into one application and they handle the server hosting. It only costs all of your privacy and $10/mo.
Maybe I’ll give this a shot when I have some free time.
TIL that discord is not part of the fediverse.
You say it’s not unique and then list the ways it’s unique by packaging up multiple different services into 1.
Totally agree it’s a privacy nightmare but you discredit the service too much. There’s a reason it’s widely adopted the way it is, and it’s not because it’s the same as everything else.
It isn’t unique, it provides text, voice and video chatting. These are not new services to the world of technology.
What makes Discord stand apart is that they require that your chats, calls and streams are not private and, in exchange for people giving up their private data the users only have to install one piece of software instead of two. It is like a company giving people a ‘free’ phone as long as they or their advertisers can listen into the calls, read the texts and look at the videos on the phone.
The only thing that Discord does is to package the software in such a way that you can’t access it until you give them information about you and then they gate features behind you identifying yourself with a credit card and a phone number.
What are some good alternatives to discord?
matrix works pretty well as a discord replacement, it’s sometimes unreliable when you’re using a selfhosted instance but I’d wager it’d work smooth enough for a non techie if you turn off end to end encryption
isn’t that the main reason to use it though, privacy?
imo the biggest appeal is decentralisation and non corporate ownership, ofc the matrix people are trying their best to do e2ee and whatnot but iirc media isn’t encrypted e2e and it’s inferior to signal or whatever
also for a large fraction of discord’s usage (large open access guilds) encryption doesn’t mean anything
I convinced my friends to get Discord so we could communicate as a community without Facebook. Now I have figured out it is just as bad. I tried Matrix and couldn’t figure out how to log in before I heard it’s enshittification is underway.
Endhittification is often the result of an established centralized platform that got that way via giving unfairly good deals because they had a lot of investment becoming suddenly greedy and controlling to make that money back. Matrix, meanwhile, is just a protocol. It quite literally cannot be enshittified unless the protocol is updated to do something a certain way that benefits the developers over the users, because a user can simply switch providers. Even though the org that develops it is also a provider and I hear they’re going freemium, that is a service that costs money to render. I’m not surprised they need more money to offer hosting and maintain the software behind it. Unless the protocol is being modified in a way that hinders or scams us or steals our data, saying matrix is enshittifying is like saying email or HTTP is enshittifying.
So then it is still worthwhile to try to host a matrix server? Cool. I guess I need to get the login part figured out so I can try it first. I think DBZer0 has one I can try. Thanks for explaining. I am in a hurry to try it now so my friends have yet somewhere else to go.
I have the same issue, but got 2 Discord users to try Jitsi Meet with me (a friend of mine on my Snikket server invited her friend). After a while, her friend asked me why it looked so much alike Discord and my friend agreed. I gave them a big smile and said, “because this is awesome”.
Jitsi Meet + Snikket has been my saves since I deleted my Discord account during the pandemic.
I loved Jitsi too, though, the call quality was a bit low quality when I used it previously (browser version I believe). The only problem with Jitsi, is how do you set up a server?
For example, Professer Messer has a Discord server, but a lot of people use the chat rooms for conversations, and there a lot of other study sessions taking place in different voice channels. I really wonder what the other alternative to Discord is. Mumble won’t do since I don’t think it has the ability to screen share.
I find the quality very good. And there’s no problems with setup a “server” :)
Once inside and as a moderator, you can create so called breakout rooms. These works just like subchannels in Discord. If you’re many people in 1 call, you can create these to create a more calmer experience. I have personally not tried these out since I have only talked to 1-2 people.
Mumble is a excellent VoIP software, but like you said, screen sharing is not possible since Mumble is just what VoIP means: voice over IP.
Im checking out snikett🙌 thanks for the suggestion ❤️
I don’t have very many friends, although of the ones I do have the majority of them use Signal, or are terrified of recent politics and I’m trying to move them over currently. I’m not concerned about platform lock-in for communicating over proprietary platforms since if something happens we can just move, I am concerned about the security implications.
Discord is fairly unique, there isn’t really a replacement for it that works well.
I less have an issue with people getting trapped in software they understand is insecure, and more with people who will push shit like telegram and pretend its the most private and secure thing ever invented. If they want to use discord, sure, fine with me. As long as they know not to do their activist work on discord I’m fine with it. People doing activist work/planning over telegram will never make me not cringe.
Signal isn’t something I personally want to use, but its tolerable, and it was doing a good job of replacing telegram in activist spaces I felt, but I’ve recently seen a few different groups using telegram again because they don’t trust signal.
xmpp with omemo is what I wish I could get people to use but uh, well, that just will never happen.
How do you set up XMPP with OMEMO as anonymously as possible? My friend and I would love to video call each other, currently we’re using SimpleX for this, but it’s very buggy. We use Molly for calling and SimpleX for texting, both of us are switching to using Libreboot laptops with QubesOS to communicate :)
I love teaching my friend privacy. He’s really gotten into it, I’ve done a good job making him just as paranoid as I am!
I’m gonna be honest, its been so long since I’ve actually had people to set it up and use it with that even I would need to spend a day and a half figuring out how to set it up again.
I can’t control my contacts. I can control what I do. I was personally getting annoyed enough with Discord that I uninstalled the thing and stopped visiting it on the web. My account still exists AFAIK. I didn’t make a big production of it nor tell anyone; I simply left.
It was a bit of a sacrifice because I don’t connect with an extremely rewarding community on there as much anymore. Thankfully they still host IRL meetups and I do go to those.
I’m opinionated about messaging apps but I don’t try to convince anyone. Well, other than siblings and SOs. People who want to talk to me can find me on the apps I do hang out in. If they ask why I’m not on the big ones I will gladly tell them. But where they end up is their decision, not mine.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Ux8DFgMSM
I’m personally trapped on Discord and Instagram.
Discord is required by my workplace, so no way of getting rid of it until everyone decides to move to something better. I have some friends on it too, but most of them also made Matrix accounts when I explained I won’t be very reachable on Discord (I only open it when necessary; and it doesn’r run on my phone since they rewrote the app in JS). I have Instagram as a way to people I meet during travel or events to “add me” easily, and then we can figure out a good way to communicate afterward. I’m not too bothered by having it as I don’t use it daily or anything.
You could at least move to Pixelfed.
I doubt your instagram following is enough to make a difference from what you’d get on Pixelfed.
Many people probably follow artists on them that will never move to pixelfed so they stay here.
Good point. The “follower” mentality is still a foreign concept to me.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around what goes through the average instagram user’s mind. I forget that a lot of them are eager to follow instead of lead.
It seems I didn’t communicate my reason for having Instagram well enough. I don’t have access to the “feed” or following people (it won’t load unless I accept some terms, which I won’t). I have an account with the messaging function bridged to my Matrix account, which lets me receive messages and (when it works) reply to them to organize moving to a better platform.
It’s the best solution I found if I want to keep contact with people I meet when going out or traveling. Phone numbers barely work (I still can’t call or message any German numbers, never found out why), and everyone I meet has Instagram. I just give them my username, they can add me easily, and then later over Instagram direct messages we figure out how to get them signed up for Matrix or Signal.
It’s hard - give them a compelling reason to leave. I use Telegram, Signal, Discord and Session… Discord is rarely used - I use Telegram and Signal the most. Session is quite new.
But what we need is for someone like Mozilla to make a messaging app - someone with the users best interest at the heart, and who don’t share anything with anyone else… And at a reasonable price… Privacy isn’t free - if anyone should be in doubt.
What are your thoughts on the privacy of telegram? It has always seemed fishy to me (could just be the prevalent usage of it in conspiracy theory communities though)
I’d be thoroughly shocked if the FSB didn’t have a backdoor for telegram.
No one can be sure that there isn’t a backdoor for any app… Sorry to say, even open source have weaknesses…
Durov is an absolute scumbag though. Russian Elon Musk.
Telegram shouldnt even be in the conversation when there are alternatives like Signal.
Oh, do please worship Signal!
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/8974
Well… I don’t trust any companies that works for money - and that’s all of them. Now I’m not in some group trying to overthrow the system, so I don’t feel so vulnerable - but if I were, I wouldn’t be using any app, on any phone.
Telegram is not 100 % safe, and you have to enable encryption too, if you want it. But is Signal safe? Google? Any other app? There’s some that feel safer than others - and you have to come to terms with how safe you want to be. If you want to be as safe as possible, you have to do the encryption yourself, on a system that’s not connected to the internet, before sending it to someone who can decrypt it themselves on a system not connected. Or you have to use pen and paper, and deliver it yourself - or just meet people and talk to them - without any devices in your pocket.
If you, like me, just want to be able to communicate with you kids, your friends, family and other loved ones, about trivial things - I think you can feel pretty safe with those I mentioned.
That Telegrams owners are Russian (in exile) doesn’t matter to me. USA is the biggest spy and snoop on earth. No one is really much worse than the other. I guess it’s more important for some, to argue about who is the worst snoop and privacy invasive company/nation/agency and so forth - instead of criticizing everyone who invades their privacy - even their own government.
Would you say that it’s irrelevant that for example Signal is open source and makes an effort to make the code they run on their servers verifyable? Or that the messenger is made by a foundation? I will have to look into the backdoor allegations in the other thread, if true it should be pointed out in the code. I still think that is preferable to a complete black box like WhatsApp or Telegram
No, OS is great. But when you make a backdoor anyway, then you don’t really care about privacy. A breach is one thing, but to let someone in, that is sucking the little brown hole of a golfing president, which is a fascist and don’t care about fair judgements in trials, then it’s a major/HUGE problem.
I’m not using it to plan a coup, I’m using it mostly because it has first class bot support and decent clients.
I’ll look into signal again when they get bots
You’re commenting on federated social media that you’re hoping some company will create a centralised chat app… Use a matrix client my dude.
Do you have a habit of putting your twisted thoughts in the mouth of others? It’s a bad habit, so please don’t do that! If you are so petty, you need to attack me for something I write, do that. But making up stories about others in your own petty head, and then attacking them for it - is low!
Hoping for a company to make a chat app
Are we paying for fediverse services? Are there any companies involved?
Matrix is federated, private, and free…
What exactly did I make up? Were you hoping for a company to make a for-profit federated app?
Mozilla is more an organisation than a company. It turns profit to work for the free internet, in a world where companies with billions oppose it. But yeah, I’m sure that this federated (which also means an organisation of a sort) will prevail on it’s own. Nice banner you have here - and the following is surely huge! ;-)
And feddit du cost money - the cost is just shared by the ones making and maintaining the serves and software. But hey, keep believing it’s free…
Matrix is not free. It might be private - who knows for sure? And it’s not used by many…
Where did I write “for profit”? Are you really that clueless? A reasonable price, is what it cost to develop and maintain it, and promote it. You know, just like Mozilla does. It’s not a “for profit” company, it’s an organisation for internet privacy and freedom. So please stop you lies. That’s a childish way to try to argue!
There are 2 organizations, the Mozilla foundation and it’s subsidiary the Mozilla corporation. The corp is a for-profit entity, they’re the ones developing software, and generating revenue (mainly through the Google search deal).
Source? The main opposition to Mozilla are ad agencies, and former employees who think they’ve abandoned their values (pocket, Google, AI, MDN, etc.). Their main opposition in the browser space has been keeping them afloat for years.
Wtf are you talking about? Learn what the federated part of fediverse means.
Also, love how you’re talking shit about federated services on a federated service. You can’t make this up.
No shit hosting cost money, I was specifically talking about the cost to the end user, the same thing as you…
Lmao
Matrix is a FOSS protocol, and there are multiple FOSS apps using that protocol. You can even host it on your own if you want to be absolutely sure nobody can get any possible metadata. You literally can’t get more sure than that unless you write it yourself…
Again, the Mozilla corporation is a for-profit entity, and that’s why they’re able to charge for premium services…
Do a bit of research instead of spouting nonsense, calling names, and throwing tantrums. It’s not very mature.
You are funny. Pocket is a core value?!?
I’m talking truth about a federated service on a federated service. Can’t you handle that? Are you too fragile for that?
And childish as you are, you assume you know what I’m talking about. That’s just a pathetic move! Learn to debate, and stop lying!
I know your reading comprehension, or thinking for that matter, is not so good, but try to take the whole sentence and figure out how those examples fit in.
Don’t worry, I can handle laughing at you just fine. You seem to be losing it though.
Holy shit, this must be what talking to Trump is like. You see an argument you don’t like, start screaming incoherent nonsense and fake news, mix in a few insults that make you feel superior, and end up thinking you’re debating anything.
… Says the one with the brain and paranoia of Trump…
You may not be, but many of us are. None of it is free, from development to hosting to administrating. That works okay for now, but might be a limiting factor.
Edit: I also thing community stewardship could work better than it does.
I was responding in the context of users paying for access, the same thing OC was talking about. You would then need to create a for-profit entity in order to be able to charge for the use of the app.
I think for my friends it’s just what we have been using for literally a decade since we were kids, combined with apathy towards privacy - although of my friends does use duckduckgo. I don’t judge them for that since I’ve been pretty bad with privacy. I do worry if we get into more activism that we will need to secure our privacy
Totally get you. It’s why I roll my eyes anytime someone say “Be the change you want to see” as if I wasn’t trying to and also getting a burntout from doing so. Easier said than done.
Sadly, people are simply just so comfortable with whatever massaging & social media app they used that trying out other alternatives is immediately dismissed as a inconvenient before they even tried it. And also we are so used to corporation taking so many of our data that some are just numbed about it and see it as a losing battle or they don’t know how much valuable their information is which you often get the infamous “I got nothing to hide” BS.
I have got few my friends to use Signal when I was about to delete my Instagram. Still in contact with them which is a small victory for me.
Hey man, you’re not alone.
I recently made a new email to get away from google and a matrix account to get away from discord. Anyone new I meet will get my matrix contact info. It will take time, but I’m in it for the long haul.
Man, signal was easier to get people to use when it could also be their SMS app.
For me it’s Discord, I can’t find a good enough self hosted alternative with all the features me and my friends want.
This is a big one. I had no problem ditching the rest and I’ve been able to slowly get friends and family onto signal. But discord despite its incessant enshittification just has no real alternative. Matrix is the closest thing and it’s a clunky, confusing mess.
Plus even if I were to switch, what’s the point if the communities I use discord for aren’t moving too? They really built a monopoly out of this dogshit app and it’s going to be ridiculously difficult to get people to switch to anything else. Hell, look at Twitter - people clung to that shithole for far too long (they still do tbh), and didn’t jump ship until bsky came around, which is barely any better. Meanwhile, Mastodon’s literally been there the entire time but nope.
Matrix is the logical successor to discord.
We should focus on improving it instead of making something new from scratch.
Only if the people behind Matrix just copied the Discord UX exactly instead of making weird choices nobody can understand
We need a “server” with multiple channels that are easily discoverable for everyone on said server. We also need to be able to gate channels behind roles.
Can it do that?
Pretty sure you could do all that on matrix in 2023, maybe not the gated roles, but you can just make a subgroupchat
you can even this on telegram to an extent
discord delenda est
Please tell me how, I’ve been in some actual large communities on Matrix who haven’t managed it because the support for spaces(?) is so flaky
Just missing like 90% of the features and UI
I wouldn’t say Matrix needs 1:1 feature parity with Discord in order to be a viable alternative for a lot of users.
My social circle doesn’t typically use the entire suite of features in Discord. Text chat, voice chat, video calling, file sharing, and screen sharing cover our usual needs.
I’d love it if it actually worked… it doesn’t.
It’s extremely buggy. I’d rather use IRC, but the features it lacks isn’t ok for most people these days.
Because on every occasion – at least in the case of Signal – they tried to switch, it was a far inferior experience for them, and the leadership behind the app/service took such puritanical decisions that it became evident that the ideology was more important than the people those tools were supposed to help/protect. I don’t even bother asking my friends now. In fact, now, for me as well, those (Signal, Matrix, etc.) are just things collecting dust on my spare phone.
Comfort and scared of change. The dopamine these sites give you is close to sex for some people as weird as it sounds. So if you tell them to stop using Instagram, they can’t process that and simply say no.
This is just part of human nature. Some of us are able to say “hey this website is run by horrible people and I refuse to support it.” We leave and find other options and help them grow. We are in the minority.
Most people simply do not want to try something everyone else doesn’t use cause they don’t want to seem weird. Stupid societal norms.
Because people keep pushing for them to completely leave a platform.
Instead try to get them to dual-use platforms.
This is the way. I this case they get to “feel” those other options themselves, and even if you are the one that put that seed in their head, they are the ones making that final decision based on their own needs, capabilities and preferences.
One of the big problems nowadays is proprietary protocols. Back in the day, you could have a single client that could talk to different networks. Today you have to run a bunch of separate apps, and what’s worse is that a lot of them are built with stuff like Electron that’s resource hungry.
Even the FOSS apps don’t all get along.
Conversations is great for XMPP, and it can act as a UnifiedPush pusher, but AFAICT it doesn’t support other protocols and it doesn’t act as a UnifiedPush subscriber.
So running 2 chat protocols, one being the well-support app Conversations on the well-supported protocol XMPP, means 2 push setups and 2 apps. Bleh.
I would like to see an architecture where the expensive app side of things is separated from the protocol. But that’s all speculative, I haven’t put work hours into it. Basically, if I have an idea for P2P chat, why do I need to re-invent emojis and channels and shit like that? I only want to iterate on transport. And if I have a better idea for channels, why would I have to re-invent the transport like XMPP and Matrix?
(The reason is that cutting those two apart is hard - But I will continue to wonder.)
Oh yeah the whole thing is a mess. It kind of blows my mind that we still don’t have a single common protocol that at least the open source world agrees on. Like there is a more or less fixed set of things chat apps need to do, we should be able to agree on something akin to ActivityPub here as a base.
Understanding why those platforms are bad is another layer of thought that most people aren’t capable or willing to engage in.
Imagine it’s the 90s again, everyone has a phone number, but one person will only talk to you via ham radio. Same energy.
For communication, people will prefer what everyone is using, simply because it’s easier to reach someone else. Herd behavior. You can try to get them in, but pressure will mean that it’ll be you who will have to either give up and cave in to use Discord, Whatsapp, etc, or get removed from the talks for refusing to be where they want to.
I wish I could leave whatsapp, but it’s a literal case of “everyone uses it” in Brazil. Even the short, justice mandated wpp blackouts couldn’t keep people on telegram for more than 2 days.
Probably the idea of “all my other friends are on the mainstream platform so why would i move to another platform specifically for you?”
Can’t speak to the other apps but I have like 6 or 7 Discord servers that I’m actively involved in and a half dozen others I use sporadically. Even if I got all my friends to switch apps for our group chat I’d still need Discord for the servers I use and I’d rather not juggle two apps that are doing the same thing (actually already doing this with Discord and a text group chat and it’s annoying as fuck). Also, switch to what?
Tech illiteracy is the biggest reason.
These days people dont hardly know what IRC or a router is/does, theyre not going to change to any other application unless its DEAD easy.
Also I despise discord UI and always have. I must just be old, but its sucks and is horribly designed. Now it has built in ads so it really pisses me off. At least most of my friends moved on from Snapchat (literal Spyware).
I ditched meta platforms entirely for signal in 2019, lets say I dont have many close friends anymore haha, my social life is kaput, even my work groupchat is on facebook
It’s network effects. People have other friends on the network who have their own friends on the network, and so on. Leaving the network means convincing a critical mass of your network to leave along with you.
And it would be easier with good bridges, but of course the big platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc., refuse to bridge in or out with anything.
You can scrape public Facebook feeds, using paid services, but AFAICT you need a friend on the inside to publish your stuff into Facebook.
I guess that’s one reason I shouldn’t complain about Bluesky - They support Bridgy.
Are there even public feeds anymore? Anytime I’ve gone to Facebook since deleting it wants me to login first, no matter what the link was to
In other words, you say that we should just give up.
I’m simply explaining why it’s difficult for people to move from existing networks.
SMS
Nobody wants to use a messaging app at all. At this point I’d rather be stuck on WhatsApp. But its all family. Big family and try to get them to agree on anything is like pulling teeth.
I even sent everybody a “contact card” I made with my links to signal, simplex, and even whatsapp (figuring that’s the path of least resistance) saying I’d prefer to communicate on any of those apps. ZERO people changed nor did they even ask about it, options, or my reasoning.
I did a similar contact card thing for (real) people I cared about from Discord. 2 people installed signal to keep up. 20+ invites went out before I nuked they account. One person already had signal. The other one that installed it now ghosts all my signal comms attempts.
Yes, I understand. The annoying thing is that you end up with two or more apps for the same purpose. Mid-term, I think the only way to go is to go cold turkey at some moment, but it will costs you some friends and family contacts.
It’s because our marketing sucks. People don’t care about their privacy, they like what is cool. So what does that mean? It mean we gotta make using open source app so cool that people can’t help but join because all the cool kids are here. You feel me? Preaching alone is not enough although it will benefit all of us
It’s hard to get people to care about things. I’ve gotten a couple people to switch to signal (which I hope is good), but I have one holdout who keeps saying “ill switch later”. I don’t understand why “take 3 minutes to install signal” can’t be done right now, but I’m not a mess of depression, anxiety, and debt, so I’ve just been giving them gentle reminders every so often.
I think the way we are trying to make technology sound sophisticated and our refusal to reinvent language makes technology become much less accessible than what they should be.
Like this, I think letting irrelevant tech talk hijack the conversation makes privacy inaccessible. We need to call it what it is: a scam, abuse, and hijacking of our control.
lemmy.world/comment/19262111
The crux is that all the alternatives suck. I don’t have a problem going App hopping, I just have a very hard time finding ones that don’t fundamentally suck, and I am not talking about little implementation issue, but garbage like Signal that violates the GDPR, wants your phone number and is proud of it. Always grinds my gears when that gets celebrated as the “alternative”. Same with the Fediverse, where user owns nothing and server operator controls everything, how again is that different from Reddit, Facebook and Co.?
Nostr and Tox seem ok so far, but really the amount of true alternatives that improve on the original in significant ways is pretty damn rare.
Threaten them with having to communicate with you using email - they’ll install Signal 😂
Because lot of people just either don’t care, are too lazy to switch, or the vast majority of their friends and family still use the apps.
In addition, they may feel like they are losing out on something, especially for Instagram where a large portion of the population uses regularly.
I have a anonymous IG to keep up with activist events. The dumb asses post their actions on Meta FIRST!!! I’ve already deleted or am in the process of deleting all META accounts and even though I use the Aluicord version of discord, it still has trackers. I never use discord. I enjoy Cleotri more. But I just straight up told people I’d be deleting them altogether. If they won’t move off then they can hang themselves without me.
People can’t be convinced of anything, it’s a losing battle to try. The only way to get people to change is to live a certain way and if people admire it, then they ask you about it and you share.
So for example-I’m a minimalist and I really wished my sister would declutter because her place is overcrowded. But instead of trying to convince her, I just shared what my life normally was like. Eventually she asked me for help decluttering, and she felt a lot better about what I helped with. Now we share cleaning and organization tips.
For me, I just put in my insta bio I left for Pixelfed and to come friend me there.
I’ve told my friends I’m off insta because I’d rather be on a platform where I control my feed that’s ad free. And that I rarely see my friends content on insta so it doesn’t matter that much to me to have friends on there. If they get interested, great if not, I’m still happy.
People don’t typically like change. It has to feel like it’s their decision to drive them there.
I tried to get friends to use Signal. It’s hard because it’s a new app they e never used. One flat out refuses to use anything other than SMS and one messaging app to avoid bloat, and the others it’s just hard to get buy in when you’re the only person they know using it.
If they like use so much sms convince them to use silence so it would give SMS encryption to messages f-droid.org/packages/org.smssecure.smssecure/
Hasn’t been updated in 6 years. Is there a fork of it thats still maintained?
Does it need to be updated when it doing very simple stuff which doesn’t work over the network even :D so where threat to exploit
The source code for it isn’t available. I like the idea of it though.
github.com/SilenceIM/Silence
Discord for me. A bunch of my family and friends are avid gamers. Discord is the universal standard app they all use for general communication.
Not only do they use it for all their gaming related stuff, they have additional servers and channels for just chilling, chatting, off topic stuff, memes, politics, etc etc.
It’s the network effect. Even if there was an open source app that perfectly replicated all the functionality of Discord and was just as simple to install and run as Discord, most of them still wouldn’t switch to it, because all of their friends and family are still on Discord.
So they would have to have two completely separate apps with totally separate social groups to maintain, and nobody but hardcore advocates for FOSS and privacy are willing to do that.
Sure, I have Discord, Matrix, IRC, Signal, XMPP clients, and a Private Mumble server, all on my systems, but I’m hardcore about FOSS. None of my friends and family are willing to do that. It took all my energy to convince two of my most techie friends just to get Signal on their phones. And only One has been willing to install a Matrix client to chat just with me.
I just cannot fathom how people use discord to communicate. Maybe if it’s a very small group like ten people tops. But anything bigger? Seems like chaos.
what’s so complex about discord? Plus I thought it was made for big groups… I cannot fathom how you cannot fathom that it’s really easy to use?
Never been in IRC I take it?
That’s not a complaint specific to discord though. You just don’t like large chatrooms.
People don’t just stop using an app until there’s very little activity.
Getting people to use a new app, especially one they have little activity on is inconvenient, especially if you’re already checking WhatsApp, wechat, signal, telegram, LINE, Zalo, and discord because you have to many different friend groups.
For the same reason it’s difficult to turn people away from communism. Phlegmatic ignorance.
Because their other friends are on them, and the celebrities they follow.
I’m still on Discord because everyone else is there. I’ve moved my direct social connections, so most of the things I’d use Discord dms for on a daily basis, over to dedicated direct messaging services, but communities are so much harder to move over. You can’t shuffle between a hundred and a thousand people over to another platform unless somehow most of the groups they’re in move over at once.
And to what? Matrix communities are not as convenient, Revolt’s voice chats are not as good and screen sharing wasn’t a thing at all last I checked and it doesn’t have a mobile client, and TeamSpeak is primarily voice-based.
SonoBus is utterly awesome for voice chat, specifically, unless it’s one of those ridiculous 50+ people rooms.
People will still use discord even if it got entirely banned, there just isn’t a good alternative now that is clear
Lol, what because you tried Matrix and it SUCKS on both client and server?
XMPP can have a whole ass facebook app built inside it called Movim and it can be accessed from any “homeserver”. It can be far more than Discord will ever want to be, if the cats can be herded
If you don’t use Matrix well I guess bc it’s ubiquitous among squishy Linux and leftist communities for some godawful reason despite being Israeli-developed, US state dept funded, and idiot-maintained. They even have a slot for it on these lemmy accounts
You talk like a prick
Not federated but a pretty good alternative coming up with Revolt - still has a good way to go though.
Interesting.
What’s the catch? Is it all self hosted? If not, where’s the hosting cash coming from?
I can’t say for sure, but see this answer from 2022: github.com/orgs/revoltchat/discussions/309?utm_so…
Revolt would be good, but they lack screen share, that really was the only reason why we didn’t keep using it
While they do lack screen share, it is in active development. See github.com/revoltchat/backend/issues/313 Last work on that issue happened 4 days ago. I am not a dev of revolt.
Find new friends in Russia. These are banned there
Russians still use these services, using VPNs. Source: I know some.
PS: Slava Ukraini!
“privacy? Yeah whatever, they just use it to catch bad people right? I have nothing to hide. I don’t have the time to learn all this VPN stuff. Don’t forget to like my posts!”
FBI Likes This
So just use something different yourself. Then ask your friends to communicate with you there. You don’t need them to quit the old, you need to ask them to use something new.
Get their parents to sign up. Feels like grannies sharing minion memes and Bible verses was the end of facebook’s cool era.
Only Grandmas <logoOfDenturesWithACherryOnTopThatHasATiedStem>
So like, this is always seemingly done from a content CONSUMER point of view.
How can we provide content creators a safety net whom we as fans enjoy their content but said artists need to have their name and face out in the open? Particularly music artists/DJs/independent artists/etc?
I swear, anyone wanting privacy, just start calling yourself an artist and boom suddenly nobody can find any information about you! You don’t even have to be serious about it, just take a crayola to a bar napkin… /s