I have a life to live. My friends and family and coworkers use Slack and Discord and iMessage, so I need to be available there for them.
Just using XMPP alone is a slight upgrade from those services either way TBH
Someone who won’t install a trivial and safe free app to maintain connection with you is perhaps not as valuable a connection as one might think.
I also have a life to live, and it is important to me that living that life does not make the world more dangerous for myself, my loved ones, and others in society. Surveillance systems do that, so I don’t use them.
That's a pretty radical stance and I respect it.
However, I consider that keeping in touch with people that don't get why they shouldn't use Meta or Google is actually more productive than bubbling myself in a hacktivist bubble. I actually have more chance to get them interested in mass surveillance concerns by keeping in touch than by ghosting them.
Using surveillance platforms makes the world worse, so I don’t.
Reminds me at duckduckgo: makes claims and builds big branding about security but nobody (including me) ever questioned them. (Regarding article not at hand but of course also on HN.)
The first question I would ask: how does Signal finances itself when the service is practically "free"...
For the rest I totally agree: I could also convince some for XMPP/Jabber while at the same time it lets me question my relationship to those I couldn't move. I mean it's not that these days you couldn't install a second app if you already have 50 useless i.e. "coupon" apps installed anyway.
Don't get me started on this. It saddens me to see so much resistance from a lot of my friends that don't even want to try a tiny, privacy-friendly, open-source, non-battery consuming app when they have like 50 attention-stealing spyware apps installed on their phone. Marketing works scandalously well.