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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

#101

Post by IceWreck »

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.

> you pay a monthly fee for someone to man-in-the-middle all your communications.

All Matrix homeservers and bridges are open source. I self host some of them myself. Have been doing that long before Element One was a thing.

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

#102

Post by unicornporn »

unicornporn wrote: post #89
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.

Thank you. Let us not forget what general purpose computing was like.

Following up on this... I was Miranda user. With it I was able to run ICQ, MSN Messenger and other instant messengers with an encrypted layer slapped on top (as long as I was able to talk my friends out of using the official client). Today it's called Miranda NG[1] and it seems alive and kicking[2].

[1] https://www.miranda-ng.org/en/ [2] https://github.com/miranda-ng/miranda-ng

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

#103

Post by Ntrails »

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/

I still use pidgin regularly for various chat rooms and ircs etc. It is a great piece of kit imo

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

#104

Post by capableweb »

hellojesus wrote: post #95
capableweb wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law makers are required here to solve the situation, as platforms themselves refuse to work with each other. If Facebook and Google had to operate a common protocol (just like IMAP), Pidgin would work much better or wouldn't even be needed. But no, they want to prevent people from talking with each other via other platforms because "we're best" or whatever.

It's probably because they don't want to lose users. If you have FB, and I have Twitter, and we can chat, why would I ever make a FB profile or you a Twitter profile? The mutual exclusivity is the competitive advantage. All these companies are competing with one another for your eyes. It wouldn't make sense for them to give that up for no return value.

Exactly! Providing a walled garden just for the sake of keeping users should not be legal, just like abusing any other market position wouldn't be legal.

I get that they want their "network effect" and keep it to themselves, but this is no good for users and the industry doesn't "regulate itself" as we've heard so many times, so time for law makers to step up finally.

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

#105

Post by k1rcher »

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/

Ah, XMPP + OTR. Brings back fond memories.

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

#106

Post by lvass »

tao_oat wrote: post #97

> It’s also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is necessarily broken as messages to (and from) WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram pass across the bridge(s). The bridge(s) operates in Element’s trusted EMS environment, with no content scanning or datamining, but currently bridged conversations are not stored end-to-end encrypted in Matrix (they will be in the future). As a Signal user, I kind of don't want this to tak…

I concur. I really wouldn't mind anyone using this for whatsapp as I consider any message I send there is also available to 14-eyes, but bridge usage really should be disclosed to Signal users.

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

#108

Post by GrayShade »

krageon wrote: post #54
GrayShade wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, try it. It's a paid service so you might get some support, or maybe I'm plain unlucky.

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

#109

Post by your_challenger »

josteink wrote: post #57
dtonon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You need WhatsApp to be installed on a real device or a VM for mautrix-whatapp [1] (the bridge) to work. You also need to connect to that real device using WhatsApp web [2].

I know because I've used the bridge.

[1] https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp [2] https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/whatsapp/authentication.html

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

#110

Post by pmlnr »

tao_oat wrote: post #97

> It’s also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is necessarily broken as messages to (and from) WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram pass across the bridge(s). The bridge(s) operates in Element’s trusted EMS environment, with no content scanning or datamining, but currently bridged conversations are not stored end-to-end encrypted in Matrix (they will be in the future). As a Signal user, I kind of don't want this to tak…

I want this to take off. I'm tired of having to follow trends because people suddenly think there's a new shinyshinytrendy thing around: IRC to ICQ to MSN to Skype to Google Talk to Facebook Messenger to Whatsapp to Signal.

Pidgin is good (I also miss the ancient Trillian, even though it was closed source), but limited to a local device.

There are XMPP Transports as well for these (see https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmpp , https://gitlab.com/nicocool84/spectrum2_signald , but sadly https://spectrum.im/ is surprisingly finicky to set up.)

EDIT: for encryption fans, I've been wondering for a long time now: why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Are you not aware of OMEMO for XMPP? (See https://omemo.top/ )

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