so I found it interesting and checked it out. the protocol is all well and good but the problem is social. I’m simply not going to send people my delta chat Id and ask them to message me there instead if they have delta chat installed. I had the same problem with session messenger.

when I meet someone irl I’m trading phone numbers. not asking if they have app X installed.

this might be useful for open source projects where you can use ur delta chat id instead of ur email. but it’s not something I would use unless it’s a requirement to join some community I wanted to.

the problem signal solves by tieing accounts to your phone number is contact discovery. thanks to user IDs you no longer have to share your phone number with people u want to chat with, and can only share your user id

plus signal guarantees the metadata is encrypted. is the same true for delta chat?

for WhatsApp the founders quit over privacy concerns, and made signal

https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind/

there’s also a nice (long) article by propublica from a few years ago

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-privacy-protections-for-its-2-billion-whatsapp-users

lol. so I told my mom im deleting Whatsapp. if she wants to keep in touch with me she can install signal, or pay for international texts and calls.

she installed signal 😃