this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I'm not using Signal as long as Signal Foundation is based in the US. Also Signal is not on FDroid, so I can't use it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I installed Signal via Obtanium. Just use this URL when searching/adding the app

https://signal.org/android/apk/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why would you need to use obtanium to get the Signal apk file from that link?

You can just download the apk from that website and install it. The app can update itself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The app doesn't auto update for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Huh, that's strange. On my 3 Android devices, I downloaded the APK from the website, and it always auto-updates.

It existed ever since they added the APK to their website as a compromise for people who don't want to get Signal from the Play Store.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This might not be relevant because you have other reasons not to use Signal, but you can get android signal directly from their website and via aurora store (on fdroid)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's more the attitude that bothers me. Signal's refusal to support alternative appstores and clients is very disturbing. It gives the impression that Signal is a honeypot.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

You seem to have really high standards around who you trust and in the same moment you call Telegram secure. I feel like you should atleast use the same amount of scepticism for Telegram that you use for Signal.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The official version of Telegram isn't available on F-Droid either, and it doesn't use end-to-end encryption by default, so it's much more likely that it is a honeypot

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That is not the official Telegram app. It is a fork called "Telegram-FOSS". If you go to the F-Droid page and click on 'Source code', you will see that it links to this repo: https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS

This is the description of that GitHub repository:

Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

It's Signal Foundation's hostility to open and non-Google platforms that is very disturbing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

But RusSSian/UAE-based Telegram is fine? 😂

Also, it really doesn't matter where Signal is based, as long as it's client code is open source and it uses E2EE by default. Telegram doesn't encrypt chats by default, and even if you enable 'secret chats' it uses a pretty weak encryption protocol.

Btw the official version of Telegram isn't available on F-Droid either, only a fork called Telegram-FOSS. You can get the exact same thing for Signal from a 3rd-party repo: https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/, or use Molly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Absolutely not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Signal releases their own self-updating apk on their site, and this release doesn't use Google services for push notifications. There are legitimate reasons why publishers sometimes avoid f-droid.

Also there's Molly, which is a signal fork that allows database encryption; or Session, which doesn't require a phone number for account registration and is decentralized. Both of these forks have repos that you can add to f-droid.

I do understand the hesitance to use a platform that has its infrastructure in the US, but I will say that international compliance with the US is a problem even if the infrastructure is located elsewhere. Session is a really promising option, since it's decentralized, and I'd love to see more people using it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

It would be better even if they just hosted an F-droid repo for their app. If they don't trust the f-droid organization with building the app, that's fine I guess. But as I'm aware, they had said no to allf of what is f-droid.