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Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

element.io

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Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#51

Post by dtonon »

dTal wrote: post #40
personjerry wrote: post #35

Back in the day before the rise of Facebook, there was an open source service that combined all the popular messaging protocols - MSN, AoL, IRC, etc. It was called Pidgin[0], and it never got particularly big. I see the same thing here. While it's interesting, I'm failing to see what the use case is. What's the niche that needs this solved in a big way? [0] https://www.pidgin.im/

No, it wasn't a "service" - it was a program. Unlike this thing. The main difference between this and Pidgin seems to be that you pay a monthly fee for someone to man-in-the-middle all your communications.

It is a service, because the bridge is a software that need to be keep operational 24/24h and sometimes this is not so trivial (if I don't get wrong WA need an Android emulator running).

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#52

Post by jakecopp »

upofadown wrote: post #50

Correct me if I am wrong, but this means that you have to trust the people running the bridging server with not just the content of your messages but your account identity/login information as well?

> with not just the content of your messages

Yes, for bridged chats. Matrix Matrix direct & group chats are E2E by default.

> but your account identity/login information as well

Yes, however identity/login does not permit access to E2E messages (and cross signing prevents E2E compromise [1]). Matrix supports migrating accounts to other servers [2] while keeping your data/social graph (depending on your history viewability settings I believe, someone please correct me if I'm wrong!).

[1]: https://matrix.org/blog/2020/05/06/cross-signing-and-end-to-...

[2]: https://ems.element.io/tools/matrix-migration

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#53

Post by krageon »

jakecopp wrote: post #23
krageon wrote: post #7

Does anyone know what this product is based on? Is it just a ready-made image with all the bridges preconfigured (and prerequisites such as a small android vm for a viable whatsapp bridge), or has there been some evolution on the existing package? Is there documentation on what was done to achieve this? Purely on the content of the article: Given that the messages are not stored encrypted locally and that this servic…

> Purely on the content of the article: Given that the messages are not stored encrypted locally and that this service is connected to the US, I do not see how it can be viable for the privacy-conscious. Matrix chats (direct and group) are E2E by default. There is no bridge that will let you keep E2E encryption between Signal/WhatsApp and another service - it has to be broken somewhere. I believe Element is a UK comp…

> There is no bridge that will let you keep E2E encryption between Signal/WhatsApp and another service - it has to be broken somewhere

Yes, but it doesn't have to be stored plain on a completely untrusted (because again, the company touches the US - that is an ideologically privacy-hostile space) server. This makes data collection much easier, including data collection of data in the past (as opposed to only communication from a certain point in time, as with an ongoing tap of the machine itself).

> The blog post on This Week In Matrix

Thank you :)

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#54

Post by krageon »

GrayShade wrote: post #42
krageon wrote: post #7

Does anyone know what this product is based on? Is it just a ready-made image with all the bridges preconfigured (and prerequisites such as a small android vm for a viable whatsapp bridge), or has there been some evolution on the existing package? Is there documentation on what was done to achieve this? Purely on the content of the article: Given that the messages are not stored encrypted locally and that this servic…

I've been running the Signal bridge for a couple of months and it seems pretty unstable. Sometimes it stops delivering messages and I have to restart either signald or the bridge. At other times, it broke completely and started working again only after a couple of days, when I updated signald. I haven't tried the WhatsApp bridge yet because it needs to go through my phone or an Android VM. WhatsApp recently announced…

That's a bummer. I was excited about running a home instance to bridge my (many) chat platforms. To me the point of such a thing is you can set it up and mostly leave it alone, so if it needs frequent fiddling it is mostly not fit for purpose.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#55

Post by ho_schi »

This kind of stuff never works reliable of even fully. Because? There is no standard. And especially Telegram and WhatsApp will have absolutely no interest in keeping it working reliable. If you send your data anyway over this questionable services you're already in a concerning situation adding more possibilities for failure doesn't help.

I use Matrix and it is certainly a good thing and the connections to other stuff like IRC, too. The fix is getting rid of WhatsApp. Signal is fine, the non-native desktop applications (i.e. fat and ugly Electron with Chrome behind) needs a rewrite with Gtk and Qt.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#56

Post by saurik »

dtonon wrote: post #51
dTal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn't a "service" - it was a program. Unlike this thing. The main difference between this and Pidgin seems to be that you pay a monthly fee for someone to man-in-the-middle all your communications.

It is a service, because the bridge is a software that need to be keep operational 24/24h and sometimes this is not so trivial (if I don't get wrong WA need an Android emulator running).

Pidgin doesn't use a "bridge"... it is just a generic local client that supports plugins for various protocols that are implemented via adversarial interoperability.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#57

Post by josteink »

dtonon wrote: post #51
dTal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn't a "service" - it was a program. Unlike this thing. The main difference between this and Pidgin seems to be that you pay a monthly fee for someone to man-in-the-middle all your communications.

It is a service, because the bridge is a software that need to be keep operational 24/24h and sometimes this is not so trivial (if I don't get wrong WA need an Android emulator running).

WA works with a pure go-based bridge. No Android required.

The rest of your comment is true though. Keeping these bridges up 24/7 is quite a bit of work. Most people (even technical ones) probably won’t bother with that.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#59

Post by miguelrochefort »

have_faith wrote: post #15
miguelrochefort wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already reverse engineered the Whatsapp protocol. I see little reason why it can't live in the client? I don't really follow why they move the bridge to the homeserver. Matrix bridges are rather complex. They rely on a combination of private APIs (WhatsApp), Chrome extension scraping (LINE), bots (Telegram), mobile clients (Android SMS), and jailbroken iPhones (iMessage).

This is all very interesting from a technological perspective but it sounds incredible brittle. Do I break any terms with these 3rd parties by paying Matrix to scrape them?

I've been using Beeper.com for a while and it's surprisingly stable despite how brittle one would expect these bridges to be.

Given that puppeteering should be indistinguishable from real application usage and that $5/month/user should be more than enough to diversify IP addresses, I suspect the model can actually be sustainable in the long term.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#60

Post by Steltek »

This is nicely timed.

Brief history: when Hangouts was going away and Google Chat coming in, I pitched Matrix to my friends as a better alternative that didn't require unique phone numbers, awkward desktop limitations, and a better federated future. We stuck with Google Chat because inertia and networks suck that way.

I revisited the instance I had setup and got the mautrix-googlechat bridge working. It's pretty nice but one friend lamented that he did not have the technical skills to self-host such a thing. And here comes this announcement! Sadly, there is a major hurdle: neither Google Chat nor SMS/GVoice are listed here and those are the major protocols that my social group uses.

At the same time, my social group is conservative in adopting new core technologies and wary of cloud lock-in for critical roles (Google being both an unfortunate anchor and precipitator of that). I'm not sure adding those protocols would tip the balance.

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