Here in South Europe people mostly use Viber. Edit: I was very unaware about situation in Southern Europe as I’ve learned from this post… Most people in Croatia use Viber!
Signal for the half dozen people I actually give a crap about messaging back and forth with.
SMS for the monthly/yearly exchanges with everyone else.
SMS. Universal and ubiquitous thanks to free or nearly free inclusion in phone plans. American English has no need for expanded character sets and carriers/Apple/Google have added just enough features on top that the vast majority of people aren’t left wanting for more.
Instant payment was literally impossible until this summer, and given it’s so new almost no bank has support for it yet. Privacy/encryption don’t enter into most people’s consciousness.
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They might mean instant bank transfers, like OSKO in Australia. Google tells me a service called FedNow is available through 35 banks as of July this year which supports instant bank transfers.
Bingo. It’s wild to me to hear other countries doing tons of their payments via apps. US is 10 years behind the rest of the world on that.
We have things like Venmo and cashapp that approximate the same thing, but in the end it’s just the same ACH transfers the banking industry has used for 30 years and takes days to process. The apps just hide that behind the scenes. FedNow actually means instant and 24/6 (still doesn’t run on Sunday, if I recall correctly).
OSKO is even better than payment apps. Basically every bank offers is as a payment method option (if not the default) for any transfer, at 0 cost. They’re also implementing a new system to replace direct debits, to add more consumer protection and control to the recurring billing market.
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SMS was ubiquitous here in NA while data was already ubiquitous but SMS heavily metered in most of the rest of the world.
I just use SMS. I don’t need to install anything extra or make some sort of extra account somewhere. Phone plans here have had unlimited texts for like over a decade now so we aren’t spending extra money here to send texts either.
SMS is notoriously unreliable, plus insecure as hell.
As in it’s known across the industry that upward of 10% of messages fail, and since SMS lacks error detection (and thereby no error correction), you have no idea when your message never arrived.
We have read reciepts, granted idk how those work all together
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Not on SMS you don’t. I’ve seen SMS apps that claim to have verification, at most that’s a verification the edge router of your service received it.
Since there’s no error detection, there’s no way to universally implement read receipts across vendors.
SMS is a best-effort system. Like shouting at the clouds, unfortunately.
Not on SMS you don’t.
estonia here: most people use Facebook messager, whatsapp, sms, viber, Skype and snapchat
Here in NL it’s pretty much 100% Whatsapp, from family, friends and colleagues.
Same in germany. Some people that care a little about security might use Telegram, Signal and/or Threema, but most still use WhatsApp parallel for family and stuff
sms
I have family who use facebook messenger but I refuse.
Mix of messenger, telegram, and SMS for me.
I’d love to love Discord, but frankly it’s one of the most convoluted, obtuse interfaces I’ve ever seen. And I wrote my first program in Fortran on punched cards…
IRC.
Doesn’t everyone?
I wish
That or matrix though I think matrix will bridge with irc fairly cleanly
Discord for friends, SMS for everyone else. Rather use something private but I can’t convince people to care.
As an American living in Germany, I have:
- Signal
- Matrix
- Discord
- Telegram
- SimpleX
- SMS via Google Voice for some very stubborn Americans
Everyone I know in Europe uses Signal or Whatsapp, often both. Sometimes when I suggest to Americans who live in the US that they should use one of those, they counter that I should buy an iPhone and use iMessage.
As a fellow American, fuck iMessage. I wish we were more like Europe in that regard.
I’ve even seen technically-sophisticated adults exclude people from group conversations for not having iPhones. The resistance to using anything else is weird. I’m even willing to add to the above list if somebody has a different preference that isn’t the one thing not everyone can use.
With the Digital Market Act in the EU they’ll soon all be speaking to each other. Vestager is about to tear those messaging monopolies a new asshole!
That sounds good, until you realize that your data will then end up with Meta after you specifically left all of their services.
That’s a GDPR request away from deletion, at least in the EU (and for a while at least, the U.K.)
I don’t want them to have my data. It doesn’t matter how easy it is to delete them. And basically every time someone scans their contacts I might get re-added to allow this cross functionality
How ya liking SimpleX? I’m just rocking Discord, Matrix for internet ppl WhatsApp and Telegram for RL ppl. Used to use Signal, but Telegram replaced it a while back for me. Way better feature set.
SimpleX is interesting. Its complete lack of server-side profiles would be promising if I had something really secret to discuss, but I don’t. It doesn’t have a way to get timely notifications without keeping the CPU awake and draining the battery, so it’s kind of a non-starter for general use.
What features do you prefer in Telegram? Few people I know use it and I just keep it around as an alternate because why not?
I like the fact that my messages are on in sync on all my devices. Yeah, it’s not E2E, but it’s good enough for just chatting with friends and family. I like how easy it is to send photos on it. Also being able to edit messages is nice for when you fat finger stuff.
And yeah, SimpleX seems like some spy level shit, neat though. I used Signal for a few years, back when it had SMS support.
Signal does stay in sync between my laptop and phone, but I think if I wanted more than that it would not be easy to achieve. Message editing was added in a recent update, and it seems to be as easy to send photos via Signal as any other messaging app (I can’t remember if it was ever difficult).
I’ve become more insistent about E2EE for anything I rely on lately because big platforms have been scanning “private” conversations for content some computer program guesses violates their policies. Someone I know recently got a suspension from Facebook (yes, they’re probably worse than other platforms) for a joke sent to a friend in chat years prior. That took it from an abstract they could to a concrete they do.
Yeah, fuck Facebook. I don’t trust them for shit.
No doubt they’re the worst, but will Discord do the same thing? I wouldn’t be shocked. Will Telegram? If they get enough pressure from governments because of people talking about doing bad things over Telegram, they probably will.
So now if I’m using anything that isn’t E2EE, I find myself thinking about whether dark humor or hypothetical self defense scenarios will get my flagged by some algorithm. People act differently when they’re being watched.
Nah, just for the features. It’s secure enough for just chit chat. I only use the secure message chat when I need to send documents to family. I just like that they have clients on every platform, including Linux.
Its so weird how standardised the use of Apple Phones is in the US
Whatsapp because I can’t get anyone to flip
Discord/SMS/Instagram/Telegram/Matrix for text.
Discord/Skype for video.
Signal for anyone I could get on Signal.
But sms/RCS for random people I exchange numbers with.
