Selfhosted services like Nextcloud/Immich aren’t nearly as dependent on a critical user mass like Discord/Matrix, but the principle is the same.

If you host for family or friends, they may even use it if you convince them to switch. But when the setup, which doesn’t consist of redundant instances and isn’t maintained by a small army of SysAdmins 24/7, inevitably breaks for longer than a few minutes, most will switch back to the easy, reliable option.

I’d love to be able to disagree in any of your points, but I can’t.

The vast majority of users want something that simply works, is polished and intuitively usable. Reading docs, remembering anything other than the bare minimum, running into issues that don’t get magically resolved within 5 minutes will turn them away forever.

Even people with a technical background will at least partially compromise and migrate towards the services with the most users to not isolate themselfs.

Matrix is neat, Lemmy is neat, Nextcloud is neat (well, in theory), Immich is neat, so many other privacy friendly solutions are neat. But they’ll always be irrelevant in the global context.

Signal and DeltaChat, as well as Simplex and some others e2e communication solutions, are adequate from a technical point of view.

The main issue is always adoption. You can have the most convenient way to safely communicate with people, it’ll be useless if nobody you’re talking to wants to use it.

So, since Signal is very easy to set up and use as well as the most adopted, it’s currently the best pick for regular conversations.

Telcos know that authentication is about the only remaining use case for SMS and are not going to turn down the revenue stream.

And it can’t die fast enough, as it’s essentially the same as broadcasting your sensitive information over unencrypted radio.

Apart from security, phone number based user identification is such a half-assed approach and I still don’t get why Signal wants to die on that hill. It’s inconvenient, yet trivial, for anyone to register a second, third or tenth phone number. With a bit more knowledge and inconvenience, even anonymously. It adds so little.

Their issue tracker is probably the best bet.

I never use dubious sources like this, especially banking apps.

Oh yeah, it’s usually a very bad idea, especially regarding apps handling sensitive information. Since my use case for APKMirror strictly consists of apps without internet permission in a dedicated, otherwise empty profile, the risk is acceptable.

open from a direct link from the Play store (in which the app page opens, however, with almost no information, such as version, permissions, size and so on, and the download doesn’t start.

Tested this myself, as that used to be the workaround for apps not appearing, but I’m facing the same issue on some apps. For the time being, installing/updating manually via APKMirror isn’t ideal, but I’m not installing the Play Store.

Yikes. This has the potential to seriously damage the reputation of Mozilla. I guess there are 3 possibilities:

• Onerep isn’t actually shady, but partnering with a company part of a conglomerate with companies directly opposing the stated goal isn’t a good look either way
• Onerep is shady and Mozilla failed to conduct the necessary research before partnering with them
• Onerep is shady and Mozilla knew

In any case: Personally, I’ll never not be grateful towards Mozilla for continuing to support and develop Firefox, which is quite literally the only relevant engine standing against the monopoly of chromium and all the bad that entails. But I trust other companies/initiatives/projects more when it comes to services other than the browser engine.

Yes, but in fairness: The same is true for iOS or GrapeneOS, though that’s for valid reasons.

As much as I’d like to use a Linux phone, it’s simply not feasible for almost everybody at the moment.

What do people user their phone for?

• Private conversations
• Banking
• All kind of apps

Linux phones, at the moment, are way behind Android/iOS in terms of security and, since privacy requires security, also in privacy.

Even stock Android has so many more security features, that it’s not even close. Verified boot, exploit mitigation, (working) app sandboxing and so on. Not even speaking of specialized projects like GrapheneOS.

Even if the app ecosystem was there and the OS mature, I’d never run my banking through a Linux phone at the moment.

As long as you don’t use some shady, unofficial ROM on a phone, most phones are actually vastly more secure than your typical Linux/Windows OS.

I’m really not a fan of such gatekeeping rhetoric.

Congrats on already knowing stuff, I guess. The vast majority of people don’t have the ability, will or exposure to engage with most technical stuff, especially since the concept of (digital) privacy still is surprisingly controversial.

We all benefit from more people caring about privacy. Comments like yours achieve the exact opposite and don’t provide any value at all to the conversation.