It seems like I constantly see “X secure messaging option is actually bullshit because it was purchased by Dr. Evil and Y is actually just e-mailing your messages directly to Xi Jinping.”
Is there an authoritatively “best” one I can just…download and setup easily? Is Signal good? Or do I need to solder a Raspberry Pi to the flux modulator of my home Linux NAS GUI, etc…?
Only downsides of Signal are 1. It’s centralized 2. You have to sign up with a phone number.
It’s secure, cross platform, and easy to set up and use.
Probably most importantly, it’s a similar experience to using other popular texting apps and the set-up experience is familiar to anyone singing into any big-brand-name app, making it a relatively easy sell to non-techies.
To add to this:
It’s also owned and operator by a non-profit in the United States (unlike Telegram and Whatsapp which are operated from the UAE and a for-profit company respectively).
WhatsApp is owned by Meta (FaceBook), which is notorious for stooping to the level of borderline malware to steal data.
Look at openAI trying to switch to a forprofit. It’s hard to imagine signal surviving for longer especially that it is hemorrhaging a shit load of money and donations aren’t enough to keep it afloat
Signal is actually trying very diligently to pioneer a novel financial model for a sustaining long term. Here’s a lemmy post from a few month ago about a Wired interview with Signal Foundation’s president covering it in some depth (and a current archive link to the article). They seem to be one of the few actually good entities left in a world of surveillance capitalism and pervasive domestic government espionage.
Whether they succeed or not in the long term is certainly still unclear, but I expect they have many years of financial runway remaining.