To answer your edit: No. They use different encryption algorithms.

for me it's xmpp. now that monal on ios has almost reached feature parity with conversations on android, there's no reason xmpp shouldn't be the go-to alternative to whatsapp.

I don't think signal is the answer. a centralised service susceptible to all the things wrong with whatsapp. matrix is bloated. push notifications on simplex android is still sketchy.

and i dont buy the argument that onboarding is too complicated these days. most people can make an account for anything they feel is worth it.

Rolled up scrolls attached to foxes

Recommending to friends and family means Signal. With a phone number they can start using the gold standard for encryption from the get go.

I'd consider Signal to be the gold standard of secure communications.

You can describe it to them like WhatsApp, except it's private, secure, not Facebook-owned, nonprofit so it can't be bought or sold, etc.

Here's the blog post that I share with my friends comparing Signal to iMessage and WhatsApp when they ask me about it.

It usually answers most of their questions.

I just moved to Signal and have convinced most of my family and many friends to join. It is very secure, non-profit and doesn't share much personal data (the least of the main messaging services) and most of my luddite family has been able to figure it out.

I've used Signal since it first came out as TextSecure like 10+ years ago.

It doesnt have fancy bells or whistles, but its work well for me and good enough that ive gotten elderly family members to use it too

Signal. It's changed a lot. For the better.

Signal

signal or SimpleX.

I'm starting to move away from Matrix, primarily because its metadata is not encrypted. So you might have a message that's encrypted, but the emoji reaction like a thumbs up is not encrypted, and the time it was sent and received is not encrypted, and who it was sent from and to is not encrypted.

Not to mention that in Matrix, private key management for encryption in rooms and stuff like that is quite frankly a pain in the ass. Even I as a cryptocurrency user have trouble making sure that my keys are properly stored without fucking them up.

I would not recommend my friends or family members use it for these reasons.

Signal is the easiest with true end to end encryption with keys stored on the endpoints only.

Signal for security standard and ease of use, which is essential, if You want to use it with non techy people.

Simplex for anonymity, You can download it, share chat and start talking without registration.

Just a note that there's an in development fediverse app called 'sup' by the creators of pixelfed. It's not released yet but is going to be encrypted and Open Source. https://mastodon.social/@dansup/113912441928236882

Yup echoing most here. Unless you or someone you are paying are willing to put time and effort in to maintaining Matrix, go with Signal. It's like WhatsApp but actually secure and is appropriate for the vast majority of use cases.

Personally I'd go with Signal. Matrix has a certain jank level IME, for example rooms can get desynced between homeservers and the only way to fix is to create a new room and abandon the old one. Not sure how often that happens for small scale use though, I've only seen it in large rooms.

I will second the others that only suggest Signal or a variant of Signal like Langis or Molly. Everybody has each other's phone numbers, go with Signal so people don't need any other contact information.

No bridges are not end 2 end encrypted. The best you can do is host the server and bridge in your own home and thus have the bridge "end" in a secure location.

If your friends and family are not very technical, then Matrix is probably a bad idea as it tends to be quite in your face about all sorts of technical issues especially with the encryption keys and so on. It works ok usually once everything is set up though.

XMPP is IMHO the better option as the mobile apps are easier to understand and the e2ee usually works out of the box and stays out of the way unless you specifically want to mess around with it. For a friends & family server I recommend setting up https://snikket.org/ or rent a server from them cheaply.

There are also good bridges for XMPP, but setting them up requires more understanding of self-hosting.

Signal for your family (mostly due to interface), Matrix for online communities, and SimplexChat if you're trying to be a privacy extremist. I did have some success with setting simplexchat up for some old people over the phone because they didn't need an account.

I got my family onto signal. The app is basic, but that is kinda a benefit when getting half-blind 90yo's onto it.

I switched from hangouts when they killed group calls by trying to be zoom.

No regrets, but group calls sometimes dont ring, which is annoying. Mostly good though.

I got my mother on XMPP - if you set the person's account up, Conversations is as easy to use as Whatsapp or Signal, but doesn't have the central server dependence.

i use simplex with people i used sms with before, and matrix for everything else

Signal and Telegram both require user ID to use their apps. SimpleX-chat does not, zero registration. So if privacy is your number one whish from your messenger than SimpleX is what you're looking for.

Signal

If you're going to bring your friends and family, then you need to make it easy for the lowest common denominator.

I'd recommend using Signal in that case.

If no one's on any kind of private messaging platform, SimpleX is good and fairly easy to use. But I mostly use Signal just because everyone's on it.

Also consider your threat model; Signal is appropriate for just casual personal conversations, but it is centralised and not self-hostable. The servers are run by the Signal org who are based in the US. If the potential of message metadata (which can be used to eg create networks of who's messaging who) getting into the hands of the US state could create significant issues for you, you may want to at least find either a decentralised or self-hostable solution which is not so US-centric. I assume, though, since you're talking to these people on non-private platforms, that these are not super sensitive discussions anyway.

I don't use messengers with vendor lock-in. Therefore Matrix and XMPP see: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html

Both self hosted on a Raspberry #freedombox https://freedombox.org/

Matrix has all the features like Slack and WhatsApp and XMPP Conversations: the very last word in instant messaging.