I want to set up a ‘home phone’ network for the kids in a couple of different households. The kids are too young to have their own phones, but are currently dependent on parents to contact each other in the way we did when we were kids
My idea at the moment is to set up an old Android phone on the wifi in each house with messenger or similar, then uninstall all other internet apps and lock down the play store
Does this sound like the best option? If there a better tool that is still cheap/free and will be relatively safe for the kids to use unattended?
If you don’t have phone Sims/phone numbers then you can use something like Mumble.
I setup my own server locally and have a VPN to it. My kids phone can connect then and we can talk over a local LAN or with a VPN if I’m elsewhere.
Other than that. Discord?
I can easily get phone numbers to register a messenger account or similar, but not so interested in an ongoing cost like a dumb phone
None of the families are really home server types, so I would have to maintain any server client solution for them which is less than ideal
Is discord better than messenger, whether it’s ease of use, quality, privacy etc.?
Both Discord and Messenger have shit privacy practices. I’d try out Matrix or Conversations (XMPP). Niether require a phone number to work.
If you don’t mind using a phone number for registration, I’d recommend Signal.
Signal is probably going to be the simplest to use, but the other two are also pretty easy to get up and running relatively speaking.
discord and messenger are pretty bad when it comes to privacy, neither even bother end-to-end-encrypting calls.
Signal really is the best choice, but due to the phone number registration requirement, unless you’re fine with the one-time purchase of some prepaid SIMs or something, that might get a bit annoying.
SimpleX is decent enough with calls for now (when they work), but connection times can be abysmal
This is where I would jump to Matrix / Element, but Element is currently in the middle of re-making their mobile Apps, including the entire calling feature 🥴