Getting People Onto a Good Messaging App
Folks, I have finally figured it out.
Have a baby.
Since having a baby a week ago, all of a sudden everyone is willing to install a decent messaging app in order to receive pics of the baby.
We explained that we weren't ready for images of our child to end up in the wrong hands via non-private apps. Another thing was telling them that the one single friend who had already got on board with this had already been recieving pics...
It's been a conversation starter for many and I think seeing privacy from the point of view of a newborn has helped our family and friends understand it a bit more easily. Plus they've had to put up with it if they want any photos, so they will see it working firsthand.
So, if you want to have a baby, know that it can be a wonderful opportunity to help loved ones communicate more privately.
It also increases the sum total of love, community and compassion in the world and in your own life but that's a conversation for another community :)
Edit: If anyone has good tips on how to share a little one's journey more privately with those that care about them, please post them in the discussion.
I have two kids. I asked people to use signal to send and receive the photos. Asking people to follow your requirements only works for the direct immediate communication. The photos of my kids were sent by the recipients I sent them to (over signal) to other members of the family, over gmail (unencrypted), WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. I learned that years after.
This was in direct violation of my express requests. When I confronted them, they played dumb.
So, not to be a buzzkill here OP, but if you did this to get more people to use your messenger of choice, good job, it worked. If you did this so the pics of your kids stayed on safe apps, don't fool yourself. They didn't.
That's OK, I understand that unfortunately it's only a matter of time until images of them end up somewhere I don't want want them, either through ignorance or a difference in values. That's the world we live in right now sadly. But hopefully I can delay and minimise it a bit, open a better channel of communication with a few friends and relatives and perhaps raise some awareness in the process.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear about your experience, especially with the pictures of them ending up on instagram. At least you were responsible as a parent and tried to do your best.
Its important to share and celebrate the birth of a child with your community. Yet another part of our lives that has been compromised by the degradation of our privacy unfortunately.
Absolutely.
Yeah, my strategy is to not share pictures of my kids at all. I can hold my phone up in front of people's face so they can look if they want, but that's it.
My relatives hated this strategy, and I wasn't the only one who suffered from it. They guilted me for it, but also guilted my parents and siblings. As if they are entitled to the details of my daughter.
People could handle (though they were vocally unhappy about it) is keeping the baby off Facebook. They could not handle me not sending pics on (Facebook) messenger, and they couldn't handle me not telling me the birth weight.
Multiple boomers got very upset that I wanted to keep that information private.
Man that sounds really horrible. I'm sorry to hear your relatives were so unsupportive. I hope everyone gets along now.
My immediate family was all on board, so no big worries. It was the Grand parent level that thought I was being unreasonable with the privacy stuff. None of them ever be brought it up directly to me, just to my husband and my parents, so I could never really address it.
Could I simply purchase a baby?
Just be careful with the return policy, if your past the 60 day window it locks in a multi year contract.
Ugh, everything is a subscription service now. Even babies!
You Can!
Stores are called Adoption Agencies.
Congrats!
You might want to start with a lease, with the option to buy out, or trade-in, after the original terms are up.
Not sure, but I'm sure you could hire one on a barter basis. Offer to cook a few meals and change a few nappies.
i hope signal becomes the "go-to" app in near future in europe because i'm sick of using whatsapp
I would be furious if a different app that required Android or iOS to use became the norm. Have a Linux phone, a KaiOS phone, or no phone? Too bad.
They should make the default settings on for keeping a username for connecting to each other and number hidden
yup but normies don't care about safety and privacy
I discovered that it doesn't work if the baby's other parent is an avid Facebook user.
Oh dear. I'm sensing a deep backstory here...
You know what you need to do
Join them on the darkside!
Not quite
I was thinking divorce or murder
ReiserFS moment
I sympathize with you, as this is where I’m at as well. I’ve lost that battle. Everything is Google, Snapchat, and Facebook.
Genius idea. Is there an app that reverses a vasectomy and twenty years of aging? But seriously, this idea has got legs, I love it. Congrats with your baby. Have you made a Facebook account for them yet?
Haha. Thanks :)
No, if they want a facebook account they will have to wait until they are 18!
I'm not arguing with your parenting style or saying you're doing it wrong etc etc, I agree with it in theory but I'd like to share my younger sisters story.
My mum decided she couldn't have social media until she was "old enough" to protect her, this however caused her to end up getting a secret phone and create secret social media accounts. This eventually led to her being cyber bullied by students at her school who's parents were less cautious. But because she was doing all of this secretly as her mum had said no to social media, she didn't feel like she could get the support she needed. Fortunately she had an older brother who could help her, but I couldn't go to the school for her as I'm not her guardian.
I personally after this would lean into the world of not necessarily supervised social media usage, but educating and cautioning what it means to post on social media. How it will never go away and when it's there, it's there forever.
My sister fully understands this now and is doing alot better, but ultimately the damage is done.
I fully understand the point of view of no social media until 18, I just want you to be aware of potential consequences of being strict on it.
I don't think you can really control kids after 12-13. If they really want something or their friends are all doing something then they can figure it out at that age, whether it's the internet or drugs or whatever
Even if they don't create a secret account, they get left out of groups, and probably mocked because everyone else is doing it. Not being able to do things that everyone else does when you're a kid sucks. My wife and I were just talking a couple nights ago about how we're glad we didn't have to deal with that with our kid. We probably would have said no, which would have caused our kid some issues for sure.
I've heard of people having success.eiyh setting up an account for the family pet and friending their kids and friends before they are old enough to understand the concept of sharing online.allows you to keep tabs on them unobtrusively and can obviously deactivate or defined as appropriate when they age.
Hopefully though, I stead, you'll teach them how to use privacy controls to not allow you to see, when they are old enough that it's appropriate.
6402373705728000 is a lot
Indeed
Based. This is something I may do down the road since it may be the only way I can get my friends and family on Signal.
I usually phrase it as "it's one more app on your phone and it doesn't ask you for anything, it's really not that big of an ask".
Cool. I'm a dude and pretty old, though. Having a baby might be a bit of a problem.
Just do it, you'll figure out the details later.
This really is the best way. Once there's a REASON for extra security, people understand and want to learn more. Once it's installed, other day or day conversations can take place there
If you start off with low priority / day to day conversations, they aren't as willing to put in the energy
No one cares. Nobody around you understands the security, the need for it, and the requirements. They will pretend, to see your kid. And then immediately and completely stop caring. It works for making people adopt your favourite messenger, yes. But nothing else.
Well, I disagree based on personal experiences. It doesn't work for everyone, but I'm not trying to help everyone through this method
I too, like OP, thought I found the grail when I got my kids. People suddenly accepted using my communication preferences. Only to find years later that they didn't. They didn't care, understand, or respected my wishes. Don't fool yourself: some people do care, but that is 10% tops.
Yes, this exactly what has happened with one of my friends - after installing Session for the pics he is now messaging me on the app about unrelated stuff instead of using SMS in whatever his preinstalled iOS app is. Win!
Wait, who other than the grandparents actually wants to see the baby pictures? In my experience it is insufferable new parents that want to show their baby pictures to everyone and you have to pretend to like it to be polite. Maybe others just agreed to using another messenger just so they could ignore it better?
Depends on the baby, I liked seeing my nieces and nephews growing up. Random coworker baby pics though, they get one pic to announce them, then unsubscribe.
I know it's a hard concept... But people can be nice and genuinely happy for them?
Your basement is likely insufferable too.
I am genuinely happy for them, but that still doesn't mean I need or want to see random baby pictures twice a day.
P.S.: my basement is fine, thanks 😅
Have ever held a baby. They are little happy squish balls. It's intoxicating physiologically.
Yeah they're amazing! They definitely come with some intense needs but I think the world would be a better place if we all spent more time around babies.
How could you drop a baby? You ever held a baby? How could you not?
Haha. Yes, grandparents but also aunties and uncles and close friends. I've noticed that especially friends who have their own kids have been really keen. It's mostly been my girlfriend's female friends but my own two best friends (male) have been keen because they've been by my side in the journey and have been excited and wishing us well. For us it's not about spamming all of our contacts, just sharing with people who are close.
Chicks like baby pictures and they are 50% of society.
Untrue.
Signed, a chick who gives negative shits about other people's babies.
To be fair, let's say 90%+ chicks like baby pics. There are some who are indifferent.
Still, even that number plus the number of men who are gracious, kind and actually care, we're still looking at an overwhelming majority.
I think if we socialized men to not deny their biology and actually be around babies the numbers would be a lot closer to 60 or 70 percent of both genders love being around a little squish baby. Plenty of people don't like it in both genders, but in my experience most men like a lot of domestic stuff if they're not specifically trained not to.
I found this approach to be highly effective. Not being preachy, just this is what I use. If you want to contact me great. And then be a interesting and dynamic person that they want to talk to.
I've got email, or you can talk to me on signal... So I'm not being unreachable, but I'm not installing WhatsApp. I'm not being preachy, and most people, more or less, will install it to talk to you if you're interesting, and they have things to talk to you about
It's what I did 5 years ago. All family and friends now on Signal.
Awesome, well done!
They also still use WhatsApp for their wider connections, but still, progress.
Interesting story. t y for sharing. And what did you push this crowd of people into ? :) Signal, Matrix, XMPP, Briar, Session ?
Signal is the only thing I advocate. Everything else has a really high bar for nontechnical people.
Jami and Session are as simple as copying and pasting an ID; no more complex than email in reality. But it is a sign of how deeply set in our ways we are that even that can seem arcane when you first use it. Signal does make it extremely easy/familiar.
I really like both Session and Jami's ability to add contacts by scanning each others qr codes too.
I think as more people start using these apps they will feel more familiar and less daunting. I think that really it's a familiarity thing.
We got them using Session. My girlfriend and I currently use Jami for text/calls/files but I found that Session worked more reliably with my friend who uses an iphone, so we went with that. So far so good!
In case you don't already know, to make voice calls with Session you have to enable it in the settings. I also recommend changing the theme from the stock 'bio-hazard' one!
I thought signal is better than session, they're basically the same but signal has a larger userbase.
Signal feels like you're still using a texting app. Session feels like a modern (post-2000) messenger.
Doesn't seem like a big deal, but people react to it.
Yes I think Session is in fact based on Signal but it has implemented some other technologies like a distributed network, as opposed to Signal's, which I believe is centralised. There's also some blockchain stuff involved, which I normally find a turnoff but I'm not an expert. Rob Braxman has a good review of it on YouTube and Odysee.
Only the texting side of Session is decentralized. Everything else goes through Oxen's servers.
We created a WordPress (installed on our server) blog which requires logins we have to approve. We share this with family members, with an email notification to them when something new is posted. They can post comments to the site.
We really actually did this for ourselves, as a kind of family photo album/blog, and so would have it even if no one else was invited :-)
Awesome, I was thinking about doing this on my VPS!
We have been thinking about doing this as well. I am also tempted to try installing Pixelfed and see how that is
Yep. This works pretty well.
Got the whole family to convert to signal by using kid photo sharing as a catalyst.
Some people are actually interested in seeing pictures of someone else's baby?
Everyone is being polite, while we are the only ones who are amazed by our newborns 😀
Nah they really like it, it's making me feel like a weird uncaring sociopath that I'm just really not that interested in the multiple daily photos, but the rest of us around the person sharing can't seem to get enough of it. I don't know why I don't care so much, I've met the kid and they're nice enough, I hope I'm someone they'll be glad to have in their lives and form an affection for but you can't really convincingly fake intense interest and emotional investment and much as I'd like it to be, that just isn't my natural reaction. I like to think if I have ever have kids it'd be different otherwise the poor kid would have to deal with someone totally uninterested for the rest of their lives.
Everyone is a winner!
No but it is the propper thing to say/do
Yes, that's how it works with people who have families. They usually want to see their new relative.
Who's down to make babies?
A cat is fine too
I'm imagine your granpa with f-droid and simpleXchat, fuckyeah you are a genious
Lol Grandpa is even more of a technogrouch than I am and won't even have a phone! Grandma OTOH is already using jami on her gentoo installation.
That is very cool. If I may ask, does she tinker with her Gentoo system?
So, xmpp or matrix ?
We're using Session with friends and family because I think it works most reliably with people who use apple devices out of the box. We use Jami for each other because it's p2p (distributed) and endorsed by the FSF. I set up Jami on my mum's phone too. You can use your own push notification provider with it or simply let it run in the background if you want to run your phone without google or apple servers but still want instant notifications for messages and voice calls. Jami is the app I would most like to see succeed. I believe you can also use it on internal networks, which is a pro in terms of independence future-proofing
Thanks, I didn't know about these two !
Time to have a baby then.
Always.
Damn of all the times to be an antinatalist... I guess it's Messenger 🤢 video chats with my family for the foreseeable future
We are all antenatal my friend.
Lol nice
Signal has stories 🙂
::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 :::
This would be a good use case for private posts on self-hosted Movim + XMPP. Only your followers can see the posts but they persist unlike messages which tend to fade either due to expiry or just being too far back in the history. The XMPP platform’s clients come with OMEMO for double ratchet E2EE & Movim has a slick progressive web app for anyone that doesn’t want ta install some app while being able to comment on posts, participate in DMs+audio/voice calls, as well as MUCs (multi-user chat).
If I had a kid, this was my plan.
Personally this would be the exact reason that would stop me from signing up for a new messaging service.
Yes, your baby is special and amazing. To you.
There's no signup involved for the apps we're using - you just download them and share IDs with people (you can even choose to add only people who don't have kids). Worth checking out:
getsession.org/
jami.net/
Yes, but Signal and Matrix-something aren't good "messaging" apps. Just a bunch of poorly written desktop and mobile clients tied to questionable backends and metadata disasters.
Maybe not Signal: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html
You can’t recommend Signal over anything when it comes to features and service quality it just can't handle large group chats (hundreds of people) and the cross device sync fails often with a “signal can’t display this message”. Signal’s desktop and mobile clients are simply a pile of react and javascript garbage that can never be as fast as the native applications from other apps.
Maybe not Matrix: metadata disaster
Matrix is developed by a for profit entity, a group of venture capitalists and having a spec doesn’t mean everything. The way Matrix is designed is to force into jumping through hoops and kind of draw all attention to Matrix itself instead of the end result.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/06/decentralized-communication-protocol-matrix-shifts-to-less-permissive-agpl-open-source-license/
Stop recommending questionable open-source like Matrix. XMPP is the true and the OG federated and truly open solution that is very extensible. XMPP is tested, reliable, secure and above all a truly open standard and decentralized it just lacks some investment in better mobile clients.
What people fail to see is that XMPP is the only solution that treats messaging and video like email: just provide an address and the servers and clients will cooperate with each other in order to maintain a conversation and it can be configured to be secure and private. Everything else is just an attempt at yet another vendor lock-in. Here a quick overview of the architecture.
I do prefer xmpp, but fuck I have never gotten a single person to use it.
Yes, I get the pain, XMPP is good but it just lacks some investment in better mobile clients. And that most likely happens because there's no easy way to monetize and sustain a mobile XMPP client.
Man, we need Paris to get off their ass do another commune, and fill it with software devs.
Synapse and Element are fully open source, there is nothing questionable about it. Having a company backing your project as main developer does not mean it suddenly becomes closed source or said company owns the project now.
None of the issues you mentioned are a big deal or make Matrix inherently worse than XMPP. The biggest flaw you can pin on Matrix is its performance but they're working on it.
SimpleXchat is the goat
Literally just don't.
It's 2024, don't lead horses to water. Just live your life and check out.
If they want to connect, tell them where you choose to be. Compromise is for babies.
Also git fetch, git pull & git push every once in a while please
Very once in a while.
That’s why my aunt and uncle finally got iPhones. They were missing out on iMessage and FaceTime with the grandkids and rest of the family making plans.
Wait, so the family chose to keep two people out of the loop until they caved and bought new hardware instead of adding one more app that would be common for everyone and give everyone the option to use whatever hardware they wanted?
Nobody uses third-party messaging apps here; it’s not just those two old people. There’s just no need. MMS has horrible quality videos and can’t be added and removed from a group chat and breaks functionality for everyone else in the chat.
That'd why Apple is getting sued by the DOJ among other reasons
DOJ needs to fuck off. Of people want to use an inferior product like android they’re free to, but nobody else should have to suffer for their bad decisions
Ok Tim Apple