Translated from German (with DeepL):
The Swiss messenger service Threema is being acquired by the German investment company Comitis Capital. Both the company and Threema itself emphasize that the arrival of the new investor will not lead to any significant changes for the time being. The company headquarters and servers will remain in Switzerland, and the management team will stay unchanged.
A financial investor with a broad portfolio
Comitis Capital is a young private equity firm, not a technology company. It invests in various industries, including a UK-based supplier of vegan meat alternatives and a manufacturer of dog accessories.
Its business model consists of providing financial support to promising companies so that they can grow and establish themselves internationally. “Comitis now clearly sees this potential in Threema too,” says SRF digital editor Tanja Eder.
Data protection as a business model
The strong focus on data protection is considered a key strength of the messenger. Precisely because US tech companies are coming under increasing criticism and digital sovereignty is gaining in importance, Comitis sees this aspect as a clear unique selling point.
Whether this will remain the case in the long term is unclear, according to Eder. If Comitis were to conclude at some point that it would be more profitable to collect Threema customer data or sell the company, no one could prevent them from doing so.
Trust in the authorities remains an issue
In Switzerland, federal authorities and the military also use Threema for internal communication. Even though everyone involved is aware that there is no such thing as absolute security, Threema still has advantages over its competitors.
For example, Threema’s source code is openly accessible. Experts in the fields of data protection, IT security, and research regularly check whether the company is keeping its promises. Government agencies can also carry out their own checks.
Hardly any alternatives on the market
Good alternatives to Threema are rare. “Apart from WhatsApp, which dominates the market, there is simply not much room for other messenger services,” notes the digital editor.
Signal is considered another secure messenger alongside Threema. However, it is operated from the US, albeit by a non-profit foundation and financed by donations. In Switzerland, Proton offers encrypted emails, but does not have its own messenger service.
“Given this limited offering, we can only hope that privacy-friendly communication services will gain in importance in the future,” says Eder.
“Hardly any alternative”. Guys… Besides Signal there is Matrix (self-hostable) and Session. Both pretty good alternatives. I personally think Matrix is best tho
I’ve recently left Matrix behind for a few reasons.
- Element, the “best client,” is a buggy mess on android and a shitty electron app on PC.
- While I wasn’t using it due to a bug and awaiting an update, I learned that it started as an Amdocs project before being defunded and the lead dev went off to create The Matrix Foundation. Amdocs is a Mossad affiliated company that infiltrated America’s telcom networks long ago. Now, I’m not saying that means Mossad is tracking all the metadata that pours out of Matrix, but like, too close for comfort.
- Also it leaks metadata like a sieve.
- It’s too hard for the normals to use, yes I agree they should just get gud but they won’t, and it was hurting adoption (in my circle). What good is a messaging app without people to message?
- The public rooms’ CP issue makes it hard to convert people too, I had one friend asking what kind of app I made him install and scared he was gonna get arrested for a post someone made in the RaspberryPi room. Not a good look.
It is for these reasons I’ve migrated to Delta Chat (well, Arcane Chat but same same), and with the easy onboarding it has been easier to get normal people on it.
For me the old element was always buggy but Element X is pretty dope. The protocol has also been audited multiple times and improved quite a bit over the last 5 years. Its not hard to start for others if you just give them one instance you recommend. When it comes to CP I personally don’t know of the issue but I’m not in a lot of spaces. I like that it has voice and video calls tho.
X was worse for me last time I used it, which was admittedly a while back, but still. They might not be able to read message content but any server that federates with matrix.org leaks a fuck ton of metadata to them and people have been killed for metadata before. If Mossad is monitoring that metadata then that’s enough for me. It’s hard enough, I have people asking me about second passwords and all that. This is the type of people that use one password for everything and it’s hunter2, I love them but they aren’t all America’s Best. Delta Chat is spotty on the video/audio calls, but they’re working on it, and somehow they ring through on my phone where (due to my setting pull notifications polling every 300sec because GrapheneOS) on Element they wouldn’t notify me until too late.
It’s ridiculous that we have so many proper alternatives and the only thing missing are people in our personal circles to care about them. What’s even more ridiculous is that a few people seem to be slowly shifting away from WhatsApp as their primary choice, but instead they use Discord for direct messaging =) How…
Oh yeah discord is much worse than whatsapp, which is upsetting. Much of Gen Z also uses Snapchat which is also unencrypted. Like bro Signal is right there… next to a gazillion others like Element (Matrix protocol). Honestly in germany so much relies on whatsapp its crazy.
“for the time being”. relax peasants, we only gonna start datafarming from next year.
What are you even trying to say with that message? Matrix is a federated protocol and fully E2EE. Even the German army uses it
There are so, so many alternatives.
Already got Element X installed, but looking for a reliable Matrix server to join before I commit.
Hosting your own Matrix server is pretty easy and cheap. There’s a pretty robust Ansible project, and I have it running on a Hetzner cloud for 6$ a month.
The added bonus is I can turn on bridges for Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord and don’t need to be worried that someone somewhere will steal my account, since it’s all running on my server. So far I haven’t had any problems, and I’ve had it running for more than a year by now.
It’s high time we all agreed that Matrix is the official winner of this absurd struggle. That way developers and funders can know where to focus their efforts. The corporate giants are going nowhere and network effects are a massive barrier. There just aren’t enough users for lots of good FOSS encrypted messengers. We need to stop wasting time and pick a single protocol to become the official new open standard for IM, like POP and SMTP are for email. Matrix has been the obvious solution for a decade.
This does not mean that other messengers can’t exist too.
For family and friends chat, DeltaChat is better.
For chatrooms/Discord/IRC, Matrix works.
The way Matrix handles encryption is just too complex for average users. The Element X rewrite not supporting all OG Element feature do not help.
Example of issues I faced recently: https://piefed.zip/c/privacy/p/763572/looking-for-a-federated-alternative-to-signal-as-they-might-have-to-comply-with-chatcontro
My position remains that we should just pick the option which is closest to achieving IM open-standard status and is generally agreed to have a modern codebase (so not XMPP), that option is Matrix, and then get on with fixing all these problems that Matrix supposedly has. Instead of this interminable shopping around, as if somehow a perfect alternative is miraculously going be invented one day in a finished state.
Example of issues I faced recently
A couple of comments. Signal is not going to cave to chat control, that just will not happen. DeltaChat is an interesting project but it’s a hack. I used it for a while years ago and it kept getting me locked out of my GMX mail account for spam violation. That was an edge case but hardly surprising given the hacky nature of its concept. At best it’s an intermediate solution.
How many of your friends and relatives do you talk to on Matrix?
I never managed to get anyone to use it.
In comparison, DeltaChat has been a smooth transition.
Indeed, and this is the heart of issue. The network problem means that it ultimately makes no sense to have multiple IM systems, just we don’t have multiple telephone systems. I believe we need to get our act together, pick the winner of this battle and commit to it. As far as I can see the winner has been clear for years now: Matrix. And yet we’re not committing to its, we’re still talking interminably about the relative merits of all the also-rans.
It’s reminiscent of (among other examples) USB. If the EU hadn’t stepped in and mandated USB, we’d still be arguing about the relative merits of different cable standards. This is the problem of having no central authority.
Personally, like a few million others (here in Europe), I convinced a small handful of Whatsapp-addicted normies to also use Signal. I’m not doing that again until the FOSS replacement for Signal is usable, reliable, and definitive. DeltaChat does not meet those criteria so I’ll be sticking with Signal. Unfortunately.
To be honest at this point Signal is the least worst solution. Okay it’s centralized, and you can’t self host it, but it’s similar enough to Whatsapp to make a smooth transition.
Now if they could add Communities like Whatsapp, that would a huge improvement
Also, both Whatsapp and Discord coexist without being the same app. There’s space for a family/friends messenger and a chatroom messenger.
And yet, people still refuse to use it.
At least I’ve learned a lot about people during my 10 years on signal.
In all my time I’ve only got about 6 people to permanently use it. Unfortunately, they only permanently use it with me.
I swear they act like it’s such a pain. Even though it’s just as easy as anything else. It’s quite infuriating.
To be honest at this point Signal is the worst solution
Presumably you meant not the worst solution
DeltaChat is an interesting project but it’s a hack. I used it for a while years ago and it kept getting me locked out of my GMX mail account for spam violation.
Then use a provider that won’t ban you. With Chatmail it’s easy and cheap to host your own, or you can just use the free public instance that’s configured by default in the app.
I’ve been on it (with myncontacts) for ~4 months with most of my regular contacts, and it has been perfect.
To be clear for anyone who’s not clear about this, DeltaChat is a shoehorning of E2E encrypted IM into a protocol (IMAP) designed for something very different (email). The privacy argument is that the infrastructure (IMAP servers) is decentralized and already exists. Fair enough, but it’s still a hack and so it can only be at best an intermediate solution. Like Signal. There’s no reason IM can’t stand on its own at last, with its own protocol and competing software that uses it. Personally I don’t plan to tackle the massive task of moving my contacts until that definitive solution is ready.
“shoehorning” and “it’s a hack” are meaningless and pointlessly negative terms to describe it. Doing it this way isn’t any less reliable, secure, or functional than with a custom protocol.
Think about it like this: if the payload is encrypted, the “transport layer” doesn’t matter. Messages could be delivered over SMS, carrier pigeon, etc and it would still work. The only consideration is the cost of that layer.
Email servers are specifically designed to deliver messages, and many implementations are absolutely massive in scale. People already send encrypted emails using PGP, so it’s not even unprecedented. Delta just nicely wraps that into a Whatsapp-style interface.
Performance can be a concern, because email typically isn’t instant like IM. Chatmail solves this, by building a backend that is optimized specifically for the Delta Chat use case.
So in the end, you get what is effectively the best private/secure chat app you can download today. Ecen without the corporate backing Signal has, it is competitive on user experience and features.
Idk what Delta Chat did to piss you off so much, but you’re doing yourself a disservice holding a grudge against an inanimate bundle of bytes. Give it another try.
It’s not a grudge. I said I think DeltaChat is a good intermediate solution. I just can’t believe in 2026 we still don’t have a protocol-based open standard designed specifically for the communication paradigm of IM as we’ve had for the paradigm of e-letters for many decades. Or rather, AFAICT we do have it but we’re not committing to it.
Anyway, your technical arguments are persuasive enough to convince me that DeltaChat is better than Signal as an intermediate solution. If not sufficiently better to warrant switching.
Matrix is just yet another nu-protocol. If there’s going to be investment it better be on something like XMPP. Maaaaaybe IRC.
I remember when they were saying “we’re independent because it’s a paid product and there is no need to worry.” Good joke.
I never understood how Threema could make this work. Messangers rely on the network effect and asking people to pay adds a lot of friction. It’s not enough for you to pay in order to use it, you have to convince your peers to also do the same. So, why would I pay to use a messanger that I have nobody to message?
Yeah, it’s hard to believe companies now. That’s why I’m building a XMPP server/service to help people move off of centralized services.
XMPP
I made that mistake too. XMPP’s app situation isn’t pretty, and ime notifications don’t ecen work on iOS half the time.
Delta Chat is where its at.
+1 for Delta Chat, I’ve been loving it! Using it through Arcane Chat at the moment.
Against XMPP+OMEMO - Soatok
Hopefully, they keep Threema like it is. But sure, I will watch closely. If they slowly start to enshittify it, I will be gone.
I’ll probably stick with them til the bitter end, but like you I will bail if they start to enshittify the experience.
Hardly any alternatives to Threema…
Well, there goes one of my favorite alternatives to WhatsApp… Looks like I’ll need to find a replacement.
Signal is pretty good.
I already have Signal… Agree it’s pretty good, all except that fact it requires a phone number to register an account.
XMPP is a good alternative and a good client to use would be monocles. Let me see if I can find my link archive to XMPP info and I’ll share it with you.
I’m familiar with XMPP… I’ve experimented with the latest version of Prosody and Monal as a client before, but since my personal domain ends in .us, it’s probably not the best option to use to host a server.
Ahh well you could always join someone else’s server and communicate through them honestly.
I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to making sure any XMPP server fully supports the full XMPP spec, especially since I’ve had the chance to experiment with a fully compliant server I set up myself.
That is understandable, talking to the operators and getting spec info from them is a way to verify. I know it’s tedious, but it’s worth it.
Aparently they were owned by a company based in Munich (germany) even before this? Definitely still better than WhatsApp but it does leave a sour taste.
What was the company’s name? I would like to dig deeper into Threema so I can communicate with folks that use it about these changes.
