It's open source. The code has been evaluated by third party privacy advocates, and you can do the same. It's not perfect, but it's a huge push in the right direction.
Ultimately, you need to decide what your threat model looks like. If the omniscient cabal of women are after you and you specifically, your choice of chat app won't keep you out of jail. If you just like to text the N word to your buddies because you think it's funny, running Signal is leagues better than blasting embarrassing texts over SMS for some asshole at the phone company to store forever and the NSA to retrieve and leak whenever you become politically inconvenient.
Use an end to end encrypted messenger, I got most of my family and friends to switch to signal. Others I know use whatsapp, but fuck Zuckerberg.
I'm prepared to leave signal the instant I have cause to believe it is compromised.
Signal is endorsed by fucking Dorsey.
I heard about it because Antfia uses it to organize. It's a tool.
Don't use it. I wouldn't trust it.
It's open source. The code has been evaluated by third party privacy advocates, and you can do the same. It's not perfect, but it's a huge push in the right direction.
Ultimately, you need to decide what your threat model looks like. If the omniscient cabal of women are after you and you specifically, your choice of chat app won't keep you out of jail. If you just like to text the N word to your buddies because you think it's funny, running Signal is leagues better than blasting embarrassing texts over SMS for some asshole at the phone company to store forever and the NSA to retrieve and leak whenever you become politically inconvenient.