Nostr Web Client

yeah, but whatsapp was the first to become really popular. When facebook bought it, it was already the most used app, at least here in italy (was like the most expensive acquistition ever made at the time).

After the acquisition, the original founder of whatsapp joined with 50 million $ to the development of a little niche app noone uses called "chatsecure" by the cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike, then they renamed it to signal and started "recreating whatsapp but open source".

Signal started late and always been many steps behind whatsapp in every features (except implementing signal protocol for cryptography).

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 11mo ago 💬 1

yeah, that definitely was not the sequence of events

signal started in about 2014-15 and their protocol was used by the rest of them, so-called "double ratchet" protocol, and you may also have heard of "OTR" messaging, that also came around the same time, it was out of the same school of cryptography development

signal was born out of the merger of the FIRST SMS based auth service, and everything else uses that now, whatsapp, telegram, viber, they all use that, but it was invented by Redphone

here's some history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Whisper_Systems

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Keychat 11mo ago

The encryption protocol OTR (Off-the-Record) was released in 2004.

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ponymontana💜⚡ 11mo ago 💬 2

I mispelled "chatsecure", was " textsecure" instead... whatsapp launched in 2009, and reached great popularity in the first years of smartphones here in italy. The facebook acquisition happened in 2014.

Then has been "upgraded" with the signal protocol by the collaboration with the signal guys in later years.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 11mo ago

yes, that's the story as i understood it, everyone adopted it, telegram also, and viber

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 11mo ago 💬 1

all i remember was that whatsapp became very popular by 2014, i recall it vividly from my time staying at a netherlands christian hostel in late 2014 "wawwawawwawwaw"

but signal had already appeared at that point and they were all adopting the redphone/textsecure protocols

somana 11mo ago

Where are you from?