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Comment by tombh | Hacker News Reader

I've been de-googled (and de-facebooked) for over a year now. I wrote about it here https://tombh.co.uk/deleting-facebook-and-google

My main motivation is slightly different in that being a software engineer I am actually in a unique position to navigate this tricky path and therefore feel a responsibility to tread the de-googled path, so that it might make it easier for others to follow, should they so wish. At the very least we all need readily available choices.

Interestingly, although I went through all the steps to delete my Google account I got stuck at the point of wondering what to do with my Youtube videos. Although, since last time I checked, it seems now I can actually move them to another Google account, I'll look into that.

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> I opt for Signal now, hardly anyone uses it and the UX isn’t as nice, but it uses state of art in encryption.

Out of curiosity, what don't you like about the UX?

And doesn't it use the same "state of the art" encryption as WhatsApp?

The problem with WhatsApp is that the other participants in a given chat are likely to back up the conversation to Google Drive of iCloud which defeats the purpose of E2E encryption. And, of course, the metadata.

Also it's owned by Facebook, so you just know there's some backdoors built in.

Hmm? The e in e2e is you and your partner communicating. If your don't trust your conversation partner, don't talk to them.

> Out of curiosity, what don't you like about the UX?

Not GP, but I’ve railed against Signal’s stability and UX before.

Apart from messages not being delivered sometimes (or taking very long) and getting unnecessary “device changed” messages when nothing has changed (this happened as recent as last year), within a year or two of use, Signal makes sure that the user realizes that it’s meant for ephemeral use.

It does this by a few different ways. One is that if you change devices, you’d have to jump through hoops to rejoin groups you were a part of, and then see that you cannot see the list of members or the group’s name. Once you change devices, at least in iOS, you’d realize that you’ve permanently lost all your previous chats because Signal explicitly prohibits chat backup by iTunes and does not provide a way to backup chats and restore it either.

In terms of UX alone, Telegram > WhatsApp > Signal. FWIW, I use all these and Wire too. Signal gets the least amount of use because the people I chat with on it are also fed up with the poor UX and lack of features.

EDIT: As someone pointed out in a reply, iOS would in fact support this file functionality, so it would presumably be up to Signal to add it.

> at least in iOS, you’d realize that you’ve permanently lost all your previous chats because Signal explicitly prohibits chat backup by iTunes and does not provide a way to backup chats and restore it either.

This seems like an iOS limitation that Signal doesn't want to compromise on. On Android it outputs an encrypted backup file that you can use a file manager to upload or send wherever you want.

No, that’s not true at all. There’s been a Files app in iOS since iOS 11 (which was released in late 2017 and allows you to store the data on device or on the cloud, including creating folders), and before that there was iCloud Drive. Either of these could be used to save the file. The share sheet on iOS also exposes other apps that the user has. So for example, if someone has the Dropbox app, it can be used as a destination to save files.

Thank you for the correction, I will edit my comment. Sorry about that, I haven't owned an iOS device in a few years and clearly didn't search online intelligently enough to find it.

At the time Signal didn't have the swipe-right-to-reply behaviour, nor the ability to lock audio message recording so you can record handsfree. But it has both now!

As far as I know yes Whatsapp uses some of Signal's tech but doesn't implement it in exactly the same way.

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