Gregory's ServerI don't really like Signal. I don't like Telegram either. Wire is acceptable, but also clunky. It kinda sucks that people have to basically choose and commit to one app with all of their contacts now, if IM apps were federated like e-mail and Mastodon you could just keep talking to your friends from wherever.
Eugen Rochko
108 comments | Expand all CWs
Tomas Ekeli
@Gargron i hope something based on element can be this. perhaps something on your phone that forwards any sms messages into it?
'';<!--"'hansw'
@Gargron I agree, years ago we used xmmp to connect to a lot of other accounts. Facebook, MS and others killed that.  
Dr. Quadragon ❌
@Gargron Yeah. If only there was some federated extensible messaging and presence protocol that could do this!
Eugen Rochko
@drq I used to advocate for XMPP for many years, but I don't think there's any point anymore. I think multiple factors contributed to the downfall of XMPP... The underlying tech simply went out of vogue, nobody's excited to write or parse XML; too many crucial functions were not part of the core standard so UX varied wildly between different client and server apps, and of course the EEE by Google and Facebook contributed too, you could argue if that was a licensing failure
:ggc: Niklas
@Gargron You could use Matrix or Jabber,they're federated just like Email and Mastodon and they work really good. 
bluestarultor
@Gargron I used to use Miranda IM, which is nice because it handled YIM, AIM, IRC, and various others. Sadly the FF Wiki IRC migrated to Discord and I just hate the setup and never properly got into it after my indefinite hiatus, so I haven't had reason to do anything but group SMS in ages.  
Eugen Rochko
@Ertain Yeah, though it's still disappointing. I think in 2017 they said they'd eventually make it possible to run your own Wire server and to talk between Wire servers (so, federation) but it's 2021 now and I don't think anything's moved. 
Lance R. Vick
Matrix is federated, has multiple clients on every platform, and can bridge to centralized networks like Signal, Telegram etc if one absolutely must. Matrix and IRC are all I use for over a year now.
Grzegorz Kulik
@Gargron Matrix is federated and has bridges to other networks. It's pretty promising.
wisemonkey
@Gargron matrix / element? However for communication app friends and family need to be willing to switch. I find that part harder than finding a service. 
Gracious Anthracite
I miss the days of (semi-)open protocols and multi-protocol apps so much. RIP Adium.
FiberDrive
@Gargron there are apps that utilize email protocols, like Delta Chat for Android, and XMPP is a protocol that has federation. The fight, like with Mastodon, is getting friends onto the federated platform in the first place.
Christoffer Tallerås :noreg:
@Gargron without checking the replies I can hear the thunder and waves of matrix and XMPP replies 😅
[DATA EXPUNGED]
Max Cahill
@Gargron completely this
Thomas Boxley
@Gargron Remember the old days of using Pidgin or Trillian with five different IM accounts?
Kyle Gospodnetich
@Gargron sadly good luck getting everyone to agree to one standard of encryption. It's bad enough getting everyone to agree to any standards at all.  
Григорий Клюшников
Someone :suckless:, it's paid, it's even less secure than plaintext HTTP, it's very limited in its features, and to top it off, your identity aka phone number doesn't belong to you, it belongs to your carrier and is tied to a particular country. Also I don't really remember when I chatted over SMS with a real person. It's still widely popular for all kinds of notifications and 2fa codes though.
Григорий Клюшников
Wasn't Mastodon going to integrate Matrix? I remember seeing a merged pull request about that, and there also now are some fields about this in Mastodon's ActivityPub objects.
Григорий Клюшников
Dr. Quadragon ❌, interesting. So the PMs would remain the same nearly-unusable threaded thing, just encrypted? I was thinking about integrating the Matrix protocol into Smithereen to have a more traditional IM experience.
Григорий Клюшников
˗ˏˋ wakest ˎˊ˗, in a distant future maybe :P   
Michal :verified:
@Gargron that reminds me, I need to finish setting up that Prosody server for the protocol-that-shall-not-be-named.  
txt.file
And you could have multiple IDs. 
Steffen Voß
@gargron Problem is: If they all were federated, there's no reason anymore for most people to have more than WhatsApp installed. And when you communicate with them, facebook will still use that meta-data.
Adonay Felipe Nogueira
@Gargron This is why I foster #XMPP, see also https://libreplanet.org/wiki/XMPP .
Aaron Graves
@Gargron Agree with the sentiment, though Signal appears to work fine for people you know (i.e. not just handing your numbers out around town). I've been playing with Session messenger for a bit, along with Element/Matrix.
Adam Stambaugh
@Gargron I really like XMPP. I use https://jmp.chat for their SMS/MMS/PSTN transport and I have an IRC transport. On top of that there's a bifrost instance on matrix.org. With those I can connect to Matrix MUCs, IRC channels, and MMS groups all from the comfort of XMPP. I also have most of my friends and family over on XMPP thanks to Quicksy for OMEMO E2EE communication. 
peterretief
@Gargron If there was one app that could keep your contacts and keep contact with friends/coworkers why even use fb/twitter/whatsapp etc
Carlos Ceballos ✅:mastodon:
@Gargron Also there is alternatives right now that literally uses the current e-mail federation infrastructure to put an end-to-end encrypted msg system on top like Delta Chat: https://delta.chat/en/
P.J. Finlay
@Gargron since Signal's main selling point is strong encryption that they are (at least for now) continually updating this seems hard to do in a federated way
crushfuckkcreate
@Gargron Why don't you like Signal? Does Wire still excist? I think i used that one many years ago. Looked amazing! |
@Gargron I love signal please don't bulli me Gargron