May be worth having a read up https://aboutsignal.com/blog/how-to-switch-from-whatsapp-to-signal/
Also there is watomatic.app which can automatically respond to a message saying you are on Signal.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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So I have Whatsapp for regular people (most). My family switched to Telegram years ago. My GFs family uses only Signal. My brother refuses such things and made us download SimpleX.
Meanwhile I don't even want to receive messages.
Now you have to get Matrix as well
Signal is blocked where I am, the assholes here created enough friction that nobody will bother (install signal and get a paid VPN with good obfs protocols to talk to me about how's the weather today -> dude nah I am good)
Where are you ..? China ?
"I use signal. If you care about our friendship, you'll install it too."
I have friends that got it just for me. I also lost some so-called "friends"
I'm all for getting off anything meta, but come on. Someone not wanting to move to a chat service that's probably less convenient for them does not make them a "so called 'friend'" lmao.
If you're actually losing friends over this, that's quite sad.
i have to wonder though how the fuck could we actually move a critical mass of people to better apps. we are not having any real luck here so far.
Gradually. You don't have to get all your friends off Meta right now. Maybe some of them will, and they might push their friends to ditch meta as well.
Just keep trying. But totally alienating your friends also won't do much good for the whole perception of the movement. Becomes a lot easier to just think of that weird guy who won't talk to us anymore because of some app, rather than what it's actually about.
I feel like I worded that really badly, but I hope my point comes across.
yeah still plinking away at it i guess, but they can always invest their money again in stealing back all of those users for a platform that will enshittify asap.
reminds me of that time people were gradually going to mastodon and then bluesky came around and stole all that thunder because of mostly superior marketing and being very similar to twitter.
it sounds like you hit the nail on the head with marketing; the other apps needs a huge marketing budget.
I don't value my privacy so much to lose my friends.
I also don't give a s*** if somebody snoops about me planning a brunch with some random person.
Hey look, there's normie's here on lemmy now! Your post is the type of naive stuff that gets a ton of traction on reddit.
Its usually more like, "I've got nothing to hide, let them look!", or whatever, but I like your version too.
I definitely do though. Hey I'm planning a brunch here means corporations have a little more information about where you live, where you like to eat, who you have friends with, your friends weeknesses, social media can then try to inflict the group with different political opinions splitting up the friendship increasing depression and therefore the amount of time you spend on social media because it's your only escape from your depression. Just to list an example of what could happen.
Exactly. Maybe one of your less close friends turns out to be a serial killer. Unbeknownst to you now you've made some jokes and had brunch with them. Now a team of cops is going through everything you've ever texted anyone because it's unencrypted, correlating things to make you look horrible. Suddenly you're getting your life ruined.
There are cases of innocent people riding their bikes past an unknown crime scene getting arrested for murder because their phone was reporting their location to Google. Try explaining to your boss that you're missing work today because you're in jail for a murder charge. Privacy is important even when you think it's not and perhaps especially when you think it's not
I managed to move my family and a few friends there but my main group chats and nonchalant gf are impossible to move over unfortunately.
I go one level deeper. I make me friends use matrix. They can use my server or someone else but I want them to meet me there.
in my country, it's pretty much mandatory. everybody and their parrots use it universally.
work comms, company services. even the state uses it for their services (of course they have other means too but still).
and i don't trust it at all. been meaning to sandbox it better than just denying permissions.
Setup a matrix bridge for WhatsApp. Run WhatsApp on a VM when you need to open the app. Tell them you don't have calls which they will get on signal.
Oh wow nice idea, I'm gonna do it ASAP, thanks!
EDIT: after few research Ive seen that also : https://github.com/meinto/whatsapp-signal-bridge
I made the jump to signal, and those that refused to come with got relegated to SMS.
But it's not always that easy. Sorry that you have to deal with that BS.
Signal is also compromised. It's supported by the US security state. Use Matrix chat for friends if not for family members.
Yes it is, but most people cant understand it for some reason Its not 100% open source, haven't fixed a hole that breaks encryption for a while and the CEO is a jew who worked at facebook
Calm down with the anti-semitism.
what?
Can you point to any vulnerabilities in its source code as evidence for this?
If they could they wouldn't have written that.