We Switched to Signal
You know it’s bad when even non–privacy nuts like my wife and me felt the need to switch to Signal for our messaging from Facebook Messenger and—gasp—SMS/RCS.
I remember hearing about Signal for the first time some years ago and how it was the most secure and private messaging app. I was like, psh, that’s so extra and unnecessary.
I was a university student then, and my chats with other people were mostly just us shooting the shit.
That was also when Facebook Messenger looked like this:
…and AI hadn’t infiltrated and permeated our daily lives like cancerous cells thriving off a new host, let alone messaging apps.
My god, we never knew how good we had it.
Now, Facebook Messenger is incredibly bloated with a bazillion features, and has AI built in without an option to remove it. The company behind it, which used to be just “Facebook,” has become “Meta” and it has faced many, many criticisms over privacy and many other ethnical issues.
At the same time, as my wife and I treaded closer to our 30s, our messages started to involve more private matters such as our finances, physical health, mental health, trips, insurances, life-planning etc.—stuff that you wouldn’t be discussing loudly in public.
Still, while we complained about the enshittification of Facebook Messenger and the worsening violation that our digital privacy constantly underwent, we continued to tolerate Messenger because we’d had it forever and installing yet another app seemed like a hassle.
But the last straw that finally incentivized us to ditch Facebook Messenger (and SMS/RCS) and switch to Signal was when my wife started to share with me on Messenger the progress she’s been making on a major creative project she’s been working on. She feared that whatever she shared might end up getting used to train Meta’s AI.
Look, we’re aware that Messenger now supposedly has “end-to-end encryption” and technically, Meta has no access to the chat content, but we’re not programmers and we don’t know how things work in the back end.
When we see AI to be so embedded within Messenger—like WTF is “Edit with AI” on the images we send?!—it’s hard to have any trust that our data in Messenger is secure at all.
Meta claims that your messages are secure, but does anyone trust anything Meta says nowadays?
Also, with Meta constantly adding AI updates, who’s to say that Meta won’t quietly opt you in for any AI training without your consent. I mean, I just learned a couple of weeks ago that LinkedIn opts you in by default for letting it use your data to train AI—I have no idea when this setting came about and how long I’d had it on.
Yeah, no thanks.
What I like about Signal (from a layman’s perspective)
Once again, I’m no privacy nut (apologies if I got anything wrong below) but I did do some extensive research to confirm that Signal was the right choice.
Here’s what I like about Signal:
- It’s an independent nonprofit
- It’s “billionaire-proof,” aka it can’t just be bought (thanks to it being a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)
- It’s open source and the end-to-end encryption is verifiable by anyone
- It’s been extensively and routinely audited for years
- No agency or government can force Signal, in any way, to give them any of your data in Signal, simply because Signal can’t access your data at all
- The Signal Protocol is highly tested and trusted by experts
- Post-quantum protection: literally even quantum computers can’t hack the encryption (I’m not really worried about this, but it really shows Signal’s ongoing commitment to security and privacy)
- On online forums like Reddit, Signal gets consistent praise and recommendation by very privacy-aware people, from privacy enthusiasts to actual cybersecurity professionals. For a layman like me, this says a lot because it’s pretty rare for Reddit users to come to a consensus on a highly debated topic like privacy.
If you are still using messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram etc., maybe this is a sign to reflect on how much you value your data privacy in messaging apps. Perhaps you think it’s no big deal because you aren’t saying anything illegal in your chats (most of us aren’t), but it doesn’t mean your privacy isn’t worth protecting.
Think of it this way—
Digital privacy may seem abstract, but you probably don’t want to wait til it’s violated before realizing its importance to you.
Finally, Signal isn’t the only or even “the best” messaging app out there, depending on whom you ask, so do your own research and come to your own conclusions. I found the site, Secure Messaging Apps Comparison, to be a great reference tool if you need a place to start!
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