Hi friends,

I’m new to Lemmy but I think I like where it is heading in general. I would like to ask, do you have any specific apps used for ?

As a community that seems more focused on decentralized platforms, I thought this could spike up an interesting discussion

I have been using mainly Viber and FB messenger. I did try to convince friends and family to move over to simpleXchat, as it seems the most privacy focused alternative I have found, but basically failed.

I would love to hear your input!

      • krash
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        1 year ago

        Correct me if I’m wrong, but I belive the reason why SMS was dropped was because of the unreliable interaction between two endpoints: If you’re communicating with a contact over RCS in Google messages, and you’d send them a message over signal- they’d receive an SMS. But throttling reply would be over RCS and signal wouldn’t be able to display that since there isn’t an open API for signal to interact with RCS messages. So the whole reason to drop SMS support was due to inconsistencies of how messages in androids would be handled.

        • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Basically, Signal could have implemented RCS messaging themselves, making them the de facto iMessage replacement on Android, but they chose not to so that their devs could instead spend their time building NFTs into their platform or whatever the next shiny bauble is.

          I still use Signal for lack of a credible alternative but dropping SMS support in favour of NFTs and Stories was fucking dumb. They need to focus on being the best messaging platform first, then focus on expanding into other markets and functionality.

          • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ
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            1 year ago

            Signal could have implemented RCS messaging themselves

            That would have been great, except Google doesn’t provide an API for developers to use RCS in their own apps like they did with SMS. Google’s basically forcing everyone (long term) into their messaging app, which I suspect will eventually be the “iMessage” of Android since there wont be any alternative “texting” apps.

    • iwannet
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      1 year ago

      How did you do it ? I cant get them to migrate.

      • CarrotsHaveEars
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        1 year ago

        To be real, getting someone to change their habit is near impossible and when that happens, just send them SMS.

      • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ
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        1 year ago

        The way I did it was getting rid of the apps I no longer wanted on my phone. This forced people to send text messages. If they try sending a good pic/video it would obviously fail. Their only option was usually something more difficult than just installing Signal. I don’t provide Whatsapp as an alternative. I did lose some contacts, but close friends/family will obviously opt for the better messaging experience compared to default SMS.

    • tubbadu@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Managed to migrate my friends and family away from WhatsApp

      Please tell my how I beg you

      • jonuno
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        1 year ago
        1. Uninstall WhatsApp
        2. Family+friends will get notification that you left in every group you were in, and lose their shit. They will call you asking wtf is happening
        3. Try to calm the waters by telling them you found out Meta is a bad company and you don’t want to participate it
        4. Get confusing looks and asked wtf is wrong with you
        5. Try to divert the complexity of the subject by mentioning that they can just download Signal and reach you there
        6. Get scoffed and manage to get one or two nearest friends on your Signal app
        7. Still get contacted by everyone’s else on whatsapp and by your grandmother on FB messenger , although you ain’t there
        8. Sucessfully managed to keep your 2 contacts on Signal and even see it growing to 4 over a year.
        9. Wait till Signal fucks up, delete it, install SimpleX, start over again
    • MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      My brother got everyone to switch from FB messenger to WhatsApp and then FB bought whatsapp and prompted a second switch to signal

  • Lewistrick@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    Whatsapp is the norm here so I begrudgingly use that. Wish more people were on Signal, Matrix or Telegram.

    • CAPSLOCKFTW
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      1 year ago

      You can apparently bridge Whatsapp and Matrix. I have looked into it for a few evenings but got nothing running despite having some experience with self hosting stuff. It was a while ago though.

      • Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        There is an Ansible repo. It does all you need. It’s just some configuration in one file. Maybe takes a few hours to read through, but it can set up early everything Matrix has to offer and is well documented… It just really is a lot.

      • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Something like this where you can bridge into other RCS apps, just with phone number, is what I would need for both private and work stuff.

  • Rain@lm.melonbread.dev
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    1 year ago

    Elements (Matrix) as much as much as possible. I bridge a lot services through it. Though Signal would be the second most.

  • mintiefresh@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I wish more people in my life would use Signal but I’ve given up on converting people from WhatsApp.

    I pretty much just use everything. my messaging folder has Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, SMS, etc lol.

  • Jomn
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    1 year ago

    I mainly use Signal, but sometimes have to fall back to SMS for people that aren’t on Signal. I also have matrix accounts, but I never really use them since I don’t have anyone among my friends and family that uses matrix.

    • Catsrules
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      1 year ago

      Does signal allow two phones yet?

      I have two phones and signel can’t comprehend me signing in on both of them at once. Such a stupid limitation IMO.

      • Jomn
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        1 year ago

        No, I don’t think so. I still think that it requires a different phone number on each phone. But I agree with you that it is annoying that they do not allow it, especially since they could simply imitate the functionality that exists on the desktop apps.

  • archchan
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    1 year ago

    Signal. I refuse to use whatsapp even though that’s what most people I know use.

  • PreciousDeclaration@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I really like using Signal Private Messenger app, but I can’t get all my friends and family to use it, so for my regular texting app, I just use Chomp SMS.

  • bigbox
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    1 year ago

    Signal is my go to. Some of my friends refuse to download it, so I just text them. I’ll use iMessage on iOS and Google Messages on Android. But if I can use Signal, I will