Edit - y’all are awesome! I’m gonna check out all of these - thank you!!
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A family member is moving out of country and convinced the best way to keep in touch is with WhatsApp. I really don’t want to install any Meta shit on my phone.
Any recommendation for a FOSS or other alternative from a company that’s less of an ethical dumpster fire?
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Signal
Seconded - it even has a much better way of dealing with media attachments.
Just make sure you configure a PIN and backups.
Signal
As is the highest up vote, Signal. However, if you refuse to install WA (you should) and they refuse to install Signal (scold them for being dumb), a backup is to bridge WhatsApp with Matrix and use Element on your phone. Way more complicated than Signal and I still strongly recommend they use Signal.
a backup is to bridge WhatsApp with Matrix and use Element on your phone
Any recommendations on where to start learning how to set up a bridge like that?
Does this work with WhatsApp groups chat?
Yes, here’s the supported features for the recommended bridge: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/whatsapp/
This is cool, are there downsides? Like will messages be strangely formatted or anything for my contacts?
Also, are there bridges for other apps? Signal, telegram, messenger? I’d love to have one messenger app to rule them all
Works great for me. Only oddity is “quotes” in Discord sometimes dont show the content unless you tap on them. And yes, look at the bridges page for more. https://www.beeper.com/ is a hosted version of this with a custom app.
Nice, thanks I’ll check it out
Signal
Signal. Also see https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html
For my family member who moved out of country, signal’s voice quality was not very good. WhatsApp’s quality was better than a regular phone call, very impressive.
Also, outside the US WhatsApp is some kind of standard the way rich Americans think iMessage is. Companies will ask her to contact them on WhatsApp, so she’ll have to have it regardless of your personal involvement.
There’s also jitsi.
Also, outside the US WhatsApp is some kind of standard the way rich Americans think iMessage is. Companies will ask her to contact them on WhatsApp, so she’ll have to have it regardless of your personal involvement.
That really depends on the country that the family member is moving to, and is not an absolute thing world-wide.
Do you think signal’s voice quality is not as good as whatsapp? It might be because they have less servers than whatsapp
Signal, Matrix/Element, Wire
SimpleX Chat, no phone number or e-mail registration needed. Truly a privacy pioneer.
Lemmy
How? What? Why?
Comment sections and DM. Because you can and you should
Lemmy is not a WhatsApp alternative
Federation is the opposite of privacy
I’d recommend just regular texting, but if for whatever reason you can’t/don’t want to the. matrix should work, it’s basically foss discord.
Why would you recommend texting as an alternative?
Otherwise you don’t get all operators being able to read your messages, all the vulnerabilities of SS7 (so not only your operator, any random dude with experience can read your messages)
So many advantages!
But it is compatible with iMessage that it is what really matters, really 😂
not as an alternative to Whatsapp, I mean not bothering with an alternative to texting. there is no need for something like Whatsapp because everything it does is already part of just texting normally. Whatsapp is a texting alternative, and as such is pointless.
Texting doesn’t do end-to-end encryption though, which is a dealbreaker for many.
sure but if Whatsapp was in consideration security clearly isn’t.
