Open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp raise funds on Kickstarter | TechCrunch

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still more work then just letting google handle it for them, so wont happen

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I worked for years in one of the biggest in telecom companies in Europe. They supported RCS for about 2 years, before they stopped. I tried to restart the project, but there was no interest. It is viewed as a waste of money since customers already use Google Messages, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

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Centralized. Not good. Conversations is on fdroid and is decentralized, federated, and uses a mature and battle tested protocol. If I wanted something new, I would prefer Matrix over Signal.

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People act like we need an alternative to Whatsapp but XMPP/Jabber exists and is much older.

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I tried using it with a friend, and it completely nuked my phone's battery, while my friend's phone silently killed it (likely for using too much battery). I understand that truly privacy-respecting messengers will always use slightly more power than apps that use the google notification thing, but simplex is just a complete power hog beyond any reasonable limit. Hopefully they fix it at some point, it seems like a pretty solid messenger otherwise, and their approach to privacy and anonymity is unparalleled, at least in theory.

ExFed

Not open source

There are lots of good reasons to be upset with how Signal produces builds. And maybe Signal has no good reason why they keep opaque dependencies. But by every common definition of the term, Signal is open source. Being on FDroid is not the definition of open source.

Please don't gatekeep. There are better ways to criticize Signal. This is not one of them.

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Diaspora is the fediverse version of Facebook. It hasn't taken off quite like lemmy or mastodon and it's much older, but still seems to be in active development.

Convincing family is hard, I have a lot of them moved over to Linux already, but they don't want to quit Facebook

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what happened to pidgin

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Nobody but a handful of nerds uses it though. You won't get your grandparents and less tech literate friends to leave whatsapp in droves, simple as that.

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If your releases include closed source blobs, then your software is closed source.

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Bluesky is just Twitter before being bought by Elon Musk. The real alternative is Mastodon. Bluesky can go fuck itself.

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Pleroma — a lightweight fediverse server

(pleroma.social)

RQG

I just did convince my family and all close friends to move to signal.

ExFed

Following that logic:

Many popular Linux distros contain closed source blobs. Ergo Linux is closed source.

DBosiers

@ExFed @jagged_circle you mean drivers for external devices ?

astro_ray

Why are there so many downvotes? Dude said the truth. Signal, like whatsapp, is a single point of failure. It can be enshittified just like whatsapp.

ExFed

Sure. That's one possible vector. Is it "Open Source" software? Yes, they accept contributions for the community. It's is "Libre" software? No, they depend on closed source software.

I'm trying to illustrate that the definition of "open source" can be weaponized for no good reason. Dismissing Signal because it doesn't fit a narrow definition of "open source" makes everybody less secure. I have a hard enough time convincing my non-tech-savvy friends to switch to Signal. There's a snowball's chance in Hell I'll convince them to use something even more obscure.

astro_ray

Then that particular build of the distro is closed source. The linux kernel is still open source.

ExFed

Okay, so the Apache license is a "closed source" license?

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Yes. This is the position of the FSF.

And its why most Linux distros have an option to include closed source or not.

Signal, however, has no option. Its just closed source software.