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WhatsApp just released a feature to have multiple accounts on the same phone if it supports dual-sim

blog.whatsapp.com/multiple-acc…

Telegram had multiple account for 6 years already:

telegram.org/blog/themes-accou…

They both have extensive feature sets. But unfortunately my messenger of choice, @signalapp , is still not fully OpenSource (server), doesn't provide similar features, and the most annoying thing: have a stale bot on their Github to push issues under the rug:

github.com/signalapp/Signal-An…

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in reply to Mehrad

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They have spent countless hours and some chunk of money to add features that the common user doesn't even use (e.g stories which since it's launch, even Signal themselves does not use it to update users of development 🤦)

Many of my contacts already left #Signal ! 🤕😮‍💨

Yes I have recurring donation to them. Yes, I'm trying to keep calm, but damn it, this is ridiculous that Signal is still this much behind the market. Stability, quality, features, design, using phone number,... . Come on!

in reply to bioinformatician_next_door

Via bridge, yes, but first one should expose their accounts to bridges (already adding one security risk), and then have to have the bridges running on a server (time, maintenance), and on top of that matrix itself is not designed to be something like Signal or Whatsapp (voice messages, disappearing messages, gifs).

Not to mention that Matrix is not fully E2EE unlike the common misconception (e.g the reactions are fully plain text).

in reply to Mehrad

Well about the time maintenance there is #beeper
beeper.com/

Regarding the sec risk, I get it but in case you need full encryption is better to use pgp and email? Plus, in case you run your own server then you could onboard everybody you care to it. Getting people out of closed source apps is always a win.

in reply to bioinformatician_next_door

No one, and I mean it, no one from non techy world will stay in Matrix. I have tried, others have tried, we all failed and they all left for WhatsApp and Telegram. Matrix is really bad and not user-friendly. The first thing a user hits is verification step which for them is a vig complicated thing. Then the crappy UI or Element on mobile and being laggy as hell (both on Android and iOS) compared to WhatsApp and Telegram. Other clients are not good either.
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in reply to Mehrad

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@bioinformatician_next_door
Matrix is designed to replace work environment communications. Something to replace Slack, not WhatsApp.

About encryption, we have many other ways other than pgp with much lower barrier to entry (e.g @delta or @Jami ) but none of them are still as attractive to general public. Jami practically is a ticking time bomb as all my conversations were wiped one day (happened twice)

I still think our best bet is Signal if they don't mess around with logo on shopping bags

in reply to Mehrad

Hello @Mehrad @bioinformatician_next_door @delta :blobwave:
I'm sorry to hear this! Jami still encounters a lot of issues, especially when it comes to device synchronization and reliability. Our whole team is now fully working on these issues, and we should have greater improvements throughout this year, with no bugs like these anymore!
in reply to Jami

@Jami
Let's hope for that, because wiping out the whole chat contents out of the blue with no way to get them back is very destructive to the trustworthiness image of a messaging app. In my case, the damage is done and it's not likely that I will ever use this GTK-based app ever again, but I hope Jami prosper when these bugs are properly squished. (Jami was one of the few GTK apps that I allowed myself to have on my computer. Now, happily I have one less.)

@bioinformatician_next_door @delta

in reply to Mehrad

Hello @Mehrad
I'm sorry about your negative experience with Jami, and thank you for the positive thoughts! :blobwave:
However, I'm a bit confused: we haven't used GTK since 2019.
So when was the last time you tried or used Jami?
Also, we started as a R&D project (we still are by a great extent) which means most of our growth comes from the open source community and users who report bugs and features they'd like to have, on top of our own road map.
This entry was edited (8 months ago)