Hi friends,

I’m new to Lemmy but I think I like where it is heading in general. I would like to ask, do you have any specific apps used for ?

As a community that seems more focused on decentralized platforms, I thought this could spike up an interesting discussion

I have been using mainly Viber and FB messenger. I did try to convince friends and family to move over to simpleXchat, as it seems the most privacy focused alternative I have found, but basically failed.

I would love to hear your input!

    • phluko@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Around the time when Meta announced some big privacy changes to WhatsApp, it became a hot topic in the news since everyone here uses WhatsApp.

      I took advantage of that situation to talk to my friends and family about how much better Signal is. I set up our existing groups like Family Chats, Friends, and Sport Groups on Signal, and helped some people install the app. I kept reminding and urging them to switch and assured them we would continue using Signal, everything will stay the same just super secure.

      To make it clear to everyone still on WhatsApp, I changed my profile picture to say “please contact me via Signal.” Surprisingly, within 1-2 weeks, everyone I care about made the switch and, to my surprise, they still use Signal today.

      Honestly, if it wasn’t for all the privacy concerns about WhatsApp in the news, I think convincing them to switch would have been much harder.

    • CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      To be real, getting someone to change their habit is near impossible and when that happens, just send them SMS.

    • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ@lemmy.mlEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      The way I did it was getting rid of the apps I no longer wanted on my phone. This forced people to send text messages. If they try sending a good pic/video it would obviously fail. Their only option was usually something more difficult than just installing Signal. I don’t provide Whatsapp as an alternative. I did lose some contacts, but close friends/family will obviously opt for the better messaging experience compared to default SMS.