106 - Simplex Chat Private Messenger

The Watchman Privacy Podcast

Gabriel speaks with Evgeny, the founder of Simplex Chat. Simplex is a recent and still-developing private messaging app with a slant toward privacy over convenience. Evgeny gives his critical thoughts on other private messengers, explains how privacy software can fund itself, exposes the myth of disappearing messages, and gets into some of the finer details of how Simplex Chat has made different choices from its competitors. In particular Simplex gets rid of accounts altogether, allowing you to create as many “profiles” as you want that are localized to your device. The result is, as Evgeny says, Simplex knows nothing about its users.

Guest Links → https://simplex.chat/ → https://twitter.com/simplexchat

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Timeline 0:00 - Introduction 1:23 – Do funding sources influence projects like Simplex? 9:45 – Evgeny’s thoughts on other private messaging apps 17:00 – Simplex Chat gets rid of the very idea of an account 20:00 – What does Simplex know about its users? 24:25 – Can we replicate Simplex profiles on other devices? 29:38 – Disappearing messages are security theater 34:00 – Why didn’t Simplex take the code base of Signal and build from it? 40:00 – Problems with UI and path forward 49:25 – Beginner tutorial for Simplex 52:50 – How can you fund a private messaging app? 56:35 – Final Thoughts

#SimplexChat #PrivateMessaging #WatchmanPrivacy