r/technology Feb 17 '25

Social Media X is blocking links to Signal

https://www.theverge.com/news/613997/x-blocks-signal-me-links-errors
17.4k Upvotes

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340

u/Objective_Resist_735 Feb 17 '25

I don't know what Signal is, but I want it now. Great advertising.

183

u/SaltyDolphin78 Feb 17 '25

encrypted messaging app

25

u/rebbsitor Feb 17 '25

Is it like Whatsapp?

145

u/False-Ad273 Feb 17 '25

Yes but better.

57

u/xraynorx Feb 17 '25

Like way better.

81

u/APKID716 Feb 17 '25

Considering Whatsapp is owned by Facebook it’s almost certainly stealing data in some capacity

11

u/son1dow Feb 17 '25

The former owner of whatsapp has criticized meta over privacy concerns. Originally he was promised things that meta later reneged on

2

u/2018MunchieOfTheYear Feb 18 '25

surprised pikachu face

4

u/wOlfLisK Feb 17 '25

As far as I know, everything on WhatsApp is encrypted so Facebook can't see what you're sending but I'm sure they collect anything else they can get their hands on.

6

u/Phrodo_00 Feb 17 '25

Only messages are supposed to be encrypted.

4

u/Dobby_1235 Feb 17 '25

Let's face it, they almost certainly have a backdoor, so they can access messages if they really wanted/needed to.

5

u/Phrodo_00 Feb 17 '25

Even if they don't now, not a lot stops them from updating the app with one.

1

u/hackitfast Feb 17 '25

I donated to it this month and plan on donating to it a little more frequently. You can also get a tax refund on it cuz it's a 501c3

39

u/fubo Feb 17 '25

Signal is run by a nonprofit foundation, created by privacy activists with a strong security background.

16

u/quelar Feb 17 '25

It's whatsapp but without that robot boy secretly reading your messages.

1

u/MacrosInHisSleep Feb 18 '25

Isn't whatsapp E2E encrypted though?

4

u/DystopianGalaxy Feb 18 '25

Its supposed to be, but it's closed source. You can't tell what it does under the hood, and with it being Meta, nothing good. Signal is open sourced, it's code can be checked in its entirety by anyone to make sure it does what it promises.

2

u/quelar Feb 18 '25

Exactly it, you're trusting this guy to be honest.

No thanks.

7

u/americanadiandrew Feb 17 '25

But not owned by facebook.

2

u/Theusualstufff Feb 17 '25

Like the fbi asked them for user data and only send a user id and nothing else which in the tech world is a way to show a middle finger. They are the real deal for security.

48

u/GoofyGills Feb 17 '25

Cross-platform (Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux) encrypted messaging app.

You should begin using it. Introduce a few friends as well and go from there. Took me about a year but now basically every contact I regularly talk to is using it. You may be surprised to find some of your contacts already there.

https://signal.org/install

3

u/cadtek Feb 17 '25

The only thing I can think of that some people won't like is that there's no cloud backup.

10

u/GoofyGills Feb 17 '25

Yeah that's something to get used to at first but that's also the whole point at the same time. Your messages are on your main device only and relayed to your accessory devices.

2

u/PrincePamper Feb 17 '25

Is there any benefit to switching over if me and my friends already use Telegram?

1

u/djdadi Feb 17 '25

I got most of my friends / family to switch just for better chatting / calling between iphone and android

1

u/GoofyGills Feb 17 '25

That was the biggest reason most of my circle switched too. My close group of friends and I are all techy so we switched for both reasons but my family switched because the experience was just far superior to SMS long before RCS came to iOS.

The only holdouts are my sister and BIL because they're just annoying lol.

-8

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25

[deleted]

9

u/GoofyGills Feb 17 '25

I've never had an issue installing on Ubuntu, Mint, or Fedora but those are the only distros I've used for any length of time.

-7

u/sonobanana33 Feb 17 '25

Adding external repositories, not vetted, not reproducible builds… signal is for security conscious people and yet asks users to forget about security to install it :D

9

u/Traditional-Will3182 Feb 17 '25

It literally takes 2 minutes to just build it with make if you'd rather not add an external repo.

Source is on GitHub.

1

u/hunkaliciousnerd Feb 17 '25

Sorry, kinda tech illiterate, you are saying I can download it on github instead of using an app store, and that's better, or no?

3

u/Traditional-Will3182 Feb 17 '25

You're using Linux but have never used make?

https://thoughtbot.com/blog/the-magic-behind-configure-make-make-install

It's the most common way of installing software from source code.

You literally download the source (either by cloning the repo or by downloading a tarball) and type 3 commands.

1

u/GoofyGills Feb 17 '25

They're saying there isn't a single installer that is available via the various linux "app stores" or default repositories. So the fact that you have to add a repository to get it, you don't have control over where it comes from.

It's a bit of a stretch.

0

u/sonobanana33 Feb 17 '25

But why don't you stop and reflect on the WHY they don't want to be on f-droid or any linux distribution? For an open source app that's sus to say the least.

(because it's the silicon valley open source where there's a company behind leaking money and trying to figure out how to monetize at some point, so they want to have full control)

1

u/Traditional-Will3182 Feb 17 '25

F-droid isn't possible because Signal uses Google Play Services for notifications, that violates the f-droid guidelines.

Have you looked at the procedure for getting a new package into Debian? It's not trivial especially for an app built like Signal, and it makes updates far more complicated.

Signal is made by a non-profit with plenty of funding, they don't need control to monetize it at this point.

1

u/sonobanana33 Feb 18 '25

F-droid isn't possible because Signal uses Google Play Services for notifications, that violates the f-droid guidelines.

This is really self commenting.

Have you looked at the procedure for getting a new package into Debian? It's not trivial especially for an app built like Signal, and it makes updates far more complicated.

Yes I have :) But signal violates like every single paragraph of policy and they are not interested in fixing it.

Also chatgpt is made by a non-profit, and see how that worked out :D

3

u/GoofyGills Feb 17 '25

So you downvoted me lol.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25

[deleted]

1

u/sonobanana33 Feb 18 '25

AUR ≠ default repos

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '25 edited Feb 18 '25

[deleted]

1

u/sonobanana33 Feb 18 '25

Lots of other software needs frequent updates. For example browsers, openssl…

I mean signal claimed to be fully open source and didn't provide the server sources for several years. If you trust them, good for you :D

20

u/BTLOTM Feb 17 '25

I just downloaded it for no reason other than President Musk doesn't want us to

6

u/kamikaze_pedestrian Feb 17 '25

I just started using it and like it so far

2

u/firstname_Iastname Feb 17 '25

2

u/Objective_Resist_735 Feb 17 '25

Well now I don't know what to do. Lol

1

u/firstname_Iastname Feb 18 '25

I started using signal back when I first saw that tweet many years ago. I had never heard about it until Elon mentioned it. It's a great app

2

u/Titanium125 Feb 17 '25

Signal is like the grand daddy of encrypted messaigng apps. The end to end ecnryption that apps like WhatsApp and iMessage use is literally called the Signal Protocol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

2

u/AnatomicalLog Feb 17 '25

I’m probably not even going to use it but I’m downloading it anyway lol.

1

u/TheVideogaming101 Feb 17 '25

I was gonna say, definitely using it now lol