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WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

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Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#181

Post by alexmingoia »

Marsymars wrote: post #180
alexmingoia wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also impractical for digital nomads like myself who don’t use phone numbers at all. I haven’t used Signal, but what do I do if every X months I have a new phone number? Will it still work if I swap SIM cards?

Not having a stable phone number seems impractical in general. (e.g. You can’t set up 2FA for Apple or Google accounts without a phone number.) More practical is porting a regular number to a SIP service so that you can receive important things via app. (2FA short codes typically don’t work with numbers that are assigned to SIP providers, but work fine you you port over a number from a regular carrier.)

Apple doesn’t require 2FA. I don’t have a Google account. All my accounts with 2FA use an Authenticator app. 2FA with SMS is insecure. If an account needs a phone, I use whatever number is in the SIM I’m using, and then it becomes outdated when I get a new SIM.

It’s not practical to pay for a static phone number and SIP service. Phone numbers are stupid. They’re insecure, expensive, and region locked (no such thing as international number, many services only support numbers with specific country code).

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#182

Post by Marsymars »

alexmingoia wrote: post #181
Marsymars wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having a stable phone number seems impractical in general. (e.g. You can’t set up 2FA for Apple or Google accounts without a phone number.) More practical is porting a regular number to a SIP service so that you can receive important things via app. (2FA short codes typically don’t work with numbers that are assigned to SIP providers, but work fine you you port over a number from a regular carrier.)

Apple doesn’t require 2FA. I don’t have a Google account. All my accounts with 2FA use an Authenticator app. 2FA with SMS is insecure. If an account needs a phone, I use whatever number is in the SIM I’m using, and then it becomes outdated when I get a new SIM. It’s not practical to pay for a static phone number and SIP service. Phone numbers are stupid. They’re insecure, expensive, and region locked (no such thing a…

> Apple doesn’t require 2FA.

They do if you want to be able to log in to any of Apple’s developer portal.

> It’s not practical to pay for a static phone number and SIP service.

It’s cheap to the level of being negligible. Exact cost depends on what number you want to get, but I’ve got a North American number that after initial SIM and porting fees is indefinitely zero-cost.

I wish we could do away with phone numbers. I’ve tried to do without, and found it impossible.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#183

Post by forgotmypw17 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #171
sanderjd wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would anyone do it? What is the incentive to invest the resources into building an application with a good UX? This is why businesses win: aligned incentives.

Same reason. You can build a business on top of the Matrix protocol. You could create a slick UI and charge $5-$10 for it. You could insert ads. You could add micropayments, crypto, etc... whatever the market wants.

Here's an idea, for anyone reading this to run with.

Sell account packs, say 50 accounts for 10 bucks. Or maybe 10 accounts for 5 bucks. Or maybe 20 accounts for $30 a year? Adjust it for both sustainability with your tech model, I dunno about that.

But the idea is to minimize the number of payments required per account and per network, and allow one person to pay for their entire group.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#184

Post by forgotmypw17 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #58
CJefferson wrote: post #11

I 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.…

If your mother in law can't even pick a username and password, how will she shop on Amazon, sign up with Google, book a flight? Most other mobile apps require you to sign up for an account too. And it bypasses the big problem of having to use your phone number (though you can already add it if you want for people to easily find you!) In regards to the UX of Elements, I think it's not great either but it's not the onl…

> If your mother in law can't even pick a username and password, how will she shop on Amazon, sign up with Google, book a flight?

Here's a clue: Millions of people go about their lives without ever doing any of these things.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#185

Post by forgotmypw17 »

CJefferson wrote: post #11

I 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.…

The funny thing is that IRC is the last system which needs replacement. It's frustrating to see FOSS projects force-switch support communities to from IRC to Matrix, because IRC works great and has a lot of existing software, while Matrix requires a new, heavy client with tons of usability issues and few alternatives. (If you don't think there are usability issues, I challenge you go through the entire installation, registration, and connection process without using your pointing device, keyboard only.)

For example, one browser's devs have decided to stop using IRC for support. That's OK, people can still hang out on IRC if they want to, right? Nope, they closed #browsername using the ban-on-join method, and if you don't know to look for ##browsername, the unofficial support channel, you're left with having to install yet another software package just to reach the official support channel?

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#187

Post by anticensor »

junon wrote: post #40
maxwellito wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 Also about Matrix, the confusion when the client app doesn't have the same name as the protocol is so unfriendly for the non tech-savy users.

I was designing something similar to Matrix at one point several years back. The different names confused even myself when I was dabbling into Matrix. Matrix is cool, there's no doubt. The packaging is terrible, IMO. They really need a product manager.

Do you have any links to share?

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#188

Post by kitkat_new »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #183
chrisco255 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason. You can build a business on top of the Matrix protocol. You could create a slick UI and charge $5-$10 for it. You could insert ads. You could add micropayments, crypto, etc... whatever the market wants.

Here's an idea, for anyone reading this to run with. Sell account packs, say 50 accounts for 10 bucks. Or maybe 10 accounts for 5 bucks. Or maybe 20 accounts for $30 a year? Adjust it for both sustainability with your tech model, I dunno about that. But the idea is to minimize the number of payments required per account and per network, and allow one person to pay for their entire group.

Doesn't Element do this already? https://element.io/plans-and-pricing/pro

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#189

Post by GekkePrutser »

ezst wrote: post #139
GekkePrutser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate more about Matrix's metadata distribution? What exactly is being distributed and when? I'd like to see that if you have it as I wasn't aware of this. PS: I'm not trying to contradict you here, on the contrary. I'd like to deep dive into it as it is indeed a big issue. If Matrix really takes off (which I hope it does) I would want to avoid dataminers just federating to it and grabbing data that way…

Sure! The first "practical"* difference between Matrix and XMPP is that Matrix' chatrooms are "necessarily decentralized" (whereas in XMPP that's optional [1]). How it works is that users involved in a given room have their servers synchronize the room's state with each other (room state is messages, presence status, read receipts, "is composing" status, …) so when one server goes down/netsplits, messages, join/leave…

Thanks, I'll have to dig into the protocol, maybe do some sniffing on my homeserver :)

I assume not every node gets the metadata for all the rooms in the world, just the ones its users participate in? Anyway looking forward to investigating this.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#190

Post by UncleMeat »

sceox wrote: post #143
mixedCase wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure but that does not in any way take away from the point that siloed messengers are a bad idea. Well, too bad! Usability trumps idealism when network effects are at play. > If the XMPP/Matrix people wanted to they could set up a trusted third party server to link identities to phone numbers just like Signal does Usability is so bad that you're defending Matrix and don't even know this is already available, just h…

Because Matrix allows any number of clients to be made, it's entirely possible for one client to do the things you list at the same time as other clients don't for the reasons you mention. If I had to guess, it won't be Element, it will be a new client preconfigured to some (not matrix.org) server.

But they don't exist. "Someday, there will be a client that will make the signup process simple" is not a great argument for my mom when I'm trying to text her my holiday plans.
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