It's ethical because it runs on donations and has a non-profit business model.
Meta likely spends at least $1 billion a year running WhatsApp.
Please donate to Signal if you use it.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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I like Signal. I even got all my close friends and family on it, specifically to message me because I won't use whatsapp. The PIN reminders are annoying it enough to be legitimately holding it back from mass appeal imho
Wish more of my contact list would switch over to Signal. It's nearly the same. I don't see why it's so hard for some people to just start using Signal instead of WhatsApp.
Oh well.
Because people are beyond stupid. "i dont want to download another app" - while having an app for almost every other store and bullshit game and whatever
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signal not being on fdroid is a strike against them
It is though. I currently use Signal installed through F-Droid. You just need to add a separate repository.
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signal requires a phone number and won't even allow you to send sms to those that aren't on signal.
its better, but still not great.
It used to function as a fallback SMS/MMS messenger (like how iMessage does) but when Google started moving to convert Android from SMS/MMS to RCS Signal made the hard decision to cut the fallback functionality rather than follow Google's new framework.
I personally hope once the dust settles Signal designs a RCS engine and restores the fallback functionality.
Yeah killing the sms function was basically a deal breaker for me, no matter how much I tried I could only get three people to use Signal, the rest were all sms. When the sms feature was removed 2 of the 3 dropped Signal completely, so now the only person I know who still uses it is my mom and even she still flips back and forth between Signal and Google messages when texting me.
I still have Signal on my phone and suggest it people when they ask how to contact me, but everyone just wants to text my phone number.
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Ya it’d be better if it didn’t require a phone number but it’s a solid start as it’s build up a user base over the past decade. Matrix is good but I know far less people that use it and it’ll be a long time of growing with nerdy/geeky communities before it starts getting more mainstream users
A truly ethical replacement would not need a phone number
And would have FOSS implementations of reference server & client + an openly specified protocol.
Like Matrix.
Matrix still has it's problems. All the meta data is still saved on every server permanently.
There is still space to improve from there.
And it would have as much spam as email.
How about Delta Chat? At least as secure as Signal, open source, and decentralized.
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