I have been cleaning my phone - removing Google Services, Google Account and replacing it with alternatives. Strangely, I do still have many very different messaging app. If I count correctly, there is Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Signal, Viber and also two local apps TakeUp and Mastadon. I am more and more returning back to SMS messages and normal encrypted e-mails.
What do you use most and is it normal, to have so many messaging apps and using them all for different people groups?
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I use Signal with my girlfriend. Others only use Kakaotalk, which is a shittier South Korean Whatsapp clone with more ads and more ways to make money off of you and occasionally SMS.
Exactly the same here. I loathe kakao
Signal for some friends and family, Whatsapp (ugh) mainly for work, Discord (ugh ugh) with a few gaming buddies, and Matrix for a group chat or two.
My go-to for pretty much all purposes would be to use SimpleX, it’s a really good secure and private app that is in early development. Basically it use the Signal protocol, but in an app without telemetry, blobs, etc… Or if you want to use Signal, download Molly
My other recommandation would be Matrix for large public groups or business talk.
Surprised nobody here is talking about Matrix. Open source, client side / end to end encrypted, chat history stored (encrypted) on the server so it syncs to every device, supports federation, and supports bridges so you can use Matrix to access your other accounts like Signal, WhatsApp, etc and have everything in one place.
https://Beeper.com is based on Matrix and worth a look. But you can also self-host everything.
I really like beeper, but im probably gonna selfhost all the bridges once i have the hw
FWIW beeper is moving towards a client side hosting model where your phone app hosts the bridges. They currently have a local hosted Signal bridge which runs on the phone…
did they also move the HS to the phone?
That was for Beeper Mini which was an attempt at imessage on android.
I don’t think the new version runs the homeserver on the phone; with the new version you can still participate in federated chats and use the desktop client so I don’t think it majorly changed in that way.
Happy self-hosting matrix user with bridges to various chats, and I’ve successfully converted family to use it, too.
People really like having all their chats in one app.
It’s not simple though. Matrix is the most complicated service I have to maintain.
Yeah Synapse is still largely a first gen system. There will be others.
I mostly use Signal and qksms for SMS. Also use element(Matrix).
WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, in order of usage.
I’m an American with an Android phone. I use Google Messages for SMS because no one uses anything but iMessages or SMS here. It blows ass.
No Telegram or Signal or Mastadon? That’s little bit strange, considering the amount of USA surveillance 👀
I’m from the US as well, and I can verify that very few average people use those types of messengers primarily. It is almost exclusively iMessage and SMS/MMS/RCS texts as the main form of messaging. I will admit that quite a few people will use the messaging features that are built into social media apps (like messaging in Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, etc). At least to me, it seems like those are moreso used for sending memes or messaging people you don’t interact with regularly and are still secondary to the other forms of messaging.
I don’t think most citizens of the USA care about surveillance. (Source: I am a citizen who doesn’t care) Targeted ads don’t really bother me. I care more about convenience than privacy and a good portion of people I know feel the same way. I guess it’s a cultural thing.
Email, Matrix (also with friends and family) and sadly also still WhatsApp…
Email and sometimes irc. And old fashioned sms when needed.
IRC is still alive?
IRC will never die! I mean, it probably will eventually. It’s still fairly popular with Linux users, and even stil preinstalled on some distros
Are there some websites or lists of interesting channels?
Depends on what you’re into. It’s kinda like discord, in that it has a lot of servers for specific communities/apps/games, etc.
I used it mostly for pirating cause it was always blazing fast compared to torrenting.
Libera.chat, IRCNet, Undernet, Rizon, EFNet are the biggest networks I can think of off my head. Each has like 5000 to 20000 channels!
I use SMS and good old phone calls. You would be surprised how much people freak up when you call them. For work I use Slack, sometimes Teams. And on rare occasions, Messenger to talk to some family members.
edit Forgot about emails. I use it for more planned communications.
Surprised no one mentioned simplex yet. So whatsapp, matrix (personal server, for family and as a bridge to whatsapp), and simplex.
What is Simplex?
I’ve tried to get my friends consolidated in one app in the past, but have given up. I prefer Discord, but use a combo of that and Slack, Signal, GroupMe, IG, FB Messenger, SMS, email, and probably some others I’m forgetting about. Discord is the only one I directly open, the others I’ll just rely on notifications.
I use MS Teams for work. We don’t have to use it, but it’s more comfortable to send a chat message when I’m late for a meeting, than to phone the front desk and tell them to relay it to all attendees. Also, you can send Chats to yourself and I do it for work related notes I want to make off work, i.e. a neews article I want to share with colleagues during working hours.
I try to steer as many people as I know to Signal, but I don’t want to be the type of person who accepts no compromise so I also use a bunch of others. Whatsapp is the most common, as pretty much everyone here in the Netherlands uses it. I used to use Telegram, but nowadays I trust it less than Whatsapp and all my Telegram chats have moved to Signal. SMS is only there for backup and older people who don’t use other apps. And Discord is there for people who want their messages to never be read, because that app is a dumpster fire that constantly makes me miss messages.
Discord and Whatsapp
I’d love to use Signal, but virtually noone in my sphere uses it.
