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<!-- pubdate: 20210123 -->
# Better than WhatsApp: Try these Free Software Apps and Services
We recommend using [Free Software][free-sw] apps like [Element][1],
[Quicksy][2] or [Conversations][3] that connect to Free Software
powered services. These services allow users to choose their service
provider without losing the ability to talk to users of other
providers following the same standard. Free Software ensures users'
freedom and interoperable services ensure there is no vendor lock-in.
Any non-free app controls the user while [free software app is
controlled by its users][free-sw]. When we are talking about free
software, we are not talking about price, we are concerned about
freedom.
[1]: https://element.io
[2]: https://quicksy.im
[3]: https://conversations.im
[free-sw]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
## Comparison of different apps and services
1. Non-free software client and server + centralization (Example
WhatsApp): does not respect user's freedom and creates vendor
lock-in.
2. Free Software client but non-free server + centralization (Example
Telegram): client software respects freedom, server software does
not respect freedom and creates vendor lock-in.
3. Free Software client and server + centralization (Example Signal):
respect user's freedom but creates vendor lock-in.
4. Free Software client and server + federation (Example Matrix and
Quicksy/XMPP): respects users' freedom (as a user or as a
community) and no vendor lock-in.
5. Free software client + peer to peer design (Example Briar, Tox):
respects users' freedom and no vendor lock-in.
## Some basic concepts
[Vendor lock-in][v-li]: Ability to switch service
is too hard because it requires convincing every contact to move to
a new service.
[Peer-to-Peer Design][p2p]: Design which enables a user to communicate
with another user directly without involving any service provider in
between. Both parties need to be online at the same time for the
design to work efficiently.
[End-to-End Encryption][e2e]: Only the users involved in a
communication can read the messages.
[v-li]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in
[p2p]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer
[e2e]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_encryption
## WhatsApp and other non-free apps
WhatsApp app is a non-free software which does not respect user's
freedom and privacy. WhatsApp does not provide its users the access
to its source code and actively bans anyone creating a Free Software
app that can connect to WhatsApp service. They claim their app
provides end-to-end encryption, but we cannot verify if they actually
implemented end-to-end encryption without any backdoors (access of app
remotely without user's permission) or loopholes. Being non-free app
is enough to reject WhatsApp, so we are not going to talk about other
bad things about WhatsApp.
There are three broad categories of messaging systems with Free
Software apps - Centralized services, Federated services and
Peer-to-Peer systems.
## A. Centralized services
A centralized service is one in which every one is forced to use the
same provider. Setups such as this has many disadvantages such as
vendor lock-in, being more susceptible to back-doors by government,
the whole world getting dependent on a single organization for their
communications. Centralized services also have a single point of
failure. The organization controlling the service can be sold to a
different organization, change or even shut down the operation, set
their own terms of service and privacy policy, [forbid the third-party
apps from connecting to the centralized service][libresignal-issue].
[libresignal-issue]: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165
<dl>
<dt><strong>Telegram</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p><strong>Pros</strong>:The client apps for Telegram is Free
Software.</p>
<p>IRC and Matrix users can talk to Telegram users
<a href="https://t2bot.io/telegram">through a bridge without creating
a Telegram account</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Cons</strong>:The Telegram service component — that
enables communication between the Telegram users — is
proprietary (non-free) and is not federated.</p>
<p>End-to-end encryption is available only on the Telegram mobile
apps.</p>
<p>Needs phone number for signing up.</p>
<p><strong>Summary</strong>: The official Telegram clients are a
amalgamation of free (as in freedom) and proprietary (non-free)
components; the Telegram service component is 100% proprietary.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong>Signal</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p><strong>Pros</strong>: Signal app is Free Software like
Telegram, and in comparison to Telegram it offers server software
also as Free Software which makes it better than Telegram.</p>
<p>End-to-end encryption is enabled by default and groups
chats are also encrypted.</p>
<p>Minimal
<a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata-matters">
metadata</a> <a href="https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender">
collected on the server</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Cons</strong>: Even though you are allowed to set up
Signal service yourself, the users of your service will not be able to
talk to users of the official Signal server, making it practically a
vendor lock-in.</p>
<p>Needs phone number for signing up.</p>
<p><strong>Summary</strong>: Signal is better than WhatsApp and
Telegram.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
## B. Federated services
A federated system is a collection of independent service providers
which can communicate with each other. Federation is important to take
full control of your communications.
You can choose a trusted provider or be a service provider
yourself. No single entity can force their terms on users.
Examples of federated systems are mobile phones, emails, matrix , XMPP
etc. For example, you can buy a SIM card from any mobile service
provider and talk or send SMS to subscribers of other
providers. Similarly, you can create an email account with any service
provider and send emails to people who are registered with a different
email provider.
<dl>
<dt><strong>Quicksy</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p><strong>Pros</strong>: Federated with XMPP, Control over the
policies of the services, switch to any XMPP
provider without losing ability to talk to all
your Quicksy contacts.</p>
<p>End-to-end encryption is enabled by
default and group chats are also encrypted
by default.</p>
<p><strong>Cons</strong>: Needs phone number for signing up</p>
<p><strong>Summary</strong>: Quicksy is better than Signal
because of its federated design.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong>XMPP via apps like Conversations, Dino</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p><strong>Pros</strong>: In addition to all pros of Quicksy,
the phone number/email is not mandatory for an account. If you
self-host, metadata retention is under your control.</p>
<p><strong>Cons</strong>:The process of choosing a service
provider and creating an account can appear to be difficult
since it may be unfamiliar, no
automatic contact discovery.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong>Matrix via apps like Element, FluffyChat</strong></dt>
<dd>
<p><strong>Pros</strong>: In addition to all pros of XMPP,
Matrix asks your permission before you are added to a personal
chat or added to a group chat.</p>
<p><strong>Cons</strong>: The process of choosing a service
provider and creating an account can appear to be difficult
since it may be unfamiliar, no automatic contact discovery.</p>
<p><strong>Summary</strong>: XMPP/Matrix is better than Quicksy
from perspective of privacy and freedom at the cost of a bit
inconvenience of creating accounts and finding other users
automatically.</p>
<p><strong>Note</strong>: Since XMPP/Matrix allows you to have
your choice of apps instead of the ones mentioned above, please
choose apps which support end-to-end encryption
(<a href="https://omemo.top">OMEMO</a> for XMPP). The choices we
mentioned have end-to-end encryption by default.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
### C. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems
Peer-to-peer instant messengers can talk directly without requiring
any servers. Examples are [Briar][briar], [Tox][tox] and [GNU
Jami][jami], etc. The messages are end-to-encrypted and are stored
only locally in the devices since there are no servers involved. There
are no servers that could intercept your communications, so it gives
you the ultimate privacy and freedom. To exchange messages, both peers
need to be online, which might be a bit inconvenient.
[briar]: https://briarproject.org
[tox]: https://tox.chat
[jami]: https://jami.net
## Conclusion
We recommend you to choose any federated system or peer-to-peer
messenger according to your use-case so that you get full control of
your communications, freedom and privacy. It is very important to
reject proprietary services like WhatsApp which takes freedom away
from the user. [FSF India][fsfi], [FSCI][fsci] or other volunteer-run
organization in India would be glad to extend support to anyone
needing more details on undergoing such a shift.
[fsfi]: /contact
[fsci]: https://fsci.in/#join-us
---
The "Comparison of Instant Messengers" infographic — Copyright ©
2021 Riya Sawant. It is licensed under the [Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license][cc-by-sa].
[cc-by-sa]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
|
