Privacy Guides

Of all the privacy-related changes I've made, Signal is the only thing I've managed to get anyone else to use.

It was a matter of saying "I don't use WhatsApp anymore" and that was that. Some friends didn't make the switch, but they know where to find me.

Quitting Facebook lead people to believe that I was in need of help, though. They thought I was crazy. Still, today, people ask me why they can't tag me on FB or why I unfriended them. When I tell them I stopped using FB they're shocked and say things like, "but you're such a techy computer nerd guy."

Quitting Google was confusing for others too.

The unfortunate fact is that most people don’t care about their privacy until it’s violated. It’s weird.

Start sending invites to Signal. Setting up group chats can help too, as invitations to those create mild FOMO in the mind of the invitee, then once they have the app they can use it for things besides group chats.

I have a few friends and family on Signal. Pretty much everyone uses other services too (including myself) but Signal is installed on a few

• I talk to some friends / family on Signal exclusively. They either already cared about it, or they're close enough that they trust my recommendation / still don't care but want to put in the effort

• I talk to some friends / family on Signal only when we want to have a more private conversation

• Some people won't ever be convinced, I talk to them on other services or in person when privacy is important. I set up boundaries to protect myself, and people usually respect that.

This way I protect myself while respecting other people's choices.

For you I'd recommend focussing on the second option. When you need to talk privately, ask the person to install it and give a short explanation for why it's better. If they do, then great it's installed and it'll get used once in a while. Maybe they will see other people and build up the network. If they don't install it, then suggest an alternative like talking in person

I don’t have anything to hide

Great! Then I guess they don't mind giving you their bank password, credit card pin, details of all the medicines they take, information from the work they do, their detailed weekly activity schedule, their browser history, their investment portfolio and assets, etc, etc... I'm salivating at the thought of the hundreds of different ways in which I can make money with all that info!

"I don't have anything to hide"

I prefer to suggest a different mindset - "It's not that I have nothing to hide. It's that I have nothing I want anybody to see"

It's worse for me in my country, 90% of people use Viber. Which not only has the same lack of privacy with other popular messengers, it's also ugly, filled with ads and company bots, and it's obviously targeted to teenagers. It's so weird to me that people use this app, but I guess most people's choice is always "whatever my most contacts use". I've been trying to introduce my friends to something better, I would prefer Signal but literally zero of my contacts use it. On Telegram on the other hand, I found 4-5 of my contacts already using it so I started from there, added my family too, and I'm slowly trying to add more friends. Until then, like others said, I'll use whatever for a casual message, and I'll just call the person for anything more personal or private.

You're not going to convince anyone to suffer inconvenience for something that has no tangible benefit in their eyes. The best you can do is give people the option to contact you on Signal and explain (briefly) why you prefer it. After enough experience, you realize there is no argument you can make that will convince people to care about privacy. The people who join you on Signal either already care about privacy (but maybe didn't realize it) or value your comfort over theirs.

Personally, I would rather send unencrypted SMS instead of using a Meta-owned service. I don't want to be part of the network effect keeping people on Facebook. Everyone with a SIM card in their phone already has access to SMS, but few use it if they can help it, so I don't think I'm contributing to a network effect by doing this. The only MMS client I use is Signal, so anyone can contact me over there if they want more functionality. That's the only tactic I use, and so far, it has been unsuccessful.

I got no one to switch. Eventually I just gave up as people were getting sick of me always recommending alternatives no one else uses.

Either they're okay with a switch and it's easy or they are not open for that and it's impossible to change their mind.

Pretty much nobody I know wants to switch to Signal or any other messaging app. So it's SMS communication with them because I definitely won't install WhatsApp.

It's a slow change, honestly. Just do what you can with your own services.

Signal is not much better than WhatsApp or any other walled garden messenger without provider choice. Don't waste your time and energy to move people to walled gardens. A better idea would be to use providers and apps that support the federated internet standard XMPP: https://joinjabber.org

Just start using Signal. Don't push it for a reason for people who don't care, just let people know "Hey, message me here". The more people that use it - the better for everyone - whether they benefit or not.

The second part of that is use things like WhatsApp less or not at all, but you can always start with the first part. Maybe you already have folks on signal, and you can just start messaging them there until more folks come over.