Knowing what a privacy nightmare all meta apps are, I’m wondering if there is an alternative option which is more privacy friendly but still has some of the ease and simplicity of some features such as messenger.
I already know there will be friends I can’t convince and thats fine, I may just have to accept that. But if I could avoid using it as much, I’d really like to.
What has helped me convince my friends is to mention the features and not mention the privacy. Most people care about features and convenience but don’t care at all about privacy. When I’m trying to convince my friends to switch to Signal, I usually say something along the lines of “it’s like iMessage for Android” and give a small demonstration of the features.
Signal works quite well for me. I use it with most of my family members, though for some people I still have to resort to Whatsapp.
Both Telegram and Signal are decent, tho they require a phone number to sign up and are more similar to WhatsApp. Then there’s Matrix, but it’s like the fediverse, you must find or create and instance, they might find it complicated. Same for IRC.
Signal no longer requires a phone number to sign up for.Also telegram really should not be recommended at all if the focus is on privacy.Update: I am wrong, signal does require a phone number.
Maybe try simplex as that doesn’t require a phone number.
Good on Signal, but what’s the problem with Telegram?
Telegram isn’t encrypted end-to-end by default; apparently if you do encrypt e2e you can’t access chats from multiple devices.
Signal’s protocol is widely understood to be the gold standard for security, which is one reason it’s been adopted for multiple messengers. Telegram has a bespoke protocol which is not as well regarded.