Here in South Europe people mostly use Viber. Edit: I was very unaware about situation in Southern Europe as I’ve learned from this post… Most people in Croatia use Viber!
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I am German and use Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Threema and SMS because NO ONE CAN MAKE UP THEIR FUCKING MINDS!!!1!!11!
Some people seem to be extra confusing and contact me on multiple channels based on the moon cycle or whatever the fuck.
the worst part is when they start calling 🙄
based on the moon cycle
Lol, right? Wtf?
I have a friend with multiple active numbers. Very fun to figure out.
10000000% this … Like I just wish everyone used Telegram for IRL chat. Matrix and Discord is fine, there is even a bridge server you can run, so everyone can chat ala IRC. (We run one, it’s great).
SMS/RCS or iMessage if you’re asking what most people use.
Signal does end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice, and video chat.
As an American living in Germany, I have:
- Signal
- Matrix
- Discord
- Telegram
- SimpleX
- SMS via Google Voice for some very stubborn Americans
Everyone I know in Europe uses Signal or Whatsapp, often both. Sometimes when I suggest to Americans who live in the US that they should use one of those, they counter that I should buy an iPhone and use iMessage.
As a fellow American, fuck iMessage. I wish we were more like Europe in that regard.
I’ve even seen technically-sophisticated adults exclude people from group conversations for not having iPhones. The resistance to using anything else is weird. I’m even willing to add to the above list if somebody has a different preference that isn’t the one thing not everyone can use.
With the Digital Market Act in the EU they’ll soon all be speaking to each other. Vestager is about to tear those messaging monopolies a new asshole!
That sounds good, until you realize that your data will then end up with Meta after you specifically left all of their services.
How ya liking SimpleX? I’m just rocking Discord, Matrix for internet ppl WhatsApp and Telegram for RL ppl. Used to use Signal, but Telegram replaced it a while back for me. Way better feature set.
SimpleX is interesting. Its complete lack of server-side profiles would be promising if I had something really secret to discuss, but I don’t. It doesn’t have a way to get timely notifications without keeping the CPU awake and draining the battery, so it’s kind of a non-starter for general use.
What features do you prefer in Telegram? Few people I know use it and I just keep it around as an alternate because why not?
I like the fact that my messages are on in sync on all my devices. Yeah, it’s not E2E, but it’s good enough for just chatting with friends and family. I like how easy it is to send photos on it. Also being able to edit messages is nice for when you fat finger stuff.
And yeah, SimpleX seems like some spy level shit, neat though. I used Signal for a few years, back when it had SMS support.
Signal does stay in sync between my laptop and phone, but I think if I wanted more than that it would not be easy to achieve. Message editing was added in a recent update, and it seems to be as easy to send photos via Signal as any other messaging app (I can’t remember if it was ever difficult).
I’ve become more insistent about E2EE for anything I rely on lately because big platforms have been scanning “private” conversations for content some computer program guesses violates their policies. Someone I know recently got a suspension from Facebook (yes, they’re probably worse than other platforms) for a joke sent to a friend in chat years prior. That took it from an abstract they could to a concrete they do.
Yeah, fuck Facebook. I don’t trust them for shit.
No doubt they’re the worst, but will Discord do the same thing? I wouldn’t be shocked. Will Telegram? If they get enough pressure from governments because of people talking about doing bad things over Telegram, they probably will.
So now if I’m using anything that isn’t E2EE, I find myself thinking about whether dark humor or hypothetical self defense scenarios will get my flagged by some algorithm. People act differently when they’re being watched.
Are you using Telegram for its privacy and E2EE or just for the features. Because Telegram sure is not private nor does it have any E2EE unless you specifically select to be in a “secure chat” with someone.
Nah, just for the features. It’s secure enough for just chit chat. I only use the secure message chat when I need to send documents to family. I just like that they have clients on every platform, including Linux.
A vast majority of people I’ve met through work and other social activities simply use the default messaging app on their device.
Signal for the half dozen people I actually give a crap about messaging back and forth with.
SMS for the monthly/yearly exchanges with everyone else.
Signal for everything.
There are a couple people who are too lazy to get Signal, and they got iPhones, so I set up an iMessage server to forward messages to my GrapheneOS phone.
But the communication there is extremely sparse and surface level. It’s basically just a touch point. The real conversations all go through Signal.
Share a bit (or a link) about your iMessage server?
Maybe a good idea for a blog post, but the general gist is this:
- Buy an old/cheap Mac mini
- Set up AirMessage or BlueBubbles (open source)
- Run a command or get an app so keep your Mac mini (or whatever other Apple device you’re using) awake 24/7
The messages will get delivered to your Mac, and then forwarded to your phone via AirMessage or BlueBubbles.
Thank you :)
I want to do something like this but airmessage does not have a desktop client that works without using their clouds. I use a Apple phone but I just want to be able to respond to texts on my Linux computers. I have an iMac server that I vnc into but it’s kind of annoying just to respond to a text.
Most people I know use SMS/RCS/iMessage or Discord. My family uses Signal, but I don’t know anyone else IRL that has even heard of it. I personally don’t like Signal because they don’t have some basic features, such as if you get a new phone, you need to export/import all of your old messages manually. If your old phone broke or your traded it in already, tough shit. If you log in on your laptop, afaik, there’s no way to get your old messages from your phone. I know these were intentional design decisions to make it as secure as possible, but I would be fine with something being slightly less secure to have these QOL features.
Signal definitely has some room to improve with regard to backup/sync. It should probably never store your messages on its servers, which is what it would take for you to get your history back if you lose access to all your devices containing it, but it could allow you to keep the full history in sync across multiple devices without compromising its security guarantees.
Always interesting when I hear people’s families use something other than the default in the US. What started that? Were your parents always concerned about privacy? Did you somehow convince them to use that app? What about when they text someone who isn’t on signal, which is probably 90% of the US? I could get my family to download the app but I feel like it’s pointless because no one else uses it so they would just quit.
I’ve been in the Cyber Security space for a few decades now and have all of my close family on Signal. It’s another step in helping them understand what privacy options are out there and how to best protect themselves.
We’ve also managed to not have any of the more egregious social media platforms (Meta, X, TikTok, etc…) as well as VPN’s on everything and PiHoles at the perimeter.
It sounds paranoid to most of the other families we know but, to each there own I suppose. And knowing the people in my household stand a chance against the ever persistent push of advertising / privacy invasion is worth sounding like a madman once in a while.
My parents were going out of the country where they wouldn’t have cell access, and they just googled what to use. Signal is what came up first in a list they read online. They knew that they didn’t like Facebook and wanted to avoid Whatsapp for that reason. After we made a family chat group, it just kind of stuck. If we want to send something to the whole family, we use that group. If we send something directly to each other, we still usually use SMS/RCS/iMessage.
Who convinced your family? I tried to do the same with my family and friends to no avail.
My dad, mostly. I just explained it in another comment.
Here in South Europe people mostly use Viber.
South Europe? In Italy everyone uses WhatsApp
I was surprised to read that a country in South Europe mainly used Viber. I’m not European but I’m almost definite that WhatsApp has the largest market share for chat apps in all of Europe. Maybe Telegram coming a close second
If you move a bit eas of Italy, to that peninsula that should not be named, Viber gets real popular.
Florida?
balkan
🤫
In Greece, you’re right. But most Europe is on WhatsApp and telegram
*In Croatia
It’s chaos. Well, unless you count SMS.
There really isn’t a single dominant app/service, though apple and imessages comes close. But, since that’s apple only, it doesn’t truly dominate in the way whatsapp does in some places.
In my local area (a rural mountain zone in the Southeast), the most common single one is telegram. The only thing that gets close is Facebook messenger, but there was a big push maybe three years ago to get people away from it, and it worked.
County wide, it’s still Facebook over telegram, but not by much. Then imessage. You can even rely on apple monkeys using one or both of the others since the county school system sends on both of them as well as via SMS for major events.
My kid and most of the high school kids do discord among themselves, but still use the others away from that.
Tbh, though, I have come to prefer not having a single messaging service be dominant. It was (and still can be) a pain in the ass using multiple apps, but at least you’re not totally fucked if you refuse to use whatever else the majority have decided to use because it’s easier.
The only thing that gets close is Facebook messenger, but there was a big push maybe three years ago to get people away from it, and it worked.
Who led the push?
There was a huge problem with it being over used by the mayor’s office as a semi official channel. When the mayor got himself into a bit of trouble, those folks that were working to get him ousted made a big deal out of him corporatizing the office of mayor and town business in that way, and it made sense to use it as a tool against him. He was trying to treat it like if he said something there, it was a done deal, and it counted as some kind of replacement for posting such things publicly.
The push was from a group of like minded residents that included the county sheriff, the chief of police, myself, and the librarian. I can’t truly say anyone led the push, though the librarian would come closest. We all just got sick of him, and used what we could to get people moving against him. People were starting to hate Facebook locally because of some school drama anyway, so it was easy enough to stoke that fire.
Get people from the various town departments to stop using it, get their families and friends to help convince them if they weren’t on board. If he can’t reach anyone via messenger that’s part of the local government, it cuts that out, and ties him into the whole arguments over school aged access to Facebook in general.
It worked! Which was a bit of a surprise to all involved. But it was the right confluence of events. He was fucking up with covid issues, fucking up the people that actually run the town on a direct basis, and doing so while being an asshole as a person. There was no way he was winning the next election, but he could fuck things up before then.
Once the entire police force officially abandoned messenger, it was a bit of a death knell. Individual officers still used it, but the group chats he was using died totally.
Small town drama, in other words.
This reeks of bot
How?
I dont really know. The grammar, the style, the even distribution of paragraphs. I feel like noone writes like that…
Welcome to my life lol.
I have run into this kind of thing a lot. Once, on reddit, I got accused of lying because I wrote a pretty personal story with a little style. I write more casually and get crap for not paying attention to perfect grammar and typing. I stay to bland recital of facts and now I’m boring. I tell a simple story here with no embellishments, and I’m a bot lol.
Fwiw, I have published three books in my life so far. I’ve done custom fiction for people, and some research and reporting freelance stuff too. I’m not saying I’m a great writer or anything, just that bots try to mimic what jabronie writers do. They get fed data from articles written by people that follow basic style guidelines, like keeping paragraphs to manageable sizes, using accessible but (hopefully) clear grammar rather than fully formal.
So it’s no surprise I end up looking like a bot, fellow human.
Damn this madness, it’s much better when there is only one giant megacorp like with everything else!
Canada’s pretty close to America, so I’ll answer. My family uses WhatsApp. Better than unencrypted, at least.
You’re not going to get a very representative sample here. Signal is great but a lot of North Americans haven’t even heard of it.
Damn. Here in Quebec pretty much everyone seems to default to FB Messenger.
I’m pretty curious to know what got a bunch of prairie farmers on WhatsApp, but I suspect it leads back to India fairly quickly. Unfortunately, French-speaking Indians are a rare breed.
We love our 51st state in the north ;)
Thank you and fuck you too.
Like, you’re not wrong, but in case it wasn’t intended telling someone their country isn’t real is generally considered an insult.
No, it was a lighthearted joke. I genuinely have had almost nothing but good experiences with Canadians. Like, 8/10 encounters with unknown fellow Americans is anything from indifferent to bad. Canadians, it’s been more like 1/10 is bad. Mind you, one of those was trying to bang my mom and grabbed my ass, so he can continue fucking right off lol.
Have you never run across that before though? Where you make fun of a bad stereotype? Like, Americans treating canada like an extension is a common enough thing that I see it online all the time as a serious thing, so it becomes a joke in itself.
No, it was a lighthearted joke.
Ah good. Keep shootin’!
No it’s really typical banter, it’s just with Americans you can’t be sure how aware they are. Same with Chinese if you can talk to them, apparently; it must be a byproduct of being a giant self-contained hyperpower.
Sorry you got downvoted.
No worries :)
As a former Vermonter we used to delight in considering ourselves part of Quebec. Hell, most of our power came from Hydro Quebec.
Hey, and you’ve already succeeded in separating from Canada!
Literally nobody I know uses Viber. WTF is OP on about?
Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, USA, and Philippines. Interesting.
SMS text messaging unless it’s a group chat/voice call for gaming, in which case it’s Discord.
Really? People pay for short, unencrypted messages that can barely handle accented characters, let alone media, when there are free alternatives that are much better in the vast majority of scenarios?
Or is free sms a common thing in people’s phone plans?
Pay? In the US we haven’t paid extra for SMS since about 2005. Which partly explains why it’s prevalent.
Almost all phone plans have unlimited texting. Or at least it seems that way.
My plan is $25/month for unlimited talk, text, and 5g data.
I’ve had unlimited sms since before I had a smart phone.
It outsmarted them.
Pay per text plans only seemed to exist up until like 2010 at the latest.
The problem in the US is that the iPhone has a huge amount of the market and iMessage mostly does that already. For Android to counter that you have to use a 3rd party app, which further fractures an already smaller market. Or everyone could just use sms which is free with basically every plan nowadays, which gets you by.
Like others have commented, unlimited texting has been available in most phone plans for the better part of a decade now; I’d struggle to name a place that offers plans without it.
As for the accented characters, that’s something I personally don’t encounter much as a native English speaker. I obviously can’t speak for those who do need those keyboards, but for me it’s not a problem.
With regards to encryption/privacy, I can’t say that’s a concern I’ve personally had regarding my texts. Could the government read my messages? Probably, but all they’re getting is cute cat pics and random chatter about games and food and whatnot. Again, that’s another aspect that’s probably more of a concern for people in more sensitive situations, but I can’t speak for them.
USmobile still offers non-unlimited plans. I thought ting did as well, but I guess that changed at some point. But I think I’ve only heard of one person using USMobile.
Well most messages can be understood without accented characters and SMS is dependable to work on all devices.
SMS. Universal and ubiquitous thanks to free or nearly free inclusion in phone plans. American English has no need for expanded character sets and carriers/Apple/Google have added just enough features on top that the vast majority of people aren’t left wanting for more.
Instant payment was literally impossible until this summer, and given it’s so new almost no bank has support for it yet. Privacy/encryption don’t enter into most people’s consciousness.
SMS was ubiquitous here in NA while data was already ubiquitous but SMS heavily metered in most of the rest of the world.
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They might mean instant bank transfers, like OSKO in Australia. Google tells me a service called FedNow is available through 35 banks as of July this year which supports instant bank transfers.
Bingo. It’s wild to me to hear other countries doing tons of their payments via apps. US is 10 years behind the rest of the world on that.
We have things like Venmo and cashapp that approximate the same thing, but in the end it’s just the same ACH transfers the banking industry has used for 30 years and takes days to process. The apps just hide that behind the scenes. FedNow actually means instant and 24/6 (still doesn’t run on Sunday, if I recall correctly).
OSKO is even better than payment apps. Basically every bank offers is as a payment method option (if not the default) for any transfer, at 0 cost. They’re also implementing a new system to replace direct debits, to add more consumer protection and control to the recurring billing market.
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Mostly SMS, but I have one friend who uses Whatsapp. I have Signal installed but wasn’t able to convince anyone else to switch.
