Death, Taxes, and Off-By-One Errors

Why Signal is Important, and How to get Contacts to Switch

One of the largest problems with trying to become digitally private in our world is a lack of mass adoption of privacy-respecting software. YouTube, Twitter/X, Discord, Microsoft Office, and so on all have privacy respecting alternatives out there. However, the user base of these programs is tiny relative to the big corporations offerings, meaning a worse experience in several ways. Every so often, a privacy-oriented app garners mainstream attention. As a privacy enthusiast, it's important to me to endorse these programs when they make a splash, as they're the best chance at changing the status quo for digital privacy.

With over 40 million users as of the start of 2022, Signal is one of very few success stories in the privacy world that has seen adoption by the general public. They developed the Signal Protocol, an encryption standard used by WhatsApp, Google's RCS implementation, and others. Their own encrypted messenger is just about as convenient to setup and use as its competitors, such as WhatsApp or Telegram. Unlike those competitors, Signal doesn't know anything about their users contact info, their contacts list, location data, or anything about their users besides when they signed up, and the last day they accessed the app.

Despite Signal's relative success in mainstream adoption, it's still far from the default option. WhatsApp, Telegram, and iMessage are usually the default for most. However, it's still possible to convince friends and family to switch to a platform that's truly private. I've personally been able to convince around 20 people to switch to Signal very passively, only actually asking people to switch once at most. Here's how I did it.

Don't be a Jerk

People won't want to download this new app for you if you're rude to them about why they should switch. When talking to people about switching, be polite and don't be upset with them if they say no. Simple as that.

Know Your Audience

When asking someone to switch to Signal, consider the kind of person you're talking to and what might be of interest to them.

Are they already signed up for Signal? Perfect, just ask to move your conversations to that platform!

Are they digitally literate or technologically skilled? Cool, they might better understand the privacy and security benefits of switching to Signal.

How are you in contact with them in the first place?

What else might they be convinced by? These are some of the more obvious traits and how to approach them, but it's really a case-by-case basis. Maybe they'd be convinced by a celebrity endorsement, or by the freedom of speech argument, or by something else! It's really up to you to decide what each of your contact's priorities are.

Prepare for Questions

It might be helpful to be prepared for questions that people might have about the service. Here's a link to a Reddit AMA that Signal did a few years back, which might be indicative about some of the questions people have.

Important to note is that as of February 20, Signal has announced the addition of usernames coming over the next few weeks. While users still need a phone number to sign up, nobody, including Signal themselves, has to have access to it. Phone numbers are only required to prevent the creation of spam accounts.

Move Away From Other Services the Best You Can

Make Signal the easiest place to get in contact with you. I still have both WhatsApp and Telegram for people that refuse to switch, but my profile picture on both platforms is set to this image:

This has actually helped convince some friends to switch over. The people that want to keep in contact with you, and the people you should want to stay in contact with, will be willing to sacrifice a few megabytes of storage this way. Whether you want to completely delete these accounts or not is up to you. Personally, I'm not comfortable going that nuclear.

Not Everyone Will be Willing to Switch

And that's okay! I have yet to see someone, online or in-person, convince literally every contact of theirs to switch to Signal. Being able to convince most, or even just a few of your contacts to switch to Signal, has benefits. For one, it still minimizes the messages that are vulnerable to spying by third parties like car manufacturers.

Another, more societal benefit is demonstrating the demand for digital privacy. Just recently, Apple announced not only that they plan to adopt RCS this year, but that they want to work with the GSMA to add encryption to the RCS standard. This will be a massive improvement over SMS and MMS, which are about as old as the Super NES and have no encryption whatsoever. If the increased security and encryption ends up working out as well, That would be an improvement over Google's implementation of RCS, which currently doesn't encrypt group chats. Signal Messenger and Signal Protocol were likely large contributors to showing Apple that there was a demand for better, encrypted messaging.

Signal is undeniable proof that privacy-by-default is a realistic goal. Showing big tech companies that there's consumer demand for ethical management of user data is an important step in motivating them to do so. In order to show the demand, users need to switch to platforms and services that respect their privacy more, and Signal is the golden standard to prove the viability of that concept.