I believe in an open internet, FOSS, privacy by default, etc. I migrated away from Google by self-hosting Nextcloud. I prefer messaging apps like Molly, SimpleX, Threema, Matrix, etc. over standard SMS. I love the Fediverse (Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.).
But everyone I live with and everyone I know simply refuses to take part. I can’t interact with them socially because they’re all on Facebook. I can’t communicate with them because they all use group texts for SMS/RCS. I feel like I’m living in a different part of the world and am completely disconnected from everything that’s going on around me (with the people I want to interact).
My question is: does anyone else experience this, and how do you reconcile it? I want to share photos and clever posts with my family but they aren’t on the Fediverse. I want to communicate securely with them but they only want to SMS. I want to share documents but they only use Google Docs.
There are people I’ve met on the Fediverse and through some secure messaging apps with whom I’ve struck up a rapport, but these are still (predominately) strangers, and I’d really like to involve the people I care about in these exciting new times. They just wont participate.
I feel like I’ve invited everyone in my family to go on a great, grand vacation away and I’m the only one who’s packed.
Well, it’s harder now. Back in the day I migrated people to text secure then over to signal. So it was just an upgrade to their texting. Now that Signal dropped texting it’s harder for regular people to use it. There was a large debate and the people wanting to bring in more new people lost.
Today I “sell signal” for people who want to share pictures (SMS never works with AT&T resellers and cheap phones), people who want to get my pictures when I’m out of the country, and people who want my “technical support” for media.
But there are some people who won’t get on Signal and they just miss out on my trip pics they want to see. That’s on them.
I’m at the stage where I’m ready to remove myself from Facebook and other stuff, but I also know just how isolating it will be.
My mom told me if I want to find good internet culture (that I think died), I need to go on Instagram.
I use the mautrix-whatsapp bridge to bridge whatsapp to matrix. And I just don’t participate in other social media activities.
I know what you mean, but people are all like “but I can post on Facebook with Siri without having to think” or whatever.
Pushing your family isn’t going to help, unfortunately. There’s a pretty low threshold of nagging at which they’ll start being less inclined to take your advice for any additional bit of nagging.
My advice: make peace with it. Either quit SMS and Facebook and be aware that it’ll hamper communication with them or use SMS/RCS and Facebook and Google Docs and try to hedge as much as you can against privacy invasion within that context. Or throw caution to the wind and just use whatever they’re willing to use to talk to them.
Back in the day, I used to try to get everyone to use PGP for their email. Only a couple people did it, even though I would set it all up and provide unlimited tech support.
That’s just how it is.
They know the services, and they’re easy to use. Being the product means that there are SRE teams keeping the services up, and it funds development.
You can’t host your own services and expect everyone else to do the same. You’d be asking the “I hate technology” crowd to learn what to do from the very ground up. As in, a lifetime of experience that they didn’t invest in.
I’m not frequently trying to engage the mouth breathers.
r/Pcmasterrace vibes
What you are feeling is natural and relatable. You need to find a balance and define your threat model.
Privacy maximalism and/or FOSS maximalism etc is natural impulse when you first begin to grasp just how quietly exploitive, invasive, and commoditized the modern internet is. But it also leads to burnout and can be isolating if you are too rigid about it.
Define your threat model, and your priorities. Accept that perfection is not attainable and do the best you can. It’s less overwhelming.
My advice:
- pick ONE easy to use and well established/reputable messenger that is privacy respecting (Signal is the obvious choice in my eyes). Make it known that this is your preferred messenger (and have a short, not super technical and not super political explanation why you prefer it). Try to get the people you are closest with or communicate with most, and the people you think are most likely to be interested to start using it.
- Then, have a preferred fallback or two (basically the “least worst” mainstream option). Depending on your circle, iMessage, RCS, WhatsApp, or Telegram might be that fallback. None are anywhere near perfect but they also aren’t the worst and sometimes you have to meet people where they are.
The most private thing you can do is to not participate at all /s
With that said, I largely agree with your points. There needs to be a good reason for the OP to continue their journey
This is really great advice, I guess the middle ground has always been a bit of a struggle for me.
This echoed for me, I’ll remember it:
Privacy maximalism and/or FOSS maximalism etc is natural impulse when you first begin to grasp just how quietly exploitive, invasive, and commoditized the modern internet is. But it also leads to burnout and can be isolating if you are too rigid about it.
It’s not that big of a deal. You live your life and you let them live theirs. It’s what I’ve done. If they want to continue to use the corporate stuff, that’s on them. Hell, I don’t even harass my wife about it. Just let people be. If it bothers you, go where they are. If it doesn’t, stay here and enjoy what makes this part of the internet great.
That’s easy to say, but it feels to me as if I have to make a choice between engaging and interacting with the people I love or adhering to my beliefs about how I should manage/protect my information. It’s a difficult spot to be in and it’s neither fair that I should have to make that choice nor fair that I should have to force it on others. That’s what’s bothering me.
I’m gonna tell you what you’ve probably been told a million times before. Life ain’t fair. Never has been, never will be. You know it, I know it.
You always have choices to make and each choice bears with it consequences that you must be willing to endure. In the end, you have to decide what’s more important to you. Do you care more about interacting with your loved ones on the internet or your private information?
It’s a loaded question in either direction. Of course my original comment was easy to say and difficult to exact in practice. That’s what it means to have principles you stand for.
[Edit: is BEEPER the one Messenger to rule them all? Billed as self-hostable and Open Source, native to Matrix but with integrations to act as front end for What’s App, Signal Telegram, Facebook Messenger, etc… this is looking promising! Anyone have experience? https://www.beeper.com/ ]
Remember the great Instant Messenger schism? (I know, I’m dating myself) Back in the day AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, and MSN Messenger were the top IM platforms, while the IT crowd self-hosted IRC servers. None of these platforms were interoperable, each set up with different protocols in walled gardens. What was the answer for those of us who wanted it all? Third party cross-platform apps that integrated with each major API and provided a unified front-end, with Trillian being the most widely adopted to my knowledge.
WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and all the rest of the single-host messengers are just Instant Messenger platforms wrapped an an App shell with different encryption layers. The answer that we are all craving is a Trillian for the current generation, bundling SMS in with all these other platforms, however as I understand it these service providers no longer offer API access that would allow a third party front end client. The walled gardens no longer have gates, and the enshitification is progressing.
Note that there were official attempts to unify the original IM platforms with interoperability, but to quote wikipedia:
"Most attempts at producing a unified standard for the major IM providers (AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft) have failed, and each continues to use its own proprietary protocol.
However, while discussions at IETF were stalled, Reuters signed the first inter-service provider connectivity agreement in September 2003. This agreement enabled AIM, ICQ and MSN Messenger users to talk with Reuters Messaging counterparts and vice versa. Following this, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL agreed to a deal in which Microsoft’s Live Communications Server 2005 users would also have the possibility to talk to public instant messaging users. This deal established SIP/SIMPLE as a standard for protocol interoperability and established a connectivity fee for accessing public instant messaging groups or services. Separately, on October 13, 2005, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that by the 3rd quarter of 2006 they would interoperate using SIP/SIMPLE, which was followed, in December 2005, by the AOL and Google strategic partnership deal in which Google Talk users would be able to communicate with AIM and ICQ users provided they have an AIM account[…]
Certain networks have made changes to prevent them from being used by such multi-network IM clients. For example, Trillian had to release several revisions and patches to allow its users to access the MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! networks, after changes were made to these networks. The major IM providers usually cite the need for formal agreements, and security concerns as reasons for making these changes.
The use of proprietary protocols has meant that many instant messaging networks have been incompatible and users have been unable to reach users on other networks.[29] This may have allowed social networking with IM-like features and text messaging an opportunity to gain market share at the expense of IM.[30]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging
History is doomed to repeat itself unless FOSS can win on convenience and UX. One could imagine a big player like Mozilla taking this on and rolling a messenger with an open protocol into their software stack, but that still wouldn’t kill the others due to network effect unless it had some killer app advantage.
IIRC Pidgin integrates all of the ones you mentioned along with XMPP services. I only know about it because they used to offer it where I worked and couldn’t use the others, but admittedly I cannot speak about its privacy features or lack thereof.
Edit: don’t listen to me, I don’t see a mobile version like OP wanted.
@PrincessLeiasCat yeah, there are a lot of Windows and Linux based solutions, but not many mobile native.
Is Beeper the one chat client to rule them all?
Email address and phone number to sign up? I dunno, chief…
Yeah… gave me pause as well. Then again WhatsApp and several of the other services require the same.
I think the deal is if you self host you don’t have to give them anything.
I just don’t fucking care.
If people prefer WhatsApp because “everyone is using it” then bad luck for them reaching me. Facebook? Am I mentally challenged? If you want to know stuff about my life, ask me. If you want to see pictures of my lovely pet, ask me. Who needs this upvote-circlejerking of fake posers?
If someone really cares, they’d jump on the platform I use or they don’t.
Of course I am willing to explain and even install everything for the technically challenged. Also explain, in detail, WHY I’m so strict.
Only thing I am using mainstream with is the stupid pixel-phones. Ironically they’re the easiest to un-google. And there is no (good) alternative yet.
If someone really cares, they’d jump on the platform I use or they don’t.
What do you do when they feel the same way and don’t understand why you think you’re worth so much extra time and effort to interact with compared to everyone else?
Do you just cut those people out of your life?
It’s not really “so much extra time”. It’s installing another app. And they’re not cut out then, i still exist in the real world 😊 But i won’t use whatscrap, fuckbook and the likes. Period. And honestly, if people don’t even question why those things are horrible, i question myself why I’m interacting with them in the first place.
But it probably helps to be an old antisocial 😁
If someone wants me to install a service exclusively to speak to them: fuck em, not worth it.
I use basic text messages to contact people, it’s damn near the most universal thing people have when I meet them. I’m not gonna go out of my way to download an app and remember to use it for a specific person when texting exists and everyone else uses it already
This is the argument I typically get from others (though, not as aggressive). I don’t blame this stance at all; it makes sense and is reasonable. I try to extol the benefits of the alternatives I propose but there’s simply no getting past “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitudes.
Sure, it’s a reasonable stance. But i would just part digital ways with that person then. Why should, let’s say, whatsapp be the default someone has to deviate from? Just because it’s #1 (by count, not quality)? Should I feel extorted to install it because “everyone does”? Why is it ok this way round?
Absolutely based. I’m working on it to be like you, man.
I’ve been on both sides of this table. Yes, I wish people would move away from WhatsApp but that’s not going to happen. They’re not going to even make an effort to begin to understand Signal just to talk to me. I could just not use WhatsApp and use Signal to talk to myself, that’d be fun.
I understand their frustration as well, people already have too many message apps already. WhatsApp, telegram, hangouts, SMS, Slack, Discord… When asked to install a new app they are naturally reluctant to install yet another messaging app just to talk to me and only me. I too have that one friend who bugs me every couple of months to install the new cool message app that is going around. Currently that SimpleX, wonder what comes next.
Never even heard of SimpleX. Is that some Musk-related shitty thing?
Haven’t googled it yet but my bet is crypto.
EDIT: glad to be wrong. Looks like Tor but for chat. Looks quite cool, but considering I couldn’t even get the friend who hosts my Matrix homeserver to stick with Matrix, my hopes aren’t high for getting a chance to play around with it
Ah yeah, I don’t see that happening either because there is somewhat of a learning curve for folks who have never done that kind of thing before, and it’s unlikely grandma would be ready to make the swap.
A variety of answers, including but not limited to:
- I don’t want to learn another new thing.
- There aren’t enough other people I regularly contact using it.
- I already have this thing, why add another?
- I don’t care about the benefits of switching so why would I?
- I like what I have.
Again, I can understand these reasons. (Especially universal adoption; it’s hard to get someone to switch to a messenger that almost nobody they talk to is using, just so they can talk to you.) But I’ve made my choice for a variety of reasons to which I wholeheartedly subscribe and don’t want to go back, but it’s had the effect of isolating me.–
