You can write software to filter on arbitrary criteria with ActivityPub, or email, or IRC, or virtually any other protocol. My point is that ATProto is designed to actively encourage it, and the flagship implementation does so. Subtle hints in interfaces have a big impact on how people, including developers use software.

When a substantial fraction of users are actually using an appview with that trait, that will be great.

It’s a difference in vision, but I don’t like BlueSky’s vision here.

Combining the Reddit-like and Twitter-like experiences in one place is a little awkward, but following a blog or a Youtube-like from a Twitter-like isn’t. Having the option to switch to a more optimal appview is great, but realistically a lot more people would follow a blog from BlueSky than would use their BlueSky identity to sign into WhiteWind.

It is likely most other software will be able to consume them.

This highlights what I believe to be a poor choice in the design of BlueSky’s AT Protocol; ActivityPub software is usually liberal in what it accepts and displays, while ATProto enforces schemas (“lexicon”).

Meta does not try to hide its ownership of Whatsapp; it actively cross-promotes its other services in the Whatsapp UI.

It does not have the option to encrypt group chats last I checked, and even the one-to-one encryption is not particularly well-liked among security experts.

This isn’t about casual chats with friends and family, but political activism against the actions of a country. People doing that should be willing to put at least a trivial amount of effort into security.

Several people in the comments suggest Telegram, which doesn’t even encrypt group chats. Signal is likely the best option if the group is under 1000 members.

That’s a distinction without a difference. It’s clearly risky to rely on that company for important communications.

I assume for bribes of some sort from Google

This one is stick, not carrot: apps are generally required to use Google’s notification system to be allowed in the Play Store.

Signal gets notifications without GMS. I think battery use and latency are a little higher. Molly, a fork can use UnifiedPush for better results.

they have a perfectly good messaging app already, “why can’t you just use that?”

Only running on one brand of phone would be the obvious reason here. Installing an additional app seems like a slightly smaller ask than buying a different phone.

This sounds like a pretty unusual configuration. I don’t imagine most people can be reached more reliably using an app that only runs on their tablet than apps that run on their phone.

they don’t have to go into a specific app and hope that I’m looking at it

Do the others not ring your phone? I don’t video call often, but when I do it’s usually with Signal, and that definitely rings my phone.

FaceTime vs, Zoom/GMeet/Jitsi

Is the advantage availability among your contacts, or something about the UX?

Certainly, but installing additional messaging apps on a phone has almost no cost on either iPhone or Android. It’s interesting that iPhone users seem to dislike the idea more.

Asking people to leave things means they’re losing a line of communication to friends, family, and interest groups who still use those things. It’s probably more productive to ask people to add the services you prefer rather than leave the ones they’re used to.

I’ve encountered some resistance from Americans who use iPhones and hate the idea of adding a third-party messaging app. None of them seem very interested in justifying that position.

Switching between apps was too much for us.

I’ve heard this from a few people, but I have trouble understanding it. Perhaps its because I’ve never had the experience of being able to send text messages to all of my contacts in one place, but the effort required seems pretty insignificant to me.

Getting around Google’s attestation with an unlocked bootloader requires root - I believe the go-to is Magisk and the Play Integrity Fix module. It’s also a good idea to put the apps in question on the Magisk denylist. I’ve been using this for years with good results and would not describe it as “a lot of things”.

Is that from installing an app or from install a malicious ROM?

A malicious app could modify the OS, but it would need root permissions. There are three ways that can happen:

• The app exploits a privilege escalation bug in the OS. This can happen even if you don’t have root access yourself.
• The app exploits a bug in a superuser permission manager (e.g. Magisk) to gain root privileges without prompting you.
• A previously legitimate app you’ve given root privileges to gets a malicious update (a supply chain attack).

A malicious ROM is certainly possible. Some random person’s LineageOS fork is slightly less trustworthy than its maintainer (due to supply chain attacks).

Privacy isn’t binary.

LineageOS without Gapps won’t send information to Google unless you install something that does. It won’t do a whole lot to prevent apps from collecting data like GrapheneOS does so it’s up to you to evaluate the privacy implications of anything you install.

A locked bootloader protects against two attack vectors: malware modifying the operating system at runtime, and an unauthorized person with physical access installing a malicious operating system while you’re not looking (an “evil maid” attack). The former is rare on Android. The latter is rare unless you’re a high-value target or dating an abusive hacker.

messengers started to E2EE

This is a big deal. I’ve had the archetypal non-technical user, my mother send me a PGP encrypted email. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone who has done so that this did not become our default.

Now the majority of our messaging and calling is via Signal. It’s effortless.

I didn’t know it can do word suggestions until I read this comment. A web search suggests this functionality is provided by the ibus-typing-booster package; you could uninstall it or look for settings related to it.