Four.
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Privacy
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As far as I'm aware: Zero.
Most of the people I want to receive messages from use Signal. But to be fair (to be faaaiiiir), that number isn't that large.
Tech friends, all my family, and all my wife's family are mostly on signal. Other "regular" friends from other circles are on a mix of Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.
All but two of them.
My mother tried it once
…once
One for me.
0
Unfortunately
None that I know of.
Almost zero. We are all in the Matrix. It’s especially necessary when you are refugees by 🇷🇺, but personally me started to use matrix a very long time ago.
I usually use matrix too though haven’t used it with irl friends 💪
In theory everyone around me does. I have refused to use whatsapp and fb messenger and the like for around 10 years now. As a result I don't have contact with the majority of people I used to call friends as they refused to use anything else.
Consequently my immediate family use it and a few friends that actually cared to stay in touch do.
I have a couple of hold outs who I have contact with but pretty much everyone I'm in regular contact are on signal now.
Immediate family, two friend groups I'm in, a client's client, that's about it.
Or perhaps there are other people around and we just aven't managed to realize / First Conatct.
1 person
My whole family (excluding my extended family) uses Signal to talk with me, haha.
A bunch. I simply do not communicate without private messengers. If somebody asked me to use Matrix / Element, that'd be fine too.
People who don't care enough to use a private messenger are implying that they don't care about my and our privacy. It's quite simple for me not to want to talk to them 🤷♂️
Friends are almost all on signal. Parents are bad at technology and can barely figure out sms.
Only a small handful of people in my circle are willing to use it. Most can’t be bothered to change despite my efforts to explain how much better it is to use. I’ve waned in my usage of unencrypted chat so that is isolating me from some which saddens me a bit. I can handle that, but I am far more disappointed in people’s indifference in the matter.
I don't find it "better" in any way other than privacy.
From a user standpoint, the UI is just SMS, that is it's not good.
Plus I no longer trust them after the lie that they dropped SMS because if "engineering costs". There are free SMS apps, because the app has fuck all to do with SMS - your app merely registers as the SMS app, and uses the native API calls for the SMS database.
From a user standpoint, the UI is just SMS, that is it's not good.
SMS don't support group chats, do they?
I think you misunderstand the purpose of Signal. It's for encrypted communication. SMS can be encrypted but it can be a real hassle and security risk if messages are sent over 2 different channels and start arriving out of order or not at all. Sending media over SMS is also a problem as now that introduces another problem: MMS is over data, not SMS. If you don't have data but do have SMS, a message in the chain isn't delivered which means key renegotiation.
They dropped SMS for very good reasons. It's not because "they are lazy" or and they had "fuck all to do". If it really were that easy, it would've been done.
Myself, my wife, her parents, and my parents all use it, though honestly the latter are there for grandkid pictures and I’m confident 100% of their conversations with anyone else are sms/facebook/etc.
Me and one other tech friend who appeased me. We tried simplex first, but sometimes their background service would be off and they wouldnt get messages. So we switch to Molly.
only one, online friend 👀
All of my close friends, slowly making its way in some members of my family. Always find it funny when a friend that I haven’t seens in a while say : yeah I have signal install for some shit and I proceed to had him/her to all the stupid conversations my crazy friends made
Just me. I'm holding out I'll meet someone else who has it installed someday.
I had a friend the other day telling me that his mother made the whole family group switch from Whatsapp to Signal following Meta supporting Trump. Unexpected, but good to see.
Lol, funny the things that make people jump.
Glad to see it, but clearly privacy wasn't the reason, which is weird to me.
Zero
The entire family on both sides now! We still use FaceTime for video sometimes as it is also E2EE and seems to be much less often blurry than signal video.
most! i have one straggler on telegram
most of the people I'm closest to do. other than that it's all Whatsapp, unfortunately.
None.
When they dropped SMS support, I no longer had a mechanism to get people to switch.
I don't know. So it very well may be zero.