It is for people outside of tech circles. Just having to locate an instance is a massive amount of friction. But you need to locate an instance and a client, and there are a lot of configurable options and things that can go wrong.
Signal is turn-key, easier than Whatsapp friction wise, encryption by default, open source, non-profit, and secure. I don’t like that their messaging platform isn’t more open and that they don’t have mitigation against, say, AWS going offline, but at the moment, they are the only app I have successfully migrated “normal” people to.
I think in the future, fediverse-esque tech will reduce their friction. Instead of managing instances, data is user-sovereign, instances never see non-encrypted user data, users automatically move between them, you don’t sign up you have generated signing keys that are opaque to users unless they want to see them (tech people), etc. Fediverse can actually be LESS friction than current social media people use, but that hasn’t been implemented yet.
For communications with my friends and family I set Matrix (with element) up for them and it works perfectly, though I can see why using signal is simpler.
It is for people outside of tech circles. Just having to locate an instance is a massive amount of friction. But you need to locate an instance and a client, and there are a lot of configurable options and things that can go wrong.
Signal is turn-key, easier than Whatsapp friction wise, encryption by default, open source, non-profit, and secure. I don’t like that their messaging platform isn’t more open and that they don’t have mitigation against, say, AWS going offline, but at the moment, they are the only app I have successfully migrated “normal” people to.
I think in the future, fediverse-esque tech will reduce their friction. Instead of managing instances, data is user-sovereign, instances never see non-encrypted user data, users automatically move between them, you don’t sign up you have generated signing keys that are opaque to users unless they want to see them (tech people), etc. Fediverse can actually be LESS friction than current social media people use, but that hasn’t been implemented yet.
That’s fair.
For communications with my friends and family I set Matrix (with element) up for them and it works perfectly, though I can see why using signal is simpler.
Your method is good, but it also makes them dependent on you for messaging.
What happens if something happens to you? What if you get bored? What if you don’t have time to maintain it?
It is actually a big responsibility, and most people aren’t lucky enough to have someone like you in their lives.