(Please see comments) Alternatives to Signal if they exit EU due to ending E2EE

Can you please link an article or something explaining what you're going on about? When was this announced?

Edit: guessing it's related to this. https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2023/06/eu-member-states-still-cannot-agree-about-end-end-encryption

If so, banning E2EE because of CSAM is like cutting off your hand because you stubbed your toe. Banning E2EE won't stop child porn nor will it prevent the use of E2EE.

Pretty sure signal won't be forced to do anything:

Encryption plays an essential role in securing communications. The international human rights law test of legality, necessity and proportionality should be applied to any measures that would affect encryption. Both the UN Commissioner for Human Rights[1]and the European Data Protection Supervisor[2]have concluded that the EU’s proposal for a regulation on child sexual abuse material fails this test[3].

this is from May this year, when Spain proposed this. How in the everliving fuck the EU can get away with violating human rights?

So yeah I'll eat my hat unsalted if this actually will break encryption

I'd just like to point out that if Signal leaves the EU, it will most likely just mean that it's not available through the official app stores. With Signal updating itself, it's just a little inconvenient to install it on a new device, though, they even said that they'll try to make it as easy as possible.

Much has been said about the idea of 'signal leaving UK or EU'. Little has been said about how exactly that would happen.

AFAIK, Signal has no business presence in the UK or EU. IE, no offices, no registered corporate entities. Thus, they (arguably) have no more requirement to comply with UK's or EU's regulations than, say, Iran's or China's or any other jurisdiction where they do not do business and have no presence.

Signal's leadership has a record of giving any regional restrictions the middle finger, so I doubt Signal would voluntarily block EU countries. So that means the EU would either pressure Google and Apple to delist Signal (easily worked around, at least on Android, and soon on Apple too as EU is trying to force sideloading) or they'd pressure ISPs to block connections to Signal (more or less impossible).

If EU tried to do that, it'd just create a giant game of whack-a-mole. And people doing real CSAM shit would just move to even more private distributed systems.

XMPP or SimpleX. It's easy to block signal, given they require a phone number and the servers are centralized. But it's quite hard, potentially impossible, to block the federated XMPP network or the decentralized relay structure of SimpleX

I would still use Signal. By ignoring bad laws you are turning the EU government into a laughing stock

You can just continue using Signal. All the alternatives will disappear from the app stores too unless they spy on you.

A recent alternative with even better privacy is SimpleX: https://simplex.chat/

How about Session or SimpleX?

Both are E2EE. Unlike Signal, they also have the benefit of not requiring a phone number, so your account isn’t linked to you that way. In my experience, Session feels more mature, having apps on more platforms and more reliable notifications. However SimpleX has some really nice features, like the ability to have multiple profiles (including hidden profiles).

Signal. Any restriction can be bypassed

Have you looked into Matrix / Element?

https://matrix.org/

https://element.io/

Take a look at the matrix network. Its decentralized like lemmy and the cryptography is on point. And it cant really be cencored due to this reason.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/

If signal is banned all of these other apps will be banned, but maybe they'll not enforce it completely

Your best bet is to start using a privacy respecting VPN today, always on on your phone. Like Mullvad

The only alternative that's FOSS and not centrally controlled is Matrix. By being decentralized, anyone can run their own server and good luck stopping that.

There may be 200 other "alternatives", but they're irrelevant to the point where I consider then non-existent. Nobody has heard of them. Nobody is using them. Trying to push them on normal people will most likely result in them no longer talking to you as often or at all, and none of the other ones has any chance of reaching a critical mass. Matrix at least has some recognition among nerds and some, tiny amount of adoption outside.

Stop pushing random niche shit, it does privacy a disservice.

Briar, xmpp with omemo, matrix, jami...

I've been using DeltaChat (available on F-Droid) for a few months now.

What I like about it is that because it's email based, it uses OpenPGP for encryption, making it easy to have compatibility with other email-based solutions.

If you want to go the extra-secure route, you and your contacts can even self-host your emails - as long as you're not going to send messages to people on Gmail or other big providers, you can avoid your messages being treated as spam.

The multi-device support is still a bit rough around the edges, but has gotten better in the last few months since the app is under active development.

https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/com.amnesica.kryptey/ This looks like a good backup plan that can't be banned very well.

There are over 200 alternatives to Signal, Open Source and encrypted, out there. The attempt by governments to ban them all seems a little far from reality to me. https://alternativeto.net/category/social/encrypted-chat/?feature=end-to-end-encryption&license=opensource

Pardon my ignorance but is EU really truly considering this colossaly stupid move to ban E2EE?

Matrix

Permanently Deleted

It depends on what you want. I encourage people to use Jami (distributed, so might be a thing, if not self-hosting your own service, since what is said decentralized in reality is a set of centralized services). If too hard, then XMPP + OMemo. And only then, Matrix (by design it gives up more meta data than XMPP).

XMPP, the internet standard for federated instant messaging.

Is there a reason no one has mentioned Telegram yet in this thread?

https://g.co/kgs/TTe2mp