Hey Folks! Someone in my family (Person A), has talked to a guy, who is working in the tech world, about if it make sense to use Signal, over Messenger, Snap, WhatsApp, with privacy in mind. The tech guy said, there is no difference, and that its not making sense to use it and that its almost the same. I know Signal is discussed alot here, but im now looking for some arguments, and facts to tell the one from my family, that the tech guy is wrong. What arguments can i use, why is Signal better in privacy, then the other alternatives? Person A, has always been sceptical about me beeing so privacy minded, and A thinks that there is nothing to do to protect, and is one of thoese saying : I have nothing to hide.
Edit: thank you for the help
@FriedRice@lemmy.ml Do you still require help?
Here’s my main argument for more private services (I try to make all my arguments short).
According to a study done by proton, a single company makes a minimum of $200 dollars off of each person, each year. Of course, they probably gain more money via clandestine deals or the government buying data directly to get around the 4th amendment.
But that money, doesn’t go solely to the companies dedicated to collecting data, or those parts of other companies. It goes to lobbying the government to strip away privacy further.
And then I have two endings, depending on the situation:
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Of course, I recognize that in today’s connected world, I can’t get privacy unless I go live in the woods. But I can decrease the amount of money companies make off my data, which I do like.
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Organizations like the EFF, lobby on the other side, for more privacy for us. But they are opposed by when massive companies like google also lobby. So when I deny google $100, that’s money they can’t use to lobby anymore. Rather than thinking of it as denying google money, think of it as making a donation to the EFF, that they use to ensure our rights are in place.
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I don’t think there’s much of a point unless person A actually wants to make a change in their habits. It’s like trying to convince someone to switch to Linux.
A don’t wanna change mind, A always wanna be right, so I have to have the best arguments, not to make person a to switch, but to “win” the discussion 🙂
Both easy, backdoor them with the idea.
I managed to convince my family to switch by pointing out that the FBI and CISA both recommended switching to E2EE apps due to ongoing telecom hacks.
Sometimes, reality is enough to scare people into change.
I convinced my family to switch by giving them my Signal contact info and letting them know that that’s where they could contact me. I ditched my WhatsApp account when Facebook bought them, and never had any of the other accounts because I knew too much about the people behind the companies.
Send them both a bunch of videos from Naomi Brockwell (NBTV). Or buy them each a copy of her book
WhatsApp tracks when and who you talk with.
Thar information is used to put people on government target lists and kill them.
Snapchat does not use end-to-end encryption for messages, so it doesn’t even belong in the conversation.
WhatsApp and FB Messenger are somewhat defensible choices since they at least use E2EE by default (Messenger did not until recently). However, there are a few good reasons to favor Signal:
- It is open source. Interested parties can actually verify that Signal’s encryption claims are true. Interested parties can also audit new versions as they released.
- Facebook/Meta, as a company, has a long history of tracking users, leaking user data, and even conducting psychological experiments on users without consent and in secret.
- WhatsApp and Messenger only allow 6-digit PINs to secure your messages. With that PIN, you can decrypt those messages. Signal allows for longer alphanumeric passcodes.
- Facebook makes no promises not to track your usage of Messenger or WhatsApp, only that the messages themselves are encrypted.
Here are 28 arguments for you to use.
that’s a lot of arguments
These are not designed to penetrate disinformation.
Variants of this exact question seem to be asked at the rate of about 3 per week.
Show them this: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/22/whatsapp-wins-reprieve-in-india-over-user-data-sharing/
The dispute began when WhatsApp required users to accept expanded data sharing with Meta’s platforms or risk losing access to the messaging service. While European users can opt out of such sharing, Indian users cannot — a distinction that regulators found problematic.
Meta doesn’t know what you’re talking about, because WhatsApp is e2ee. But they know:
- who are you talking to
- when
- how often
- what else were you doing before/during/after the talk
- links that are shared (the preview fetch is not e2ee afaik)
These are all valuable metadata and given enough of it, they can even infer what you were talking about. Target you with ads on their other platforms (but rumors are that WhatsApp will have ads inside eventually)
(the preview fetch is not e2ee afaik)
Technically, it is, but end to end encryption only covers the data between the ends, and not what one of the ends chooses to do with it. If one end of the conversation chooses to log the conversation in an insecure way, the conversation itself might technically be encrypted, but the contents of the conversation can be learned by another. Or if one end simply chooses to forward a message to a new party not part of the original conversation.
The link previews are happening outside of the conversation, and that action can be seen by people like the owner of the website, your ISP, and maybe WhatsApp itself (if configured in that way, not sure if it does).
So end to end isn’t a panacea. You have to understand how it fits into the broader context of security and threat models.
Signal is not the answer. Signal’s backend is essentially closed-source, and to my knowledge none of their binaries are reproducible with the code available. If you really want privacy and security in E2EE, you want somethjng that’s completely open-source (front and backend), and can be self-hosted entirely. Matrix is this.
Signal is the only app on that list whose app is open source. That means it can be audited to see if they are telling the truth.
You cannot say the same for the others and you just have to take them at their word. Should we take Facebook at their word?
It’s also the only app on the list managed by a 501©3 non-profit, so you can additionally check where their money goes.
That’s true! I can’t wait to “shoot” back with arguments :-)
Also the FBI took signal to court and the only data they could provide was the date of signup and last login timestamp
This is an important extra point: being open source, a government can’t secretly mandate a back door, because everyone would be able to see it. For the other options listed, there are no guarantees.
They can put the backdoor in themselves though, see the recent xz backdoor. But the question is whether it would be found out or not.
xz backdoor rely on two testfile with malware, some script that do specific thing to malware to unmask and inject. If commit later change any part to break backdoor, signal probably forced to reject to keep backdoor.
But why reject good change? Might raise red flag.
xz almost worked because it was in something nobody was looking at. Signal code is audited regularly.
I think that this is a pretty good reason.
If the billionaires are using it for privacy, then it is likely the best one.
I mean, how much do you wanna bet that they all had a private dinner with the other billionaires that own other apps and had a private conversation about whether their messages are actually private and able to be hid from the government?
And here I am waiting for Sup to be released by an adrenaline-filled code-junkie from Grand Prairie, Alberta…
If we can’t self host Signal, it isn’t much better than WhatsApp.
show them a picture of zuckersuckers face and ask if they would trust him with your secrets
