Heard Telegram is Russian Spyware… then heard from an engineer who did some consulting for Signal not to trust that either…
So what’s the deal? People I know in this realm are on either or both in an effort to maintain privacy or at least feign it or maybe they are like me and just download it because someone said that’s the only place to reach them 🤷♀️
FOSS Freedom Open Source Software is the way to go I guess.
Sounds like you have more inside info on signal than most.
I’ve just heard that it is not great due to metadata and phone number collection but who knows.
It’s probably still a significant privacy wall for regular people. But if you are an international woman of mystery then you’ll probably need something better 🥸
Hahaha indeed ;) 
Keet fixes this?
Can you tell me more about Keet? Just hesitant because I was pitched signal and telegram as better than WhatsApp.
Well first, I definitely prefer Signal over Telegram and Whatsapp.
TLDR: Keet is one application of Holepunch, a way for computers to connect directly, to send end-to-end encrypted messages without going through a central server (Signal, Whatsapp, etc). It also has voice and video calling, which are apparently more reliable and better quality than Signal and even Zoom because it’s directly device-device.
I’m still reluctant to fully embrace it over Signal and dive deep into the tech because A. it’s a whole new model to understand and doesn’t have a long established track record B. it’s yet another app to get my (normie) friends to start using, getting to Signal itself was a challenge. C. Not fully open source, parts of the code are intentionally obfuscated, which is suspicious.
On the other hand, it has a very strong recommendation by Guy Swann and there’s no shitcoin or plan/reason to add one. I recommend listening to Bitcoin Audible Read 640 and Chat 76. Or check out their docs here https://docs.holepunch.to/apps/keet.io It’s promising, but very early and also got overshadowed by Nostr. Cheers.
Feel free to correct or elaborate here, but -
Signal is a centralized service and likes do do things their way (from what I hear, they're not as open to external contribution even though their app is open source), so there is some risk there. But they've had data requests and had very little to give. Data is encrypted, but only passed through their services, they dont keep your data and you need to keep your own backups.
https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/
Telegram, on the other hand - they are also a centralized service with encryption, but they own the data and keys to the encryption. So if asked, they will have to comply and unencrypt the data that is stored.
Very informative! Thank you
If there's information to the contrary, I'd love to hear about that 😶. But now my risk model for signal is - they are a good actor for now but being a centralized company there's nothing saying that they can't be incentivized to change. Its good/usable enough for now, and im not going to recommend my family to add another messenger - let alone SimpleX 😅
Telegram = KGB
Signal = NSA
pick your poison 😶
😂 damn, everyone’s been swindled
https://simplex.chat/ is FOSS, does not require phone number, does not require a central identity
Oh I think I saw that logo here on Nostr before.
Should I really download a 9th communication app? 😭
How is it?
It works well, at least for the few times I have personally used it
Wish everyone I speak to had Nostr so we could all communicate with our app of choice and it still function
I think there are a few people that are trying to implement the SimpleX idea as Nostr DMs. That would be good
I’m with you though, Nostr is superior to everything else I have used. I just wish it was easier to find people to interact with
That would be so cool!
Problem will be solved eventually
I’m working on a way for people to find relays that are for their interests or community.
But I think right now most relays are just broadly available with no preference on what community they want to create (other than some language specific tags)
I’m gonna start reaching out to relay operators and ask them to explicitly add community preferences to their relay metadata so that people might start congregating by interest/community/locale and discovering folks via the relay global feed or replies they only see because of the relays they’re on.
It’s slow work because most discovery work seem to default contribute to centralisation.
That’s a brilliant idea!
I think that would also be a solution to retaining the intimate community feeling we have now while adoption increases
Couldn’t agree more
Thanks! All that needs to change is for relay operators to add community preferences (it’s a config file update for the person hosting the relay ). Just need to reach out to relay operators to see if they’re interested.
And then folks could use my https://relay.guide to find people by those preferences.
Still working on a few performance improvements and a filter by community preferences. But I’m doing both things in parallel.
Best part is relay operators with community preferences don’t need to moderate people out that don’t fit in the community preference, it’s just about drawing in people that care about similar things.
That sounds really awesome! Let me know when you start reaching out. Maybe we can generate some hype so they have to give the people what they want haha. Happy to help with that if I can!
I’ve been thinking about building relays (ideally sustainable paid options). Hit me up if this would be of use to you
Absolutely. I saw relaying.io for mostly personal use. But I want an easy to deploy relay service.
It could be as easy as a render blueprint http://onrender.com
But that’s hardly cost effective 😂 even if you charge for admissions and publication of events.
Is this a standalone relay or a service that sets one up?
It’s a project to create a relay that’s easy to host and manage as Nostr scales. It’s a good relay as is but there’s work being done to improve it to make it the easiest to manage (which might be more important than being the fastest or cheapest to host)
There is a bounty out for encrypted DMs (i.e: Don’t leak who you are privately communicating with).
It would be 🔥 if simplex was somehow integrated as the private DM NIP.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking of, hopefully there are a lot of people working on it because it would be cool to have the services integrated
We started testing with Damus team. It works. There are less features.
I don’t have a phone number tied to all my messages, and this data therefore does not exist and is not mined/sold (as far as I understand).
The question is how important is FOSS and the above to you? Important enough to use, or important enough to convert your friends and family 🙂?
Fair question.
I think it would be easier to convert friends and family to damus because I’m thinking there are other selling points
