I have been a begrudging user of Telegram for years simply because that's what all the other furries use. When I signed up, I held my nose and expressed my discontent at Telegram by selecting a username that's a dig at MTProto's inherent insecurity against chosen ciphertext attacks: IND_CCA3_Insecure. Art: CMYKat I wrote about Furries and Telegram before, and included some basic privacy recommendations.
I have been a begrudging user of Telegram for years simply because that’s what all the other furries use. When I signed up, I held my nose and expressed my discontent at Telegram by selecting…
> Finally, it’s trivial to setup a second Signal account using Twilio or Google Voice, so you can compartmentalize your furry posting from the phone number your coworkers or family is likely to know. > > The last two considerations were really what stopped furries (or queer people in general, really) from using Signal.
This! But also, you don't need to strictly speaking use a second phone number if you're fine with only using usernames, since Signal allows you to disable finding via a known phone number!
Settings -> Privacy -> Phone number -> Who can find me by my number
@ljrk Honestly that's a big part of why I've avoided so many of these services. The older IM networks didn't require a phone number (they also worked with third party clients, some of which had E2EE options).
And living in Canada, most of the options people recommended for getting a second phone number were unavailable, or designed to be temporary.
Is there a good, secure chat service (that... ugh... supports sticker packs. Not a fan of sticker packs but furries seem to want those.) that does not require a phone number? Both Telegram and Signal have that problem of needing a phone number. While it is true that one can disable finding by phone number in Signal, that just looks like a workaround for a problem that should not be there in the first place.
Delta Lab supports Telegram stickers but if you need good moderation tools you are out of luck (but if you have a trusted community, maybe you don't need this?) Also you can't see content posted to a channel before you join the group. You might need to download the stickers you want.
SimpleX Chat can send stickers using the keyboard but stickers are not built into the app.
https://element.io is what the open source community and semi-paranoid people use. Didn't see anyone else mention it so though I might while passing through. Hope your exodus from telegram succeedes.
Element is a Matrix-based end-to-end encrypted messenger and secure collaboration app. It’s decentralised for digital sovereign self-hosting, or through a hosting service such as Element Matrix Services.
I used Signal when it was an SMS client that supported encryption. I dropped it when they dropped SMS support. I'm on Telegram because everyone I know is there. Until Signal supports multiple accounts, it's a hard pass for me. I keep my furry life and RL details carefully partitioned. While I'm okay with furs finding me, I don't want mundanes finding me in furry.
"Finally, it’s trivial for Americans to setup a second Signal account using..."
Nope, stop right there. If it's a solution is only viable in the States it's not a solution. The fandom has no borders, but Signal's suitability evidently does.
You're listing many good and compelling technical details, but that isn't what moves the needle.
I've had Signal for years, and exactly zero people are on it. Just like any social platform, how technologically "good" it is has no bearing whatsoever on its adoption. Ironically, Mastodon is a perfect example of this, too.
Just like Mastodon, Signal lacks three critical things to get people to move over to it:
1) Simplicity - The ability to create multiple accounts and manage your contacts without non-embedded ”tutorials” 2) Reliability - Signal has frequently failed to deliver or receive messages from new contacts, and even failed to add new contacts for me, and without any hope of troubleshooting why. (Mastodon servers going ‘poof’ meaning mandatory migrating) 3) Community - Even the fur who recommended I use Signal never responded to any of my messages there, so I pinged him on Telegram: "Oh yeah, I don't really use it since no one is there.” :(
Having an iPhone at hand, I don't think there's a way for Apple users to operate two Signal accounts on one iDevice unless a 3rd party client was in the app store (such client exists on Android, which actually supports multiuser and work profile). 🤔
I think the biggest barrier for me is that you have to start a conversation with someone in order to have them present in your app. It would go a long way to be able to add friends, especially when just getting started out on the platform
I've been waffling because I rarely use Telegram (so what's the harm, right?) but this article was the last straw for me. Why stick with Telegram when A. I never use it and B. There are better options that support the feature set I really care about (phone number obfuscation and *stickers*).
Telegram requires a phone number, and yeah... you can't use a phone number from GV or Twilio. This means I have to use the phone number hooked to my everything and I somehow have to trust friends (who knows y phone number) to be secure about thier hookup to Telelgram (sharing contacts).
Signal seems to require a phone # also. Is there any way around that?
Even people recently having their Telegram accounts hacked en-masse didn't move the needle, because no real alternative to Telegram truly exists yet.
I can't help but point to Mastodon’s failure. People either went back to Twitter, or chose BlueSky instead because both were superior in usability despite their known problematic factors. Another example was Weasyl, an objectively a better furry community website than FA. Everyone either went back to FA or switched to Twitter because not enough of the community saw a benefit to the heavy lift of moving.
In order for history not to repeat itself, three things need to happen: 1. Signal’s UX needs to be at least as good as Telegram, which it's not. People will see it as a step backwards, not forwards, and not want to bother. 2. There needs to be an effortless way for people to migrate their existing experience and data. 3. Signal needs equivalent community sharing such as broadcast channels.
Signal uses, requires, and exposes phone numebrs. Some of us don't want the people we meet through the internet to have our actual phone numbers.
Use matrix instead! It's decentralized (like the Fediverse), end-to-end encrypted by default, and has bridges to "legacy networks" like Telegram, Discord, Signal and the like so that you can basically migrate you're whole messaging life onto Matrix without having to force your contacts to all do the same.
I would recomend Beeper.com as a public homeserver for new users, but it's new Android app makes actually doing Matrix to Matrix communication a hassle... As in, impossible if you don't also have access to matrix through another device. But for those who don't plan on actually using the matrix part of matrix yet, or are down for a bit more tinkering (though not as much as self-hosting) then by all means, I've been on Beeper full time for months now, and it's great. I love Matrix!
With the second copy of Signal do both receive push notifications at the same time? I assume yes for Samsung's secure folder thing?
The vanilla Android solution it looks like one has to switch though I haven't tested. I've been using Signal since I succumbed to smartphones, and I use a separate telephone number for furry Telegram things but I don't have a solution for furry signal on my phone at the same time.
I agree! While the thought of making one had definitely crossed my mind more than once, someone has to pay for it to be made, and hosted. For someone to go through the trouble, they'd be abandoning their main employ, so it would have to become a profitable venture somehow. That means either ad revenue, or paid subscriptions, and it’s impossible to compete against free and no ads. The other possibility is someone who is financially wealthy enough to donate their time and/or money to the cause and give it back to the community.
It's the ol' "But Betamax is a better technology!" "Doesn't matter, it's not moving tits" conundrum.
And it's aggravating precisely because lots of people have been asking for better low friction social features and searchable chat-sync in signal but signal has been dismissive about it.
Thus everyone always uses telegram because it's an alternative to Discord and Facebook.
Signal always strikes me as more of the "This is what you really want to use over Whatsapp/Messenger/SMS/iChat If you want to have a chat about something the government may want to subpeona" software while telegram strikes me as the "This is where you can semi-anonymously discuss/share your kinky art without accidentally forwarding it to the family group chat" software.
not only is that article 2 years old, but was resolved before the end of that year. Most of the 'vulnerablities' posed assume a malicious homeserver and a reliance on the Javascript SDK, neither of which happen in a Synapse environment with a trusted homeserver operator.
I'll give you that Signal doesn't need phone number exposure anymore. But honestly, just like with telegram, it's a hassle to need one in the first place, and discourages folks who are trying to keep themselves protected from unwanted connections to different parts of their lives. Whether that be work-life balance, being in the closet, having a public persona, or just not wanting your family to see your furry pornographic profile picture, phone numbers are not good account id's. And that's not even beginning to take the inherent security issues of phone numbers. SMS is not a secure way to MFA or verify an account.
I'm happy to see that I don't have to share my phone number, and it looks like I can keep people that know it from finding me. Still wish it didn't require one, but hey, it's an improvement.
If you want to help push #Signal to support multiple accounts on same phone so you can have one account with your real name and picture, and another account with another name and picture, all within the app like you would with Telegram please like the first post and add feedback:
In short: Suggestion to allow for multiple seperate (user) profiles within Signal Priavate Messenger. Either one for each SIM for dual Sim phones, or any number of user defined profiles to which a conversation can assigned.
Also because I haven't seen it brought up as reason to leave Telegram despite being recent, Telegram has used Nazi symbology in their marketing material:
telegram decided to sneak in a nazi symbol in their announcement of NFT usernames today, so i guess this is the thing that makes me switch to Signal. (1488 in the subscriber count, and i have been informed that 4/20 is Hitler's birthday, so y'know, not a coincidence)
edit: wolfie@[url=https://queer.party/actor]queer.party[/url] pointed out another thing, they're highlighting Tucker Carlson in the blog post
would you make a difference between one-to-one chats, small group chats of locals/ friends, and, say, huge convention chats? At least for the latter, I'd say confidentiality (and thus, e2e) does not matter that much [to me]. At least, This is the "technological" side. The ideology of the founders of messengers is another matter.
i mean, the problem there is that this only works with people who use Samsung phones in US/CA.
Use an iPhone or any non-Samsung android? you're out of luck, the Signal app doesn't even have a sign out button, and if you're anywhere except US/CA hope you like paying to keep a second SIM alive (which you needed for telegram setup, but i don't think you ever need it after your account is created)
i haven't used android in any major capacity in years so this may have changed, but AFAIK stock android doesn't have the "secure folder" feature, and switching between work profile essentially "reboots" the phone into a separate "partition" (which i don't think notifications cross that gap)
and that's not even talking about iPhone users, which i mean, you can sideload a secondary copy of the app, but that won't update itself and you'll need to sign up for a ADP membership if you don't want to have to reload it every 7 days
Here in Europe, a SIM card and therefore the mobile number is a much more personal thing as its per law referenced to an verfified person
Therefore "burner phones" are impossible, you can not "just" sign up to services and espically not have the options for a second or more accounts, to keep work; family; kink and other parts of your life seperated
So signing up to Signal would require to create the highest level of metadata
I just tried it! The one you linked to creates an entirely separate profile, with its own settings, it's own wallpaper, its own apps, and its own notifications, and requires manual switching.
You can use the Shelter app artemist mentioned and it does work like I'd expect (its just a separate copy of the same app)
In general, this does exactly nothing for me, as I primarily use an iPhone, which gets a generally barely-MVP experience, primarily lacking the ability to backing up or restoring messages. (backup is only supported for Android-to-Android, and only backs up to the local storage, which I guess you could get yet another app to sync that to the cloud but that's not something I expect the average user to do, when they can just continue to use Telegram, which I mean, sure the owner is a right twat but the app is generally pretty good
@tay Vanilla Android also has a work profile which does not require a logout, apps from it appear on the homescreen with an extra icon. Normally an MDM app would set it up but you can also use Shelter
@tay Vanilla Android also has a work profile which does not require a logout, apps from it appear on the homescreen with an extra icon. Normally an MDM app would set it up but you can also use Shelter
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