Why Don't More People Use Signal?

There's this thing that keeps happening where I'm trying to organise something with friends – a meetup, a quick chat, whatever – and I'll suggest Signal . And I'll get that look. You know the one. The "why are you making this complicated?" look. The "can't we just use WhatsApp like normal people?" look.

And I get it, I really do. But also: why aren't more people using Signal? And more to the point, why am I the one being made to feel difficult for suggesting we use something that isn't owned by Meta?

Because let's be clear about something upfront: I despise Meta. I despise what Facebook (sorry, Meta – as though rebranding makes the company any less contemptible) has done to the internet, to social discourse, to the concept of privacy itself. I despise their business model, their ethics, their entire approach to treating users as products to be monetised.

And on a more personal level: Meta is actively anti-LGBTQ . They've rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ content, changed their hate-speech policies to allow more attacks on queer and trans people, and platformed accounts that actively spread anti-trans rhetoric. As a queer person, continuing to use their platforms feels like a slow betrayal of my own community. But yes, I still use WhatsApp. Not because I want to, but because everyone else does, and I'm not willing to cut myself off from communicating with friends and family just to maintain ideological purity.

But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

I'm not trying to be a privacy evangelist here (though I suppose that's exactly what this post makes me sound like, doesn't it?). I'm not going to lecture anyone about their threat model or start throwing around terms like "metadata harvesting" like some sort of digital survivalist. I just... use Signal. I like it. And I'm genuinely frustrated about why it hasn't caught on the way WhatsApp or Telegram have.

Because here's the thing: Signal isn't hard to use. It's not some arcane command-line tool where you need to compile your own encryption keys from source. It's a messaging app. You download it, you verify your phone number, you message people. That's it. The interface is clean, the app is fast, and – crucially – it works exactly like every other messaging app you've ever used.

So what's the actual barrier here?

The Network Effect Problem (Or: Everyone's Already on WhatsApp)

Right, let's address the obvious. The reason most people don't use Signal is because most people don't use Signal. Which is circular logic, but it's also the fundamental challenge of any communication platform trying to compete with an entrenched incumbent.

WhatsApp has something like two billion users . Two billion. That's not a network effect, that's a gravitational field. If everyone you know is already on WhatsApp, why would you switch to something else? What's the value proposition for the average person who just wants to send their mum a message about what time they're coming round for dinner?

And this is where I get genuinely angry, because the value proposition should be "not giving Mark Zuckerberg any more data than absolutely necessary." But most people – and I mean this descriptively, not judgmentally – don't actively think about digital privacy until something goes wrong. They don't read the terms of service. They don't consider what metadata Meta is collecting about their messaging patterns. They just want the thing to work.

Which Signal does. But if your entire social circle is on WhatsApp, Signal becomes the app you downloaded that one time and then never opened again because there's nobody to message on it.

So here I am, using WhatsApp because I have to, resenting every message I send through it, knowing that Meta is building a detailed graph of my social connections and communication patterns. I don't want to use it. I actively hate using it. But the alternative is social isolation, so I maintain an account on a platform owned by a company I genuinely despise.

And when I try to convince friends to at least install Signal as well? "It's more private!" I say, as though that's a compelling sell to someone who's never had their privacy meaningfully violated. "It's open source !" I add, which is true but also irrelevant to people who don't care about reading source code. "It's made by the people who created the encryption WhatsApp uses!" I insist, which usually just gets me blank stares.

It's exhausting, honestly. And maybe that's part of the problem – Signal's core appeal requires you to care about things that most people have never been given a reason to care about. Which is fine for them, but deeply irritating for those of us who do care and are stuck maintaining accounts on multiple platforms just to communicate with different subsets of the same friend group.

Privacy as a Hard Sell (And Why Meta Makes It Worse)

There's something about privacy advocacy that tends toward the apocalyptic. Every discussion about encrypted messaging eventually devolves into someone invoking Nineteen Eighty-Four or warning about government surveillance as though we're all one firmware update away from living in a police state.

And look, I'm not saying those concerns are invalid. Mass surveillance is real. Data breaches happen constantly. Governments do sometimes push for backdoors in encryption. But when your pitch for why someone should use Signal involves hypothetical scenarios about authoritarian crackdowns, you've already lost the conversation.

Because for most people, the threat model is much simpler: they don't want their ex reading their messages, or their employer snooping through their private chats, or some random hacker accessing their photos. WhatsApp's encryption covers those bases well enough for the average person's needs (or at least, they think it does, which amounts to the same thing in practice).

But here's what really gets me: WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol for its encryption. That's right – the encryption that makes WhatsApp "secure" was literally developed by the people who made Signal. Meta didn't build it, they just implemented it. And people trust WhatsApp because "it's encrypted" while being deeply suspicious of Signal, despite Signal being made by the same people who created the encryption protocol WhatsApp uses.

The difference is what happens to your metadata. Signal's advantage isn't just that it's encrypted – it's that it's encrypted and doesn't harvest your metadata for advertising purposes . But metadata sounds abstract. What does metadata even mean to someone who just wants to send memes to their group chat? Who cares if WhatsApp knows you messaged your friend at 2 in the morning if the content itself is encrypted?

Except... you should care. Because that metadata – who you talk to, when, how often, for how long – tells a remarkably detailed story about your life. And Meta collects it all. They can't read your messages, but they know exactly who's in your social network, who you talk to most frequently, when you're most active. That data is valuable, which is why they collect it.

This is the bit that makes me furious: Meta has repeatedly demonstrated they cannot be trusted with user data . The Cambridge Analytica scandal. The constant privacy violations. The way they've consistently prioritised profit over user wellbeing.

But beyond the privacy concerns, there's also the fact that Meta has made clear they don't care about protecting LGBTQ+ users. They've ended their fact-checking programme and loosened restrictions on hate speech, explicitly stating that content calling LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill" is now acceptable on their platforms. For those of us in the queer community, this isn't abstract – it's a direct threat to our safety and wellbeing. And yet people continue to use WhatsApp and act like I'm being paranoid for suggesting an alternative.

Every time I open WhatsApp, I'm contributing to the success of a company that has decided my existence is up for debate. That's not a comfortable position to be in.

This is the marketing problem nobody's solved. How do you make "we don't collect data about who you talk to and when" sound as compelling as "all your friends are already here"? You can't. And it's maddening.

The UX is Fine, Actually

I've seen people claim Signal is harder to use than WhatsApp or Telegram, and I genuinely don't understand where this comes from. Have these people actually used Signal? The interface is nearly identical. You have conversations, you send messages, you share media. There are group chats. There are voice calls. There are disappearing messages if you want them.

If anything, Signal is less cluttered than WhatsApp, which keeps adding features nobody asked for. Stories? Status updates? Business accounts? Payment systems? Please stop. At the very least, you can turn them off forever with Signal. Signal's feature set is deliberately constrained: it does messaging, it does calls, and that's mostly it. Some people might find that limiting, but I find it refreshing. It does what it's supposed to do without trying to become an everything app.

The one legitimate UX complaint I'll grant is the desktop app situation. Signal's desktop client works, but it's not as polished as some alternatives. The initial setup process – where you have to scan a QR code with your phone – is slightly more friction than I'd like. And there have been times when the desktop and mobile apps get out of sync in ways that require me to re-link them.

But these are minor inconveniences, not fundamental flaws. And they're certainly not insurmountable barriers for anyone who's successfully installed literally any other messaging app. If you can figure out WhatsApp, you can figure out Signal. The idea that it's "too complicated" is nonsense.

So Why Do I Use It?

Right, let's bring this back to the personal rather than the abstract. Why do I use Signal?

Partly, it's the principle of the thing. I like that Signal is a non-profit . I like that it's funded by donations rather than venture capital looking for a return. I like that the Signal Foundation's entire reason for existing is to build privacy-preserving technology, not to extract value from user data. These things matter to me, even if they don't matter to most people.

But also – and this might sound odd – I just prefer using it. The app feels cleaner to me. The lack of algorithmic timeline nonsense (because there is no timeline) means it's just for communication, not for passive scrolling. When I open Signal, it's because I have a specific person I want to message, not because I'm filling time. That focus is valuable.

There's also something valuable about having a separate space for different types of conversations. I use Signal with people who've deliberately chosen to be on Signal, which tends to select for a particular type of person. Not necessarily more paranoid (though sometimes), but more intentional about their digital choices. And that intentionality creates a different vibe to the conversations that happen there.

Though I'll be honest: most of my Signal conversations are still with the same two or three people who I've managed to convince to install it. Everyone else is still on WhatsApp. And you know what? That's fine. I use both. I'm not a purist about this. But it's frustrating that I have to maintain this split in the first place.

The Thing Nobody Wants to Hear

Here's the uncomfortable truth: Signal probably won't replace WhatsApp for most people. The network effect is too strong, the inertia too powerful, the value proposition too abstract.

And maybe that's okay? Signal doesn't need to be the dominant messaging platform to be useful. It just needs to exist as an option for people who want it. A parallel infrastructure for those of us who care about the things Signal cares about.

The mistake is thinking that everyone should switch, that there's a moral imperative to abandon platforms with worse privacy practices. That's not realistic, and it's not fair to expect people to care about the same things I care about with the same intensity.

But here's what does frustrate me: the casual dismissal. The "why are you being difficult?" attitude when I suggest using it. The implication that caring about privacy is somehow paranoid or excessive. The way people will happily complain about Meta's data practices in one breath and then refuse to switch to an alternative in the next.

I'm not asking everyone to delete WhatsApp tomorrow. I haven't deleted it, despite how much I'd like to, because I'm pragmatic enough to recognise that doing so would mean cutting myself off from most of my social circle. But I am asking people to at least acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons to want an alternative, and that those of us who use Signal aren't being difficult for the sake of it.

For me, those reasons include the fact that Meta has made it abundantly clear they don't value the safety of LGBTQ+ users. Every time I use WhatsApp, I'm supporting a company that has decided my community is acceptable collateral damage in their pursuit of engagement and profit. That's not a neutral choice, even if it feels like one.

You don't have to use Signal. But don't act like the people who do are being unreasonable. And maybe, just maybe, consider that handing Meta even more data about your life – and more power over online discourse – isn't a neutral choice either.

I do wish more people would at least try it. Not because I'm worried about government surveillance (though, you know, maybe we should be), but because diversity in communication platforms is inherently valuable. Monocultures are fragile. Having alternatives means we're not entirely dependent on Meta's goodwill and infrastructure choices. Which, given Meta's track record, seems like something worth caring about.

So yeah, I use Signal. I like it. And yes, I still use WhatsApp, because I have to. But if you're reading this and you're even slightly curious about trying something different, the app is free , the setup takes five minutes, and you can always go back to WhatsApp if it doesn't work for you.

Worth considering, at least.