Well, I have it installed, if it counts 😅.
I think SimpleX wins in privacy/anonymity:
- it doesn’t require phone number, and doesn’t have user identifiers
- it’s decentralized, and you can connect to selfhosted servers without recompiling the client
Self-hosted servers are usually pretty identifiable is my problem with this. Signal can afford the legal teams to fight court orders and has adequate infrastructure in place for plausible deniability.
A vast vast majority of lusers won’t have the resources or skillsets needed to properly set something up.
I have it. Just not many contacts there.
Privacy wise it is better than anything else, but it is also harder to use (joining groups, managing contacts, etc).
The network privacy caveat was already mentioned - simplex proto does nothing to protect a powerful attacker from linking you with a specific simplex server (AFAIK neither does any other chat protocol?). If this is a concern then you need to use large/public simplex servers (or rely on TOR, etc).
There is one other aspect specific to the public servers, which is the room directory service. When you add your groups to the directory you are inviting a bot into the group, so DO NOT expect these to be private.
