Hello, I’m doing some research for my family and friends to help them navigate the tech space and recommend them some better privacy focused alternatives. I’ve been stuck with the most important piece: instant messaging.
Ideally I would like something:
- decentralised
- Foss
- Possibly not tied to phone number
- Encrypted
- Not funded by an US or Israeli company
- Fairly easy to use by not tech people
If I manage to convince them, I can’t make them change in a year or so, the alternative needs to be future-proof.
- Signal: is Foss (not completely) but not decentralised (one “wrong” update and we are back to square one) + very much american funded
- Matrix: foss and decentralised but funded by an Israeli company (sorry I really can’t)
- Telegram: phone number registration, not fully encrypted, server proprietary
- Theema: server side not open source
- IRC: no video/audio calls, not encrypted
That leaves me with SimpleX and XMPP, I think (I don’t know much about them). What do you guys use/recommend?
I’m reading [this wiki page].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols?wprov=sfti1#Table_of_instant_messaging_protocols)
https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html
Unfortunately I had quite some battery drain with SimpleX on Android, so unless that’s fixed by now, I’d recommend XMPP out of your list. But have a look at the messenger-matrix as well. They mostly include technical aspects, though. Not relations with countries. I use Matrix. And Signal for the friends willing to leave WhatsApp behind. But neither of those are perfect at all. I’m regularly having all kinds of small little technical annoyances with Matrix these days, and Signal needs a phone number, which I don’t like at all.