Happy #GlobalSwitchDay
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Signal isn't federated [1][2][3.1]; it's decentralized [1][2][3.2]. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it's centralized.
::: spoiler References 1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server. - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses. 2. "Signal (software)". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software). - ¶"Architecture". ¶"Servers".
Yeah. I love Signal but it doesn't belong in that list. Dansup (creator of loops and pixelfed) is apparently working on "Sup" that will be a decentralized alternative to whatsapp.
To me this person sounds like they have too many big projects at once. I wish them success tho
Yeah.. I'm bit afraid of "kbin Ernest Effect" (not sure what a proper term is) where personal issues pile up and the sole head developer just disappears.
Haven't followed dansup much but from what I understand he is much more open to pull requests and listening to the community, but time will tell. Right now I appreciate and love his effort, giving, and the impact on fediverse he is brining.
The kickstarter was a good idea.
Given that I’ve waited 3 weeks to join his smaller instance of pixelfed.art, I can tell things are already piling up. I am hoping the kickstarter does help.
Damn. Yeah let's hope he can hire some help...
XMPP is an established federated messaging app with encryption.
There isn't much information about "Sup", but if I had to guess it could be that dansup is making sup app with XMPP(rotocol) as the messaging protocol.
Originally it was supposed to be ActivityPub based, but recently they posted something about it being for XMPP, Matrix and IRC as well 🤷♂️ Maybe they decided to fork Pidgin 😂
IMHO Sup. isn't going to happen. They will have their hands more than full with Pixelfed's new popularity and maybe Loops.
Oh! didn't know that, I thought activitypub can't be used for secure messaging. Lol really hope its XMPP!
Yeah I didn't take it that seriously when it was announced right now. Just hope pixelfed stays afloat amidst the user flood and hope he can publish loops as open source soon!
Multi-protocol would be awesome, hopefully down the line it'll come back around to adding some basic AP integration.
That would be rad if true ^^
Let's hope so! :)
sup is how I update my FreeBSD /usr/src tree! Twenty years ago.
Delta.chat already exists
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good
My comment wasn't protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP's post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.
Bro put citations in his lemmy comment 💀
I wish more people did that ngl 💀
I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.
On my client, it's all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.
Ah dang, that's good to know (though I'm not sure what to do as an alternative) — I was unaware that the collapsible spoilers weren't supported on Boost. I guess that means that Lemmy's markdown formatting hasn't entirely been standardized across the service. I personally have encountered some inconsistency on the Tesseract UI with CommonMark Autolink [2] formatting where the autolinks don't even render [1].
I recommend reporting this to the Boost devs to improve Markdown feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.
spoiler References 1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. <https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server>. - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses. 2. "Signal (software)". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)>. - ¶"Architecture". ¶"Servers". > Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal's messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users' public keys. […] 3. "Reflections: The ecosystem is moving". moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z. <https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/>. 1. ¶5. to ¶"Stuck in time". ¶3-6 > One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing. 2. ¶"Stuck in time". "Federation and control". ¶6. > An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do. ::: - Rendered:References
1. "Kalcifer" @[email protected]. To: ["Happy #GlobalSwitchDay". @[email protected]. "Fediverse" [email protected]. Tesseract. sh.itjust.works. Published: 2025-02-01T07:08:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:40Z. https://tesh.itjust.works/post/sh.itjust.works/32046509.]. Published: 2025-02-01T09:20:14Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:42Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32046509/16425699. - Raw Text:
Same with Sync, unfortunately.
Dang 😕. See my comment for a related response.
I recommend reporting the bug to the Sync devs to fix their Markdown formatting to improve feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.
Based.
That person isn’t fucking around.
I take the issue of misinformation seriously. I try to be the change that I wish to see.
I do my best to cite any claim that I make. I would encourage others to do the same.
Signal is hostile to third party clients like Molly.im as well
That's not true. Moxie only had a problem with a fork called "LibreSignal" because it was using their name. He didn't want users to confuse the apps.
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
For a decentralized messenger use https://delta.chat
I was using "decentralized" to mean that there isn't centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can *only* communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model [1].
This is more an argument of definitions, though. I'm not trying to claim anything in bad faith.
References
1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server. - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
That’s just open source, not decentralized. I can’t find a definition of decentralization that would even make it vague. From Wikipedia:
Signal has a central authoritative server and to use it with any other server you have to modify the source code.
Imo this fits my usage of the term — Signal *can* be broken up into many isolated servers [1] all offering the same service.
References
1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server. - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
Depending on exactly how said open source development is occuring, I could argue that open source development *is* an example of decentralization. It may even be an example of federation (all depending on licensing and development medium imo).
Yeah, Moxie has openly shot down the idea of adding federation to Signal, and I’ve never heard them claim Signal was decentralized.
Matrix is federated, distributed, and decentralized.
XMPP is federated and decentralized.
It is? How so?
Matrix servers keep a copy of any remote room an account on the server has joined, and it’s possible to recreate a room from the copies held on different servers. There are more details I don’t remember, but at a high level that’s how it’s distributed.
Storing messages of remote rooms in addition to local rooms is why people complain about the storage requirements of Matrix servers. They don’t realize it’s distributed.
Interesting — I hadn't considered it that way.
The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin's puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider's service.
I don't understand why we've forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it's worth it in my opinion. I really wish we'd start seeing government regulation that says "you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service." I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.
How is the puppy?
As for interoperability between services… Monetization of surveillance data. The social media companies are Ad companies, and they make their money surveilling people and selling access. It’s harder to build an accurate model of a person when only pieces of data is available, and they need to have more data then the other Ad tech companies they’re competing with.
For the avid readers out there, bookwyrm is a fantastic alternative to goodreads.
https://joinbookwyrm.com/
Folks should also check out neodb.social . it's good reads, letterboxd, and steam reviews all in one.
I've been looking for something to track my physical book, music, and game collections. An instance of this might work nicely. Thanks!
It could be but I find the android app buggy (this month I've been using bookwyrm, GR, Open Reads, and The Story Graph to compare them all and still nothing is as smooth as GR. Plus bookwyrm has no apple app. I love where Bookwyrm is going but right now the switch is not the best
It doesn't have an app, how is it buggy?
Might be talking about the Bookwyrm client on F-Droid?
I went back to check. This is correct. It's the un official one in f-droid.
My bad!
Signal is not Fediverse! Element/Matrix is!
No, Matrix is federated differently.
And Signal isn’t?!
Signal is centralised.
You now understood both my point and the OC’s, I hope.
Signal is not federated.
Element/matrix aren't part of the fediverse, either. It doesn't speak AP.
Matrix is federated, Signal is not.
although it is federated, it isn't apart of the fediverse, as it doesn't use activitypub.
I’d argue it’s part of “the fediverse” but not “The Fediverse”.
Fair point, definitely still apart of the same style of platform but not the same protocol.
afaik ap is no hard requirement to be considerted fediverse
Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I'm pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.
But regardless, I don't see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It's not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn't federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven't seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.
I'd be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven't looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it's supposed to interoperate with different applications.
I mean, yeah... the fediverse, specifically, are AP servers, which is why we don't include diaspora for it.
It's decentralized and federated, to be sure, just not the "fediverse".
Fediverse is about federation. It’s not Activityverse. So yeah, email, Usenet, IRC, XMPP, Matrix… all Fediverse, all an antidote to corporate walled gardens.
Edit: not demeaning AP, it’s a great achievement and the services built upon it are a testament to its quality and forward-thinking.
I'm just saying that there's deficiencies in those other networks. Just that they are different networks.
Now if an xmpp user can directly message or communicate with a Mastodon user... then they'd be both part of the "fediverse".
I'd like to argue that using AP is an inconsistent rule for membership. For example, Diaspora has been considered to be part of the fediverse from early on, but it doesn't use AP.
I don't really know where to draw the line. AP simply isn't suitable for some applications, but it makes sense to include it for branding
I don't know of anyone who include d*, accepting the tiny number of d* pods that also speak AP.
I mean, nostr is also NOT part of the fediverse, but another federated and decentralized network.
Both Wikipedia and fediverse.party consider Diaspora, and a handful of other (mostly defunct) protocols as being part of the fediverse.
I don't really like the use of AP to be a qualification of being in the fediverse. There must be a better way to qualify a platform, even if it means that use of AP is a natural consequence.
afaik ap is not a hard requirement for being in the fediverse, matrix is often included because it has the same federation idea
Then email is a part of the fediverse? UUCP nets? IRC nets?
All federated, none speak AP.
I think a good working definition is "speaks the w3c standard AP". Otherwise, its totally lost its meaning.
what about diaspora?
D* generally isn't, excepting the few instances that also speak AP.
Absolutely, signal isn't federated, but I don't want my messaging app to be federated. I want my social media to be federated. Lemmy is good because it's open. Signal is good because it's shut.
That’s your preference and there’s nothing wrong with it. Doesn’t make Signal a Fediverse alternative. Matrix fits that use case.
I prefer my messaging to be federated for the same reason I don’t want my other services depending on the benevolence of a single actor. But that’s me.
Don't use Matrix the devs knew about sidechannel vulnerabilities and ignored them for years. This is peak negligence and should immediately disqualify you from touching anything security related.
You do not have a solution.
I do, use Signal if you care about privacy. They are the only game in town when it comes to reasonably secure chat software. Sure, I would prefer a federated alternative but I haven't found one yet that is always end-to-end encrypted, open source, implements forward secrecy, and is user friendly enough to be used by my grandmother.
Thanks
SimpleX is better, you don't even need a phone number.
SimpleX is cool, but fails the "my grandmother can use it" requirement. Signal has the huge benefit that is just as easy as WhatsApp. With Simplex you have to invite each of your friends individually.
From your link.
That is exactly what it says. They knew about security issues in their library and didn't fix them for years. This isn't being ignorant, this is negligence.
Unfortunately, the switch from YouTube to PeerTube has not worked for me so far. I can't find a decent instance (not full of right-wing/conspiracy content) with interesting stuff that also allows me to make an account.
Have a look here for potential instances: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115 and also check these links out for channels to follow: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205 / https://peertube.wtf/home
Ah. I see...
Don't worry, your successor isn't offering anything big. You'll still be around for many more days to come.
I don’t get the joke
How is signal considered part of the fediverse?
It's not federated, but it is an open source secure texting alternative.
My first thought too.
Yeah it's a bit off if we're emphasizing a switch to fediverse specifically and not better alternatives in general.
It should be something like SimpleX
Youtube is probably the one that you can't "Just Switch To Fediverse"
Youtube content is mainly by creators. If they won't leave, there will be no transition. And unlike reddit posts, you can't just reupload. Because they will copyright strike you and take it down. Also, videos take up a lot more space than just text and some low-res memes like reddit-type sites.
reddit is essentially a bunch of strangers talking to people, moving froms stranger Group A to stranger Group B is very easy to do. The reddit > Lemmy transition is probably one of the easiest. You're just joining a new group of strangers.
For everything else, your contacts will also need to switch.
For Mastodon, the people you follow will also need to switch. This is even harder than getting your friends to switch.
Hear me out.
Creators should be hosting peer tubes. And they should host exclusively their own content. Fans of their can subscribe to whatever systems they want to pay and support.
For creators, it's a backup for when YouTube the project inevitably fails. For fans as well. But it's also a backup of their content.
Tech-savvy content creators, sure...
Your average content creator that wants to make Minecraft videos? Unrealistic.
I hate the monopoly Youtube has, but all of the federated alternatives have a learning curve the general public isn't willing to deal with.
Not to mention it lacks any (ethical) monetization options. And the app is absolutely rudimentary, lacking even basic functionality.
Framasoft made it clear they don't want to make it a Youtube alternative though, however it could be through plugins. So there'd have to be a company or cooperative using it as a base to build upon, which is actually realistic. Especially European ones; not because Asia wouldn't be interested in being more independent on the US as well, but because Framasoft is from France and Europe actively works towards this goal anyway with lots of money behind it.
A lot of youtubers make a living posting videos.
They dont have a good enough reason to risk going to a much smaller audience with no ads and no membership system
They also probably arent knowledgeable enough about computers to switch
You don’t need to have a YouTube login to watch those. But you can join Peertube to post your content that you make without money as an end goal.
Well I switched from the birdsite to Mastodon because a) I like to shout in the void and b) see what other people are shouting into the void. Doesn't really ultimately matter who's doing the shouting. People who go to social media exclusively for *news* and *updates* are a bit strange when you really think about it. You've got to have the shout in you.
(I'm only being half facetious here)
Lol shouting in the void is a funny way to describe it. I mean... why even need the fediverse. I can shout at my mirror.
You also can't just switch from whatsapp to signal. I have hundreds of contacts on whatsapp that message me constantly there, and 2 on signal.
PipePipe is on F-Droid
Remember the early days of YouTube? When people made garage videos for fun? Remember Vines? When people were making videos instead of businesses making content?
That’s what Peertube is for. It’s to have fun. Showcase your high school band. Talk about your potted plants. Share your excitement about trains. It’s not to make money. It’s to live.
What does signal have to do with anything?
The post is really about abandoning the tech oligarchy more than specifically using federated technology.
technically nothing but it serves as a privacy respecting alternative to meta/google controlled messengers.
things like mastodon and pixelfed are rather easy to wrap your head around and replace their big tech counterparts with if you are the average user.
there is no real replacement for an instant messaging/sms like experience. matrix is at the moment still a bit too complicated to get into if you have come to expect a workflow like: download an app -> write your phone contacts a message.
so although it is not federated it is the best we have got at the moment in my opinion
I get that but the image is referring to it as part of the "fediverse" which it is not as it doesn't use ActivityPub.
There's also SimpleX, though it's much less popular. (not like Signal is used everywhere though, it's just a matter of what you switch your group to.)
SimpleX chat is pretty wild and untraditional (no user IDs), people should give it try.
It's cool, thought people should still be wary of it since it's new and backed by VC.
I'd give it a little more until i switch fully to it, but it 100% is better than WA.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It really looks like they managed to make an ID less chat as simple as possible. But the undeniable benefit of using one’s phone as ID is that when people switch, their contacts are already there. I think that friction alone will prevent normies from adopting it.
You're welcome :) (btw, nice username)
Yeah they've tried to make it as similar as whatsapp. But it's hard convincing your entire family to switch again after signal just because you found a cool new app to switch to, lol
I know, I’m not even going to try. I can already hear the crying and gnashing of teeth.
Unpopular Opinion Lemmy and PeerTube logo look ugly.
Unpopular opinion: your opinion is not unpopular at all.
I think it's just the colours for the peertube one. I like that it's three individual play icons to signify the federation aspect, but the colours are just dull.
Yeah it’s an easy fix to update the colors, logo shape can remain.
I like the Lemmy one, but peertubes logo looks like it's gonna stab my eyeballs in my sleep
The colors in the peertube logo are pretty hideous.
Lemmy is fine, just change the color of background.
Peertube is... well... needs improvement...
The Lemmy logo always looks so sad or angry to me. Wished he could look happier.
The only ones on the right I really like are signal and friendica. (I had never seen the friendica logo before. This is really well done whoever designed that. Good job.)
All the big guys of course can afford graphic design teams and marketing/PR research.
The notable exception for me is mastodon. While I’m still not a big fan of that logo either, it certainly looks better than the X logo. I’m guessing Musk DOGE’d his design teams in favor of some yes-men.
They're horrible
Signal is centralized, loops is closed source and not accepting new users.
Loops will be open sourced later they say.
That really is not a satisfying answer. It is incredibly nebulous and even if it did have a nice definition I guarantee most software developers will tell you a lot of software rarely reaches that state.
I can see why they might want to avoid 1000 GitHub issues bike shedding things but they could open source the code and just not have open contribution
or they can also disable submitting issues for now
Sometimes you’re ashamed of the ugly hacks you cobbled together to reach MVP, and you want to fix the stuff you know you need to fix first before being thrown to the wolves. I can respect that, for a limited time.
I mean maybe but you could also just say "we did some whacky shit here help us fix it please" and let the community help you in the effort. That's the beauty of open source. Then again they may have their reasons and frankly I'm not even interested in a TikTok like social media so w/e as long as they don't eat up their word it's fine.
That means very little to me. Actions speak louder than words, and it would probably *help* the development of loops if it was actually open source.
For a lot of FLOSS projects, it's common to keep the initial team small, so a product can be delivered fast, and gets opened up later.
It's to solve the "too many cooks" and prevent bikeshedding.
A lot of corpo espionage is there solely to tank potential competitors, which include FLOSS projects.
Made by the same dev as Pixelfed, which did a similar thing.
Which I think dansup should deserve our trust on this for quite a long time for doing. It isn't empty promises if they already made Pixelfed and opensourced it.
Like.. I suppose it could be a grift, anything could but I see no reason to question their goals or motives.\
Loops is anti-libre software confirmed.
anti? is it against libre software? because it doesn't seem so
So Matrix it is?
I was told that unless you self host, matrix is less secure because it leaks more metadata. Something to consider
Leaks more metadata? What does that mean?
sender, recipient, chatroom, what kind of event you sent (message, emoji, reaction, vote), if you responded to a message, room privilege changes, etc
but it's a question how big of a problem is that. they want to tackle it in the future, but that's far away for now I think
Damm, didn't know that, good to know
it's not even true information, the new tech stack is zero trust
What does this mean?
I support the cause in general but: Signal is not federated at all. It may seem like a decent alternative to WhatsApp but is it really? It still falls under the same US jurisdiction. Let's say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case? I don't think so. Sadly i can't name a much better alternative. Maybe matrix. But it has other issues.
Signal is open source. They absolutely do always comply with US warrants. They have never provided any information to US law enforcement, because *they can't access it*. They literally have no way of accessing the information contained inside the texts. The most they could provide is metadata, but they currently aren't collecting that. I also think if they started, it would not work well for their user base. You can see all their requests for information, and the responses they gave, here: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
I really hope they stand strong. We need some influential entities standing up to the shit going on. Sadly, given the current situation in the US I have to assume that the Trump gang will sooner or later try to crack down on Signal. Who knows, forcing them to give out meta data to identify dissidents etc.
At least the open-source app makes me hope that there's a little less nasty things they can do than Facebook/Whatsapp.
We should stop being naive. Immersing ourselves as a society into facebook and twitter significantly contributed to the shit situation we are in now. Going to Signal seems like a short term solution. We should have some idea where to go on the long term.
Facebook and twitter are not the same as signal. The signal protocol is a free open source project, that WhatsApp, Signal, and many other use. It secures the data so that whatever servers they are stored on, the company storing it does not know what the texts say. Facebook and Twitter are all about getting as much data as possible. Even though WhatsApp uses the signal protocol, they still collect all metadata with the texts (which is really what they want anyway). Moving to open source project is absolutely the long term goal to get out of this shit hole.
Jurisdiction is not that important. Even if it was in Switzerland it'd have to comply with international law enforcement and warrants. The key is that sure Signal is obliged to give out whatever data it has, but the point is that it doesn't have much useful data to give. It's the same as Mullvad, and a far smarter approach than "lol we just gonna ignore the warrant huhuhu look at us we host somewhere in Shitzerfuck" (oh btw "We are in X country which is not in N eyes" is just marketing).
Oh and btw the same goes for instances of the fediverse (which are ran by volunteers you need to trust), and if they don't comply and the US government *really* wants to break into them they probably will find a way. Doesn't even need some complicated backdoors or anything it just needs to find an OPSEC slip-up, do some social engineering, arrest someone or at worst find a bug to exploit, and I can guarantee that unless you have some serious security wizards running your instance you're not beating the FBI there and if the FBI is *really* persistent and focused on you for some reason then the wizards won't be enough you need state actors.
If your threat model actually includes the US government (aka you're actually in danger and not some paranoia or just-in-case situation, be realistic with yourself) and there's credible threats you may be targeted by it or other governments then you're probably going to be using tor, briar, all that jazz, and wouldn't be on lemmy. If you're just some guy who just needs to message your family and shit Signal is perfectly fine, I can tell you that unless you're a serious threat to the government they won't waste resources cracking down ways to capture you via signal or whatever you use that is even somewhat secure (so no telegram, no WhatsApp, no messenger, etc), even if you're a minority or activist, if not because you're not important enough then because they have other easier ways to do it.
Edit: oh and btw Signal was banned in Ruzzia (a country way more authoritarian than the US currently is) because the FSB couldn't crack it so that goes to show it is pretty secure.
Why do you say this? There are real data-sharing agreements between the Eyes.
This already happened with kolektiva, unfortunately, but from what I hear they've since strengthened their security.
1) There's data-sharing agreements with more than just the N eyes countries 2) If there's an international warrant for that data the company is obliged to comply regardless
The only countries in which n° 2 doesn't apply for the US are countries you really don't want your data in either.
In short, however: if a government really wants your data it will find a way to get it no matter where you store that data, so the best thing is to simply not store that data at all, Mullvad and Signal don't do that.
Is Threema still a good option? Anyone know? I know it's not a fediverse instance just a secure messaging platform. On that note though, can any federated platform really be used as secure messaging? Or is it too open?
My personal opinion is that Threema is still a viable alternative to WhatsApp. The app is open-source, there's even a 'libre' variant on F-Droid. The service is proprietary though. The jurisdiction (Switzerland) seems more trustworthy currently. I don't really understand the business model of Threema: It seems like they have some revenue from a commercial service "Threema Work". The initial cost for purchasing an app license does not really contribute to sustainability I guess. I suspect it is more for making scams more expensive. I hope they can be sustainable from that and don't need to start doing shit.
I use threema with family but getting others to use yet another app (especially for thin social connections) is difficult.
Depends on your threat model though, I guess.
Definitely no. Russian government already is aggressively prosecuting dissidents and you can't join Signal there. I don't know whether it's due to sanctions or if the government is blocking 2FA SMS messages. In either case, it is impossible to join without a phone number confirmation. At least I wasn't able to. I don't see the USA being that far off with all the recent TikTok drama.
What do you mean? You need a phone number to join Signal in any country.
And that's the problem. The whole privacy thing goes out the window because it relies on an insecure and state-controlled method for authentication. What's the use of it if it can be killed off in any country at a whim of its, or USA's government?
There is also simplex chat
instead of switching ive mostly just been ditching entirely. I need less time interacting with internet people.\
literally the only thing on this list im still using is facebook messenger, for my work colleagues. and youtube. everything else ive migrated (reddit-lemmy), or abandoned and torched
It’s funny how things work out.
I’ve spent years checking social media multiple times per day, and due to current (and not so current) events, I initially just deleted twitter. I tried mastodon, but it was a complete echo chamber. Twitter on the other hand was 25% bots and 50% porn, so I just deleted it. Turns out I didn’t miss it.
I recently did the same with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat. Guess what, not missing those either.
Facebook messenger is tough to get rid of though. I have kids that attend after school activities, and there aren’t really any easy fixes. I doubt I can successfully persuade 100+ people to migrate to signal just because of my political crusade.
It’s not being helped by the fact that ~75% of the people here use iPhones, so most communication not going through messenger goes through iMessage. Last I checked I knew a total of 4 people on signal, despite having 50+ people i regularly communicate with over messenger or iMessage.
Don't know till you try! And if you're playing the long game, you don't need to convince 100+ people -- the more individuals that join, the easier it will become to convince everyone else to make the switch too.
In this specific case, like my kids soccer or swimming team, I would need to convince 15 childrens parents, so 30 people (or more) to switch.
On top of that, the soccer club has more teams, and since soccer practice is scheduled by the club, the club itself would need to switch their ways of working, and that’s where it gets tough.
Facebook, for better or for worse, offers a free platform with a built in blog, instant messenger, calendar, reminders, and an easy way to send messages to all relevant people.
Signal only solves one or two of those problems, meaning they would have to find alternatives for the rest, and I for one don’t miss the time when everybody used some variant of a shared calendar (ie Google calendar) to schedule, and you’d be subscribe to 10+ calendars with notifications going off left and right.
Nor do I miss every club having its own poorly maintained Wordpress site, with ensuing loss of credentials because the admin used “hunter2” as their password.
These people are not tech nerds, they’re enthusiasts for whatever sport they’re teaching our kids, and we should make their jobs as easy as possible.
Only ones I use are YouTube and fb marketplace because Craigslist is totally dead here, but it's from an alt account I've never used for anything at all.
Check out Flohmarkt https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt Instance list here: https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt/wiki/flohmarkt-instances
I will definitely check that out and try to use it before checking marketplace, but I honestly can't imagine I'll find anyone selling anything near me. I'm fairly rural, and even the nearest "city" isn't exactly a thriving metropolis.
More recently I've felt like there's issues with being completely disconnected from any sort of critical mass. If I wanted to join a protest in my local city, I have doubts any of the fringe social networks could organize that. I can do my part to try to get more people on there.
It's part of why I joined BlueSky over X. It's more popular, and issues be what they are, that counts for a lot.
A federated social fitness app(like Strava) would be cool
Hi, I think too many people are focusing too much on the type of software included in this chart. I don't think the goal of the person that created the chart was to create the ultimate guide to move to the Fediverse or FOSS apps with all the options available for them. I believe it prioritizes simplicity, and it's clearly directed towards people unaware that these alternatives exist.
Most people I know don't even know what the Fediverse is, and I think this initiative is for them.
I know that debating which FOSS/Fedi apps are the best is a big matter of concern for people that are already aware of the problems some platform have. But focusing too much on this debate not only creates more division among supporters of FOSS/Fedi, but it is also drawing attention from the main point: Bringing more people to the Fediverse.
Thank you. Please jump in faster with a tldr of this on other posts like this.
Loops.video isn't accepting new users atm. Even if it was, I got in on early signup and I have next to zero functionality out of it rn. Just informing the curious masses
Im using it now. I never used tiktok but i can see the draw now.
Loops isnt even federated or open source yet. Deleted my account
I agree. If it's not libre from the start, we should not trust it. The term "open source" is ambiguous; they could just put it under some restrictive open-source license and then revert to closed source later. If it's put under a free software license like the GPL, then I'll feel better.
That seems a little extreme. I would maybe agree if 1) it wasn't being made by the guy who has already got an AGPL project in Pixelfed and 2) it was on open signups. Whilst software is invite-only or closed entirely I don't really see a problem in it not being open-sourced.
Doesn't it says gullible in their ToS?
Loops really isn't ready for primetime. It's too new and unpolished, and will need a bit more time.
I wonder if peertube can scale. YouTube has a whole sophisticated system for ingesting and transcoding videos into dozens of formats, with tradeoffs being made on computational complexity versus file size/bandwidth, which requires some projection on which videos will be downloaded the most times in the future (and by which types of clients, with support for which codecs, etc.). Doing this can require a lot of networking/computing/memory/storage resources, and I wonder if the software can scale.
Yeah it’s no where near ready for mass adoption. It’s made a couple improvements, but it crashes every time I try to leave a comment.
I find youtube to be the hardest one on this list
Youtube is the only one on this list that I use and I only use it with an ad blocker.
Agreed as peertube is great the creators i enjoy to watch dont upload there
I keep seeing this type stuff but neither peertube or friendica are genuine replacements at this point, mastodon is weaksauce compared to akkoma or a misskey fork, and loops is alpha software. also yes signal is centralized but it just works and has contact discovery so it owns matrix and xmpp when compared to whatsapp. basically none of this stuff is truly ready
As software, PeerTube is great and there’s actually plenty of content to consume if you can find it. The more content creators we can get to use PeerTube, the more appealing PeerTube will also become.
Check this link out, if looking for content: https://peertube.wtf/
"If you can find it" ... that's the crucial point I suppose ... but without a discovery algorithm, interesting creators, and a VAST content archive, it can hardly be called an "alternative" for YouTube.
When I was looking into it I found the best use case was to use it as a self-hosted video archive to replace/extend my Vimeo. At least at that point, all instances that were remotely interesting were not taking any users, and the generic ones seemed to be very far away from what I'm doing content-wise.
And I guess as long as that's the case, and you have no ways to monetize content nor any significant reach due to the federated fragmentation, I don't think it's an interesting software/federated platform for creators ...
Check this link out: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115 for servers and have a look at https://peertube.wtf/ for some of the content available on PeerTube.
If you are a content creator, you need to take the first step. Viewers will come after you, not before.
I'm running my own instance, and typically post my stuff on mastodon, so I guess I have made the first step?
It's a bit of a Catch-22 I suppose ... low numbers of viewers makes it less attractive for creators, and fewer interesting creators make it less attractive for viewers.
Taking into account the other aspects that make it less attractive for viewers (fragmentation and inconvenience ... having to dig through "Find the right instance for you" tutorials, no matter how well curated, can be a bit of a turn-off compared to just going to a central point and find what you're looking for), I don't have that much hope that it'll reach a critical mass of both viewers and creators to catapult Peertube into large-scale relevance ... as sad as I am about saying that.
Cool. What’s your instance?
And yes, it is a catch-22 or a “chicken before the egg” issue, but I’m confident we will see even more content creators on PeerTube in the future.
matrix too has contact discovery, if you add your phone number (or email). most users don't, and that tells me something
they don't have it on the new app yet, and it's not super intuitive to begin with compared to signal or whatsapp
the new app is quite pre-release like still. there is also still no new app for the web (and desktop), or is there?
Can you please elaborate? Idk what this means
It means that, because signal mandates you to use your phone as ID, all your phone contacts that have signal are immediately signal contacts. Matrix, XMPP, SimpleX, etc. can’t really do that. That’s by choice, to preserve privacy, but it does create a friction point when migrating.
matrix and xmpp just don't have the intuitive onboarding that signal has when coming from whatsapp
I was already on Mastodon by just having a Vivaldi (the chromium browser) account, and it's just lovely I've spent most of the day setting up lemmy, even though I joined feddit.dk 2 years ago, it's only just now I'm taking it seriously.
And, while not related to the fediverse per se, I switched to linux a year ago. The only service that's hard to drop/switch away from is Youtube imo.
I’m having more trouble dropping Facebook messenger.
Pretty much everything “real life social” is organized through that. While I haven’t posted anything on Facebook for years, news from my local community, kids after school activities, birthday parties, etc are all organized through that.
It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing. If you have a decent ad blocker and don’t interact, even if you’re logged in, you’re already out of YouTube. Leave your interactions and uploads to Peertube.
I’ve removed yt from my phone and it was a positive change. I just watch stuff I get like sent or I search for. No more rabbit holes. Also no ads, background playback, playback with the phone locked… the only drawback is that closed captions don’t work full screen.
Switching from WhatsApp to any other messaging service isn't a realistic option for quite many places. I'd be more than willing to switch but of all the people in my contacts (including my entire customer base) there's like 3 people using Signal but every single one of them has WhatsApp. Even the 60+ year olds.
This does not help.
And yet it gets repeated (and upvoted) in every thread.
Acts like a psyop to stop us finding solutions. Now, I will respond and you should too.
That's Lemmy in a nutshell. Guillotine and Luigi memes are constantly repeated because they know that no one's actually going to act on that stuff, but any time anyone suggests a practical means to weaken the oligopoly people come out of the woodwork to shut it down.
You think? I consider these memes more like a reminder of our global to-do list. It doesn't mean we can't selfhost a matrix server at the same time.
Help with what?
Same (Brazil), Whatsapp is pretty much a requirement and I hate that I'm forced to give Meta my information by using their shitty app.
I’ll link my previous comment and add that it’s easier for Brazil.
Lembra de quando prenderam uns políticos pelos bate-papos do Telegram? É só lembrar a tua família que o WhatsApp tem a mesma fraqueza. Pergunta se eles confiam no Zuckerberg outra mandar os dados bancários que toda família manda de vez em quando. Documentos escaneados, dados pessoais…
Não consegui convencer os meus amigos mas confesso que poderia ter sido um pouco mais insistente. Quando o pessoal manda screenshot de transação bancária pelo wpp pra acertar conta de bar, dá pra dar uma instigada de leve. “A AI do Zuckerberg adorou ver os teus dados.” E deixa assim, vez por outra um comentário curto pra elevar a consciência de privacidade das pessoas. Uma hora vem. Ou não, mas tás fazendo tua parte.
There is always SMS for these.
Hey, wouldn't it be great if Signal still supported SMS?
Personally I see no benefit in having them in the same application.
There benefit would be exactly what this top comment is about. For all those people in your contacts who don't use signal, you could still use signal to message them, it would just be an SMS message. It would therefore also become more enticing for people to switch from their stock SMS app to signal, because it would make no difference in terms of who you can send SMS messages to. It would allow for the signal user base to grow, solving the issue of "no one uses signal"
At least WhatsApp is encrypted and let you have propre group chat
WhatsApp's a scam, anti-libre software.
Yes but it is still better than SMS.
Saying it's secure feeds their scam. At least we don't pay for it like SMS.
I would say it's a step by step work. I have moved my family from Whatsapp to Signal years ago and then to Matrix. I forced them in some way but I just said "sorry if you want to keep contact we will have to find another app, I don't accept Whatsapp ToS." It took some time but my close family and friends are there and I regularly get someone to join, friend or family. It's still close circle but it's also a good thing. Same went with work. Colleagues wanted to do a whatsapp group for a project and I basically said "No, best I can do is Signal." and they went with it.
Yeah I don't want to be that guy telling others to install an app to stay in contact with me. That would be extremely hypocritical on my part as I'm the one those people who refuses to install any apps people tells me to and it wouldn't solve the issue anyway as then I'd still be using WhatsApp as well but now I just have one more additional app to communicate with certain people.
Nowdays doesn't seem to matter where ever you go there's always an app you need to install to do XY and Z. I don't even have a Lemmy app as I only use it via browser. Same applies to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pixelfed, Reddit and so on.
You are wrong on that: It would be a start to solving the issue! Every little step forward counts.
As for 1000 apps replacing website, I could not agree more... In addition you get much better control on a website like adblocks and javascript control.
in these groups theres often someone that just cannot install a new app because their phones storage is full and they can't afford a better phone (or just don't want to spend money on it). i wouldn't insist with these people and just accept using whatsapp
I stopped with Signal. Getting coworkers/family to move to signal was enough work, but I also trust the signal protocol enough to use a centralized service
My trouble as well, I'd love to switch from Whatsapp, but literally every person I talk to and most people in my city/estate/country uses It.
There's a "vendor lock" term, maybe this would be a "social lock"?
It has to start with someone. I made my entire family switch to signal by boycotting WhatsApp. I just said, of you want to contact me your can either SMS, email or install signal. It was surprisingly easy. For non family members, I tell people to switch all the time. Most of my contacts now use signal. It was worth the trouble.
Don't get me wrong, I tried the switch, multiple times.
Where I live the vast majority uses pre-paid plans that give internet bandwidth, some calls but hardly no SMS, so that's not an alternative, unless in an emergency or you want to contact someone unilaterally.
If I want someone to use it, they will have to convince their other circles to do the same, which statically decreases the chances of switching, and you get things like: "but we're already talking fine on Whats (whatsapp)", "it's too much trouble to have another app just for you", "I don't care who's behind the app, its works fine".
To add salt to injury, many places (like stores, restaurants, salons, etc), have WhatsApp as the main communication method, some companies will even have the option to update you on things like delivery or banking solutions via WhatsApp.
It's something so ingrained in our culture at this point that is super hard to change.
I'm not looking for solutions here, just stating a sad state of affairs, I like privacy but it's not always an option living in society.
Yeah same for me. I guess some (quite many actually) people are aware Whutsapp&Co is evil and are just waiting for an opportunity to make the move.
I got my family out after some high profile data breaches on WhatsApp. We feel a lot safer sharing personal info over Signal and the switchover was painless. Even the video calls are great on signal.
There’s inertia, for sure, but once you highlight that some evil corp isn’t the one handling grandma’s inheritance data, it makes for a compelling case.
We all still have WhatsApp because we need to talk to the others. But our family chat only exists on Signal now.
why signal?
I'm surprised this hasn't been said yet... but what I hate most about Signal is its requirement for a phone number. I don't want to be identified, and I want to be able to create multiple separate accounts with different identities if I want to.
I also hate the fact that it's a mobile-first service. Yes, there is a desktop application (and just one really crappy one at that), but it's clearly designed to revolve first and foremost around your phone and be virtually impossible to use without one. As someone who hates writing on a 3-inch screen, this is a also non-starter for me.
I understand the arguments about perfectionism, but this is too much. I'll stick with XMPP, Matrix and IRC, thanks.
That's why Signal's spreading and your not.
It's meant to replace people's text messaging apps with .i imal barriers to entry. People's existing SMS/MMS contacts aren't stored by user account names, but by phone number.
When I added Signal to my device, I was able to open up my existing contacts and go.
My understanding from what you're writing (and from this article) is that the phone number is really the account number. That's all well and fine, but then they force you to verify that the number is yours (or at the very least, one that you have access to because you need to receive a confirmation over SMS), so you can't use something more private. And sure, it makes it a little harder to find your new contact, but I don't think it's really that big of a deal - just exchange your other "account number" via some other channel.
Besides, don't think for a second that when this identifying information inevitably falls into the wrong hands that it will benefit you in any way. "What are you hiding, citizen?" and all that bullshit.
The part of it that bothers me is the sense of entitlement that these companies exhibit. The "Give us your phone number or fuck off" sentiment is something I just refuse to accept. If Google forces us to do the same and we refuse, what makes Signal think that we'll do it for them when they're so much smaller by comparison? Especially when you're trying to claim you're more secure and private to people that much more tech savvy than average, this just comes off as not understanding your audience very well. I'm sure I'm not the only one that is holding out against using Signal because of this.
The last thing we need is more barriers to entry. People have hundreds of SMS /MMS contacts they'vebuilt up over decades. You can't expect people to say "fuck all that" and start over from scratch.
And you also WANT verification unless you want some bot setting up an account with my phone number so they can scam people pretending to be me.
It really sounds like your issue with Signal is it's not the correct service for your use. It's like declaring a wrench bad because it's not good at driving nails.
They used to allow their client to be used to send unsecured SMS. Then they stopped. Whatever they thought they were doing, they killed the simplest path to onboarding laypeople they had. I kinda gave up on signal after that.
No ones pays for SMS.
Exactly. No one pays for it because it's free
Not in most places.
Why didn't I hear about this until the day of?
A LinkedIn alternative, anyone?
Mastodon seems to be filling this niche (professional networking and job seeking) at the moment. I'm curious if something more targeted is emerging yet as well.
Good to hear. Just yesterday I decided to remove my LinkedIn account!
But will it have the lunatics and toxic positivity?
Loop.video is “currently not accepting new members”.
It's also a pretty rough experience tbh. It took about 2 days for me to gain access after signing up. Only usable via the Android sdk or iOS beta app. The infrastructure just isn't there yet.
Do you mean the android apk?
Damn
I was able to sign up just after seeing this comment. The wait is only 2 days...
FB Marketplace --> Flohmarkt is missing!
I haven't heard of it yet but it's very interesting! link for those who struggle to find it among german search results
Does it have categorization like eBay?
sorry, I don't know what that's like, and also haven't used this
I like this. I hope it starts conversations. Does anyone know if there are good alternatives to Discord?
Zulip or Revolt
yo, fuck discord, this is by far the most important one to emulate for me.
Matrix. Seems to be the hottest thing for group chats. Also what a lot of open source projects that used IRC before are switching to (or, if not switching, are providing a bridge for).
IRC?
IRC isn't really a replacement for Discord given that discord replaced irc for most people. Discord does a lot more than irc.
Fair point
@M154nthr0p3 @malcriada_lala that is a nice one. Or #xmpp ;-)
Revolt is the way.
TeamSpeak is doing an overhaul to be similar to Discord. You can self host.
oh cool!
revolt.chat
Mumble + Element (Matrix)
Yes, there is Matrix
Thank you for this! Bookmarked this post, downloaded the image, sent it to all my friends. Love you!
Yeah. This guide is going to make some rounds in my peer group. I've got a lot of dissatisfied friends who just need an easy guide to remind them what to try. Very cool!
Agreed!
Anyone on Loops? I tried signing up a few days ago, but the sign up page wasn't working. Now the landing page says they aren't accepting new users.
It took a day before I got my activation email. There was no indication on the website it was gonna take that long, but I'm guessing it's early enough that it might still require manual approval.
That said it's still very much a ghost town
How is it a ghost town if there is a new video someone posts like every 10 minutes?
Are you kidding me?
I thought it was more than that when I called it a ghost town.
Imagine if in the entirety of Lemmy, in all channels of all instances, there was a total of 6 posts per hour, and none of them were in channels you wanted to subscribe to.
Try Matrix or XMPP instead of signal
I miss Jabber so much. There was a brief time where my one XMPP client and an easy to install server could let me chat with everyone I knew, whether they were on ICQ, Y!, gchat, MSN, IRC, or AIM. We fucking HAD interoperability.
This should promote matrix, not signal
Are any of these actually good?
I mean, aside from Lemmy. I tried Mastadon and no one was actually on it, seems like everyone is jumping to Bluesky.
I can vouch for Signal. I got my whole family out of facebook messenger to make a new place for family chat. Even my parents in their mid 60s had no problem changing.
I can vouch for Matrix unfortunately it is not listed and instead they mentioned Signal which is further from the fediverse.
Depends on how many you follow. Lemmy is way more dead than Mastodon for me.
People only move to Bluesky because they don't want to change their thinking (picking instances is hard!) and keep using "Twitter".
I can understand it. I was banned without reason from 3 of the top mastodon instances before even posting anything. Creating new accounts is a hassle, and it's easy to lose faith in the system when bans happen without reason and none of the instances cared to respond to my appeals. In heinsight, I'm sure the ban was due to my username looking like a hash, but I still find it crazy that the appeals were ignored.
Dqw4, I'll never forget that link.
It’s the XcQ at the end that does it for me.
It might feel that way at first, but my Mastodon feed is very robust nowadays. You just need to follow more people.
George Takei is active of mastodon. There are many journalists and scientists. Tons of developers. A few small celebs. Also, many people I don't want to be here are not here. That's a plus for me.
I've seen some authors I like on Mastodon, like William Gibson. It's a quieter place but I like that about it, as someone who never used Twitter.
Friendly reminder that peertube can expose your IP address.
To stop it, disable "Help share videos being played" in your options
Where is matrix?
Right in the Signal box, it says "Or Matrix/XMPP". It's super tiny for some reason.
It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work; when you go to church; when you pay your taxes.
has anyone tried Friendica? is it devoid of people?
That’s ironic
The UI is fucking awful and way too complex, so it's difficult to get anything done. I've tried two different instances and found them both to be unusable.
It's a shame because Friendica is way more powerful than most Fediverse platforms -- they leverage way more of ActivityHub's potential, such as a system for calendars + events. But the UI needs to get sorted out before it's ready for mass adoption.
Is there an app for Loops.video?
Edit: Go to https://loops.video/ Make an account, and you should get an email afterwards to download the app from TestFlight or an Android APK.
Yup, its just called Loops, there is a download link once you log in for the APK directly or to the iOS testflight. (On a related note why does everything keep like this picture keep calling it "Loops.video" when it is just called "Loops"? - we don't call it "Lemmy.ml", "Mastodon.social" or "Peertube.tv")
Mastodons have been extinct for millennia and don't come up in conversation often. Lemmy and Peertube aren't words at all. Loops is a pretty common word, though, so it needs something extra if you want people to know what you're talking about.
The problem is the moment there is another instance then loops.video won't even make sense as that is just the name of the instance and not the application.
There is one ! I have downloaded the APK, but I think there is also a testflight for iOS
Oh no, I wasn't aware, sorry for you :( Hope they take in new users soon
PeerTube appears to be completely devoid of content
It feels pretty quiet here. At least going by active posts. They're often the same for a while. New is a bit better. Unless it's my expectations that are wrong?
no, there's tons of furries, like the rest of the fediverse. >.>
Take a look at the 2 pinned posts in this community: https://lemmy.wtf/c/peertube
Deleted by author
In my case I deleted instagram, instead of whatsapp I'm going to Matrix (I'll see who I get there), I changed Reddit for Lemmy and I'm trying to find an active Peertube instance that allows for account creation, live, and uploading videos
Check this list out: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115
yeah I'll be honest, peertube is nowhere near a youtube replacement
I'm not really all that invested in trying out Friendica, because Facebook is basically the exact sort of social network service that I really don't give a darn about. I wanted to check it anyway, but the only tangible information on what Friendica is about is the project/marketing page. I can't browse the instances. If I go to your massive social platform, the last thing I want to see is just a brick wall of a login page. Then I looked at fedidb and... um, *those aren't huge user numbers.*
So I guess I'll keep posting on the services that seem more sensible to me, like Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy.
Check out Circles
Loops really seems like it sucks. You can't see how long any video is, there's no way to thumb down really bad videos, and about 80% of all the videos seem like "really bad videos". I never even used tik tok, but im sure it wasn't content similar or it never would have gotten popular.
loops is still very early in development. people need to tamper their expectations.
Loops definitely needs more features but it's early. I've enjoyed it.
It’s for short form videos, it’s mimicking its competitors UX right now (namely YouTube shorts, Instagram reels and TikTok). Neither has thumb down or show you how long a video is.
As for content… the users generate content, not the software. So… how many good videos have you uploaded?
Could the software selection be more diverse? There's also MBin/Piefed, and Misskey/Sharkey/Firefish/Akkoma/Iceshrimp. Just a suggestion tho. (obviously they can't all fit in the image, but it would be nice to see an alternative to popular software like lemmy/mastodon.)
PS: Signal is not federated at all, it's centralized. It should either be replaced with SimpleX or matrix/Jabber.
Not if you want people to actually consider switching instead of feeling overwhelmed and confused.
If only there was a website that helps you choose, instead of inclining users to just use lemmy and only lemmy.world anyway. (also with mastodon and mastodon.social).
Overall i think more software choices are great but you are right in that it could repel users :/
Signal is better than WA tho.
True, i'll take it over wa any day.
Unfortunately, I don't know a single person who uses Friendica, and that is also, unfortunately, self-defeating because there's no way I could convince them to go without more than just me using it.
Nice to see the rear of them, was tough making the call to disconnect from a bunch of people, but I've told them where to find me. Hopefully it snowballs!
It will. I did the same thing a couple years ago. Make sure you share links to things like articles, videos, news, from the fediverse to your contacts. That helps them switch, when they see the platform in their mobile browser.
This is such a beautiful guide!
Great graphic! The only things I use on this list are reddit and youtube. Trying peertube now. I'm confused about whatsapp and facebook messenger - don't people just use the texting app that comes with their phone?