Why not Signal?As people move away from Discord for reasons that will become obvious in a few days as it begins requiring facial or government ID to continue using it, we need to seriously consider alternatives. Most people seem to be moving to Signal, which strikes me as odd, because not only is it probably the least secure option for people who care about security, it is also feature-starved in comparison to alternatives.
Signal is almost definitely being hawked to the public. It is no coincidence that it is used by the US government, touted by Elon Musk, supported by the CIA, and centralized in the United States.
Matrix is far more feature-rich, and does not contain these issues. While its protocol is built and maintained by a foundation with historical ties to the US and Israel, it is a protocol built on an open standard, like email. It is the most secure and well-supported option out there; SimpleX is in its infancy, and XMPP has glaring security problems in regard to how separate clients treat security, and the fact that it only is capable of encrypting message data (not ie file transfers).
I have, until the last few days, been more laissez-faire about what people choose, as long as it's some E2E option, but as Discord is now drawing a line in the sand and we potentially approach another exodus moment like we did from Skype, those of us in the know about these things need to draw our own line: You need to use Matrix. Find or host a server that does not require you to enter identifying information. workersofthe.world hosts one locally in Canada; if you want in, send me a message. Otherwise, using the default matrix.org server is secure enough for now to get you accustomed to the software and user experience.
The real risk, once we get away from #
Discord, is having people attached to #
Signal, which seems inevitably will be used as a honeypot, documenting your phone number and usage rates, and potentially shifting the bar for encryption standards the way Telegram did. You need to consider #
Matrix instead.
