take a look at ArcaneChat https://arcanechat.me/
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Buy European
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Wait, what's wrong with signal?
well .. US based.
It is a us based non profit that doesn't store any information about you, your contacts, or any of your metadata, and encrypts all of your data in transit and at rest, using a strong open source encryption protocol. Signals privacy is so strong that when delivering a message, they cannot tell who the sender is. It is developed out in the open and has been independently audited like four times.
Also you don't need to purchase the app so boycotting it really only harms you since every other messaging app (that isnt self-hosted) is objectively worse in all of these measures, or has no network effect.
Don't punish orgs who are doing things right.
It is a us based non profit that doesn’t store any information about you
still it runs in AWS, Microsoft, etc servers, and as any centralized service policy and interests can change at any time in the future, which would be pretty bad when you have several countries fully depending on them, just look the current situation with whatsapp, you can not be resilient/sovereign like that
has been independently audited like four times.
could you provide source pointing to the security audits?
That is a good take. However I could instead support European company with european people which is not to be neglected
That is completely reasonable and in every other instance I would encourage this, but there really isn't a secure, private (those are two different things; WhatsApp is (probably) secure, but definitely not private) alternative to Signal at the moment. Even if one did exist, it likely isn't compatible with Signal and would only serve to fragment messaging even further until it has more users than Signal already does.
I guess, I just want to encourage you to make changes where it really matters. Absolutely dump Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and other for-profit American manufacturing and services. But boycotting Signal doesn't really help the way you want it to.
Ultimately you have to decide what is best for you and I obviously can't and won't force you to use something, but I hope I can at least provide some perspective.
It's serverless though, right? The messages aren't stored in any of signal's servers? Or am I mistaken?
It's also open source, so it would be possible just to fork and use a "European" version of it. Also, since it's open source, it's free to use, so no money actually goes to on American company by using it.
It’s serverless though, right?
no, and in fact the cost of running it is really high because the server infrastructure they need to pay, they even say it themselves "Signal is expensive" https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
it would be possible just to fork and use a “European” version of it
in theory yes, in practice no one has done it, and then you should not use Signal but the european fork which will not be compatible/federated with signal
I think they are also non-profit company
The big inconvenience with the EU alternatives, is that I don’t know a single soul who use them.
I think schildichat on matrix is a good alternative the app is developed by a German guy and matrix is decentralized as the fediverse you can have your own server or join a mass server.
Here is a nice overview of the most common messenger:
Why does it matter that Signal is US based? They don't get any of your data. And you don't have to donate if you don't want to.
I keep donating. As I do for the FSF, the EFF etc.
Everything not-nonprofit? Boycotted.
I agree, in all for buying European, but you don't have to buy signal
I agree. If anything, Signal was made to circumvent government spying. So it's ANTI-US Gov.
Try out the either Element or Fluffychat. Both based on decentralized, privacy, and security. Both based on Matrix. I like Fluffychat for ease of use and it’s on all devices. Plus you have to verify every device that signs in or that new device can not see previous chats as they stay encrypted.
It's not just "based on". Element and Fluffychat are two clients that use Matrix and are fully interoperable.
(I'm sure you know, but I'm not sure it's obvious for potential newcomers)
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