> Sadly it’s not really used yet
This is so hard to overcome. Many problems have technical solutions, but are still almost impossible to implement due to all sorts of other obstacles.
WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
21–30 of 199 posts
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#22I wanted to like this piece for calling Signal for what it is: WhatsApp with better marketing (with a lot of security and privacy backed by obscurity), but if everyone is jumping ship from WhatsApp out of data syphoning concerns, I'm not sure that Matrix's insistance on replicating and distributing as much metadata as possible across its nodes is much better. The end game is probably P2P with "dumb" servers doing lit…
Can you recommend a self hosted setup? I want chat + forward to email if I'm offline.
I recommend (a recent) ejabberd if you don't know anything about XMPP: it does an excellent job coming with good default, clear, commented and foolproof config and once it's running you can literally forget about it.
XMPP does manage offline message catch-up across all devices, and with good mobile clients I've never felt the need to redirect to email (especially these days with ubiquitous E2EE, that's not something you would want the server to be capable of doing), that said I believe it would be "easily" scripted up.
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#23The reason why Signal is not an open protocol like email has been argumented by Signal creator Moxie before (can't find the article please help). It has pros (evolution is faster and thus it's easier to compete with proprietary solutions) and cons (single point of failure) and Signal devs are well aware of that. We should stop acting like Matrix and Signal are competing with each other. I happily use Matrix but my gr…
Also, for what's worth, my grandma uses XMPP just fine...
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#24I wish that the author had spent more time really thinking about _why_ communication has moved away from email, or why XMPP/IRC never really caught on despite being vastly older than these app competitors (hint: it is because they are federated, and so making sweeping changes to the protocol/client in the name of UX becomes intractable.) It is _very_ frustrating that the internet has had messenger fragmentation since…
WhatsApp just works also.
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#25Yes but email also used to be fragmented and walled garden'ed back in the early days of networking. Chat is still in its infancy as a technology. We are still trying to figure things out: what's the minimal necessary feature set? What should a server API provide to clients? And a myriad of behavior/feature/privacy questions that different messaging systems handle differently, for example: what happens when I leave a…
ICQ came out in 1996, AIM in 1997, and MSN in 1999. I don't think it's fair to give the people working on this a pass by saying this is a new problem - working products have been shipping for over 20 years. Some of the devs working on Signal and Matrix were probably born after ICQ was released.
The reality is that all of these systems, including email, tend towards becoming walled gardens. Otherwise you end up with the same problem that email has which is that a huge percentage of it is spam. At this point email is basically a few connected walled gardens from the major providers. Before that the amount of spam was even larger.
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#26I really sympathise with this point of view, but when it comes to messaging with family and friends, I just don't really care. Matrix seems to want to be an IRC replacement rather than a one-to-one / small-group chat app. That's fine, but often not what I want. Teaching my mother in law to use Signal: Install. Accept permissions. Choose a PIN. I can send you messages. You can see your friends who already use Signal.…
> Matrix seems to want to be an IRC replacement rather than a one-to-one / small-group chat app
I don't know where you get that impression.
Matrix / Element works great for 1-1 and small group chats, the general UX issues aside.
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#27I wish that the author had spent more time really thinking about _why_ communication has moved away from email, or why XMPP/IRC never really caught on despite being vastly older than these app competitors (hint: it is because they are federated, and so making sweeping changes to the protocol/client in the name of UX becomes intractable.) It is _very_ frustrating that the internet has had messenger fragmentation since…
Isn't the fact neither XMPP nor IRC are e2e-encrypted a factor in them catching on?
Nobody wants to use a messenger that's public, or that with a single centralised compromise/hack could make all their messages become so.
To me that disqualifies them as even being potential solutions to the problem.
Matrix has significant usability issues in its currently-available form(s) - but it at least meets the most basic of requirements that user messages are private, and does so fundamentally.
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#28The reason why Signal is not an open protocol like email has been argumented by Signal creator Moxie before (can't find the article please help). It has pros (evolution is faster and thus it's easier to compete with proprietary solutions) and cons (single point of failure) and Signal devs are well aware of that. We should stop acting like Matrix and Signal are competing with each other. I happily use Matrix but my gr…
The problem with statements like "I happily use Matrix but my grandma will not, ever, not in this world" is that Matrix is more of a protocol than anything. So of course, your gradma would never use HTTP, but since browsers are now user friendly enough, everyone is using HTTP indirectly. Same can (will? Might?) happen with Matrix, where a popular applications get written on top of Matrix, and users don't even need to…
> Same can (will? Might?) happen with Matrix
When will this happen, if ever?
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#29"Why does everybody wanting to exchange messages need the same client?" Gee I don't know, maybe standardisation has some sort of benefit that leads to a cohesive, consistent experience for all users as opposed to having a bunch of clients that all implement varying levels of the spec to various standards...
> Gee I don't know, maybe standardisation has some sort of benefit that leads to a cohesive, consistent experience for all users as opposed to having a bunch of clients that all implement varying levels of the spec to various standards...
Supporting only one application is quite the opposite of standardization, it is vendor lock in. If it was standardized it would open up the opportunity to have more than one client.
Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem
#30> The origin of mail were a couple of geeks who wanted to exchange messages on ARPANET
No, Inventor Of Email is this guy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai