Does anyone know where this is at? I thought WhatsApp were being forced by the EU in 2024 to introduce this under the Digital Markets App? I’m googling, but am finding very little info.
It would be great if we could use Signal to communicate with WhatsApp groups. The sooner I can delete WhatsApp the better.
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I also am waiting for news on this. I think many users lack of an european view. In Europe Whatsapp is a monopoly for Instant Messaging, look at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1005178/share-population-using-whatsapp-europe/. And you do not break a Monopoly with “remove whatsapp and use only signal”. I only have 1 contact in Signal, two years ago I had 5 contacts. If I remove Whatsapp, I lack of IM. Period.
Signal has E2EE encryption, Signal collects very few metadata. If they collect very few metadata, they have very few metadata to expose to Whatsapp. If Whatsapp forces them to provide more metadata, they could argue and even ask for arbitration with the European Comission.
But the lack of interest to ever consider the interoperalibity seems to me they are not interested in the european market. They do not want to grow in Europe to become the best privacy-respectful IM solution (with users).
I’m looking forward to the day when I confederate my own fucking messaging server. But I doubt that’ll ever come.
I think a lot of the fediverse should introduce Matrix as part of their deployment for private messages directly.
Or XMPP - it’s more accessible to host.
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Now that iPhones have RCS messaging, is something like this still desired? Can’t everyone just use RCS instead (assuming that everyone has a somewhat modern phone/OS that supports RCS). Or am I not seeing something here?
Well except that RCS is locked up by Google. I don’t believe there are any foss implementations.
Not only that, but there were reports that even Google’s implementation was stealthily turned off on custom ROMs or rooted phones :/
Not even stealthily they just required some device validation bullshit iirc. Basically they require the ROM is signed by a Google certificate. They don’t do that for custom roms even GrapheneOS after the android dev team request they get added multiple times.
I’m on GrapheneOS so RCS isn’t a solution for me.
Interesting point. Does that mean iPhones and Android can now have a shared group over imessage/whatever it’s called in Android? Are those messages encrypted?
I’d rather my Signal not be federated sigh Facebook at all. I’d be fine downloading a secondary Signal-owned app just for Whatsapp contacts (that way I don’t have WhatsApp on my phone), but I do not want my standard Signal traffic routed through Facebook’s data-guzzling, privacy-eroding servers.
Isn’t the whole point of E2E encryption that it doesn’t matter. And since signal has recently implemented sealed sender. Sending your communication to someone on a Facebook server might actually be more secure.
Federating would mean handing off chat metadata to Meta and other for-profit companies in the future.
I don’t see how anyone excited to use Signal would like that. It very much defeats the purpose of using Signal.
This is not federation, this is signal being able to send message to a WhatsApp server and WhatsApp being able to interpret it to send it to a WhatsApp user. WhatsApp wouldn’t know more than what it already knows when you inevitably need to use the app to reply to your grandma or whatever.
A big plus however is that you can convince friends and family to switch since they would be able to keep chatting with their family and friends, so the entry barrier lowers by a ton.
This is not federation and it is great.
Okay, hear me out, but I think it’s actually beneficial.
Your content itself is encrypted, e2e so u don’t need to worry about that.
The signal protocol has recently introduced sealed sender. sealed sender is completely useless if all communications are going through a centralised server, such as the signal server (You can deanonimise senders easily). If the traffic travels across multiple servers with sealed sender, then it is theoretically impossible to reveal who the sender is unless you have communications with that other server give u info on who the sender was. So if you trust signal not to be collecting your metadata, then you must also trust them, not to be giving your metadata to metadata.
The benefit would be the ability to chat with those refusing to move away from WhatsApp without having to use the Whats App. I get why they aren’t going for it, but I guess it could be handy.
So? Those of us who have switched to signal clearly don’t want our data going through meta. Just stop using WhatsApp.
I’ve even got old people using it.
I mean I love the passion and I love Signal too but I’m not going to stop messaging my family and friends over their decision to use WhatsApp. Can’t get everyone to switch.
And if they had interoperability towards WhatsApp and had their own stuff too those not using it wouldn’t have to have anything to do with WhatsApp
Eff em.
Family, friends and most people in general I know use WhatsApp. It’s very very popular in some places.
Last I heard Signal wasn’t interested in federating with WhatsApp so that initiative basically died before it was born.
It would go against their principles and the mission of the non-profit that runs Signal. They don’t store any message data on their servers (unlike WhatsApp), and WhatsApp mines as much data as they can from its users.
How much and to what extent, I can’t say, but allowing Signal to federate would essentially let Meta start mining and storing Signal user data. Fuck that noise.
The President of the Signal Foundation (Meredith Whittaker) has commented on this in this podcast episode. Skip to 1:05:45.
I wasn’t aware that it was only about Signal. Thought messengers in general must be able to communicate with each other.
If I understand this document correctly, it would mean that the entire connection somehow gets routed through Meta’s servers. I can fully understand the reluctance of other parties, including Signal, to do that, and I wonder how this is actually compliant with the DMA.
I think that’s only the case for people on a meta client. I would assume for people on a signal client get their requests proxied to meta via a signal server.
Just delete it now. Tell your friends that you’re moving because of all the tech oligarchs that just got handed the keys to the government and the economy. Tell your friends that Signal is run by a 501©3 nonprofit and actually cares about privacy.
I left Meta products in 2010, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. You deserve not to “be the product” anymore.
This is pretty close to how I did it.
The “one or the other” thing is a fallacy. You have just one, but they’re clearly happy installing stuff like WA - so tell them to install another app. It’s not like they have to switch.
If they subsequently come to realise the value of Signal in time, all the better.
If installing both helped you, then perhaps that’s a good strategy for some. I’m more of a “leave the abusive relationship and cut ties” kind of person, which is why I don’t advocate for both at the same time. People often end up going back to the familiar option, rather than trying something new.
As a side note, that’s not what a fallacy is. Fallacies are invalid logical statements, and I didn’t make any false statements or present any sort of false dichotomy. A false dichotomy would be if I said something like, “You have to choose between Signal or WhatsApp,” which is obviously false because you can choose both.
Though again, that’s not something I advocate on purpose, due to the aforementioned issue I have with “being the product,” and it is not fallacious or deceptive to exclude the suggestion of installing both in light of that additional premise.
I think you’ve misunderstood few things in my reply. I’ll clarify…
First, I meant the person with multiple IM clients will be the one who “doesn’t see the problem” with WhatsApp (or whatever). The person moving to Signal just has Signal.
Second, I wasn’t saying you used a fallacy. I was pointing out that when someone thinks of using (or are recommended to use) another IM client, they almost always think they have to uninstall what they’re currently using. (It is more accurate to call it a false dichotomy.) It’s a mystery to me why people think this way about IM clients, as many of us have multiple browsers installed, for example.
Third, my reply was about those you communicate with online, not you. Nothing in my reply was directed at you. 😊
Unfortunately this doesn’t actually work. Even if people do try Signal, they see they only have one or two contacts, and they go back to WhatsApp.
I got my entire Snapchat gc (15 people) and a little more to switch. The key isn’t dropping an announcement of “hey I’m moving”, you talk to each person individually; starting with the most likely to switch. Then go up the line, share who you’ve already got to join if you’re met with resistance. if you save the most difficult people for last, telling them almost everyone else is already there is usually enough.
If someone along the way has refused to move for the time being, you can revisit them later after you’ve got more people to move. I didn’t 100% nail my judgement of who would and who wouldn’t, but I was able to go back and revisit those who didn’t.
If you can, reach out to people in person; I got a few this way. You have to express that you will not be accessible otherwise and will only be present on signal moving forward. It helps if you have a reputation for following through :3
Likely not everyone is going to move over. I’ve accepted that there’s some people I probably won’t end up talking to ever again. I’ve got my main group over, the ones that actually respect that I want more security (and less clown-show shit that Snapchat has)
Human nature wants to stay put, you have to have some strategy or it won’t work.
Also a lot of people are pissed at Meta for lobbying for TikTok’s ban. Use that with the relevant people, if applicable
And you should call them whiny, scared little babies for doing so. But I digress.
Other people have succeeded in getting friend/family groups to switch to better E2EE options, so I believe that most people who say it can’t be done haven’t actually tried.
I’ve tried extensively. For years. I was a regular Signal donor, too.
I don’t know where you’re from, but in much of the world, asking someone to use something other than WhatsApp is like saying “stop using email”, it’s an extremely difficult sell.
So they either keep Signal around and be able to talk to you, or they don’t. They don’t need to stop using WA to use Signal.
If they don’t want to do that, it’d mean that you would have to keep WA around for the one or two contacts you have there (and only there), which is somewhat comparable, actually, if you disregard the “but meta is short for metastasis, actually” bit.
Which one of the two it ends up being is between you and your contacts.
Signal declined, despite the EU bending over backwards and handing them the chance on a silver platter to become relevant.
IMO it’s a mistake, like getting rid of SMS support was (which is far less secure than WhatsApp yet Reddit/Lemmy seem to be angry about that but glad about lack of WhatsApp interoperability?? I guess it’s because Americans don’t really use WhatsApp so it’s not a big deal to them, whereas SMS is).
It would have been an amazing opportunity to help those that want to use Signal actually use it.
Yes, I’m aware Meta scrapes what metadata they can from messages, but if you make this clear in Signal when you talk to a WhatsApp user then I don’t see the issue, after all it’s what they did for SMS chats yet everybody loved that feature!
People trying Signal because it’s compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that’s a good thing.
The Signal foundation seems to care more about being ideologically pure for its 10 users than they do about making a small compromise that leads to far more users and far more Signal-to-Signal chats. It seriously disappointed me, and I stopped my £10 monthly donation hearing that bad news. I was so invested in Signal because I thought it was a great app, but there’s no point of financially supporting the growth of an organisation that vehemently rejects growth, I was throwing my money away.
I went from having 10 contacts on Signal down to just one after the SMS purge. I want to use this app but it’s pointless. Nobody wants to use an app that nobody uses, and Signal doesn’t seem to want any users either.
Frankly, I don’t buy their excuse. If they were truly that ideologically pure about absolute privacy, they’d never have added SMS support in the first place! And they wouldn’t have tied accounts to phone numbers either!
I think the reason they ditched SMS was down to development costs. Maintaining that functionality, as well as building RCS support, is far more expensive than simply cutting the feature out and trying to salvage some “it’s about privacy!” PR. I think the same is true for WhatsApp integration.
E: I knew this would start getting heavily downvoted once the Americans started logging on. Please try to understand that WhatsApp is big in much of the world. Everybody uses it. My bank wouldn’t let me take out a mortgage without WhatsApp. That’s how ingrained it is. Being able to use Signal and still receive messages from people would go a long way in getting people to install the app.
People trying Signal because it’s compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, and that’s a good thing.
75% of my signal contacts would delete signal and just use whatsapp if interOp happened… I’ve already slowly lost 1 or 2 contacts a year because i’m the only one they know on signal and they either gave up or forgot to reinstall when they got a new phone
The 75% of your contacts you describe sound like they installed Signal only to talk to you or at most a handful of people, while most of their social circle is on WhatsApp. These people are trapped on WhatsApp exactly because there is no interoperability.
Ok, that’s your guess.
90% of my contacts did leave Signal because of the SMS removal. And that’s SMS, which nobody uses.
People being able to use Signal without being cut off from the world would be massive in terms of getting people to use signal. Which like I said, would mean more Signal-to-Signal chats, which would bring more and more people to signal once they see that it’s an actual worthwhile platform.
I’m simply sharing my own experience. It’s not a “shot in the dark”
There would likely be fewer signal users because a lot of normies only installed signal because one or two of their friends convinced them to. Once they figure out that interOp exists, why would they keep using signal (where only 2 or 3 of their paranoid weirdo friends hang out) when they could just use whatsapp to talk with their signal friends?
Ive had multiple people tell me that they only keep signal around because of me… While i’m flattered, it doesnt bode well for signal.
There would be more people willing to try Signal because they would still be able to talk to people and not become a social outcast.
More people using signal would then mean more Signal-to-Signal chats.
More Signal-to-Signal chats is a good thing.
People trying Signal because it’s compatible with WhatsApp that everybody uses would lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats
would it, though? why would anyone move away from Whatsapp if they could talk to Signal users without switching apps?
would it, though
Yes? 100% it would?
A fair amount of people don’t want to use WhatsApp, but they have no real choice because it’s practically a requirement for living in modern society.
If you make it so they can still chat to people on WhatsApp, they can go to Signal without worrying about that.
why would anyone move away from Whatsapp if they could talk to Signal users without switching apps?
Why would anybody play games on Linux via proton if they could just stay on Windows? Because they don’t like Windows.
Like I said above, plenty of people don’t like Meta, they use WhatsApp because there’s no real choice. Offer them a choice, and more will take the plunge.
And why would anybody move to Signal if they can’t talk to anybody?
The massive drop in users after getting rid of SMS support shows that people are willing to use Signal if they can still talk to people, but aren’t willing to use it when they can’t.
why would anybody move to Signal if they can’t talk to anybody?
why would anybody move to Signal if it’s no different in terms of privacy anymore? That’d be the consequence of interoperability.
You’d have better privacy when talking Signal to Signal. Interoperability would be towards those using WhatsApp and then it’d be either using Signal to chat with them or being forced to use WhatsApp’s app.
I’m assuming they’d have two different ways to communicate instead of just switching it all to WhatsApp’s system.
Because more people would be on signal, which means more Signal-to-Signal chats.
As I explained in my post.
I doubt it would lead to more signal-to-signal chats. With interoperability, they would be handing off their data to Meta, at which point users will just keep using WhatsApp as most are today.
If getting away from Meta and other for-profit companies is no more, what will be the selling point of Signal?
How could it not lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats?
The biggest problem with signal is that nobody uses Signal. Everybody uses WhatsApp.
If you make it so people can switch to signal without it completely cutting you off from the world, then more people will use it, which will lead to more Signal-to-Signal chats, which will lead to signal becoming widespread enough that people shift from WhatsApp.
People that do use signal value privacy or just want to get away from predatory companies
Once interoperability breaks this, what’s going to be the reason for people to use it?
There’s a good chance Signal will have even less users than it does today if that happens, because the few users who care will leave.
Everybody uses WhatsApp.
and there needs to be a reason for people to switch; what’s that then?
As long as you have a way to know if it’s a Signal to whatsapp conversation, I don’t see the problem.
If you only want to talk to Signal users, you could just deactivate the interooerability option.
Yeah I also found that decision to be really disappointing. Before you could just use Signal for all your messaging and it would smartly use its own protocol if you both had accounts. Now it’s relegated to dedicated Signal users, which yeah I’ve got like 4 contacts left.
Signal declined,
Signal’s management is similar thing that Google did to mozilla.
They are there to keep freedom enjoyers occupied and feeling like we are sticking to daddy and owner class but in reality is a psyop. As long as edge lord are busy jerking them selves off, it is working.
Current signal management is there to ensure that signal never goes mainstream.
Obviously still use them as that’s they the best current offering once balanced for ease of recruitment.
We need something better though and I am always on look out.
Matrix and SimpleX are on my radar but let’s what market decides.
it requires Whatsapp to open up interoperability with other services if they request that. Signal has already mentioned in the past that they wouldn’t be interested.
I don’t know. I’m having a much better time getting friends to move to telegram than signal.
I prefer signal, but they all seem to prefer telegram as an alternative.
Telegram is actually worse for privacy and security than Whatsapp.
Really?
I mean I understand whatsapp has E2E encryption but they sell all your metadata and account data and stuff dont they. Does telegram do worse?
Telegram is well known bad https://soatok.blog/2024/05/14/its-time-for-furries-to-stop-using-telegram/
Telegram can read all your actual conversations (since almost no one uses encryption on it).
It’s run using a complex web of shell companies in various countries like the British Virgin Islands, Dubai and a lot of others.
They say they don’t sell your data, but it is a for-profit organisation and no one can really know what they do.telegram doesn’t even do e2ee by default
I’ve had a shockingly easy time getting my friends and family to move to signal.
There is literally only one person I have not gotten to move to it and that’s because she just has so many contacts who won’t leave Facebook.
I have no idea, but I’m also interested. Thus said, remember that’s only inside EU. I remember that Meta said they won’t apply this outside EU.
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