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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

#201

Post by stjohnswarts »

pmlnr wrote: post #110
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/whatsxmp…

Encryption fan here, bridging is one more avenue for failure, is why I won't buy in. Security is about odds, and nothing is 100% safe. I'm pretty sure signal is way better than anything I could come up with, so I choose it.

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

#202

Post by rkangel »

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…

I've just signed up (after reading this message). My hope is that as a paid service effort will be made to make it reliable (through development, configuration, whatever). Having some users paying for it should hopefully make issues much more visible (through complaints to support if nothing else!).

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

#203

Post by NikolaNovak »

hnarn wrote: post #119

I just have a really hard time understanding who this is targeting. If you're on average more willing to sacrifice privacy over ease of use, you're very likely not using Signal or Matrix anyway. So if you're not, but you're using both WhatsApp and Telegram, how is using two apps a big enough problem to set up a third one? Even if we disregard that, I can honestly say that I don't think using four separate apps is a p…

If I can enhance understanding on any level, FYI FWIW I will sign up for this likely.

1. Yes - In this context I prefer convenience over impractical/unrealized encryption. (Not privacy - I find Whatsapp, which hinges on my personal private phone number, far less "private", than other traditional messenger apps which I can sign up for anonymously; and for my use cases it's not a realized encryption, as people I talk to have no concept of security and I should assume anything I send to them has been scrubbed by malware and any other apps they've intentionally installed and agreed to).

2. Dozen apps are annoying impractical and I darn tooting well do Not have their notifications enabled. I'll agree that Android sharing is awesome; my experience with iPhone sharing has been Far more limited.

3. Whatsapp is darn near impossible to effectively use multi-device. If this will let me chat to my in-laws (who are stuck on Whatsapp not for any privacy or encryption reasons but because "everybody uses it") from comfort of my computers and keyboards, reliably, then this is a shut up & take my money proposition.

3a. Anybody about to comment "But whatsapp works on computers", see my other replies:)

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

#204

Post by rkangel »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #197
rrrrrrrrrrrrr wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is desktop and web clients for WhatsApp by now tho

And they're broken broken broken, and such by design. Current app uses Phone as primary and allows for one other-non-phone-device. If you try to log in on e.g. your tablet and computer, or switch between them often, you'll hit any amount of trouble and will get locked out of account. The current beta has enhancements for multi-device support which may support several non-phone-devices at the same time, even if your p…

Note that the Matrix WhatsApp bridge is fundamentally pretending to be the WhatsApp web client (as I understand it at least). The phone is still the interconnection point and if you turn off your phone no WhatsApp messages would get through to Element. It is improved by being a once off 'pairing' though and you don't need to switch between multiple web clients.

Of course the new 'multi-device' beta might improve the situation but that's not leveraged yet.

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

#205

Post by TeMPOraL »

hellojesus wrote: post #168
capableweb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My point is that the walled garden is the competitive advantage. A law like this could regulate businesses out of existence. Which websites fall under it? Only social? What about forums, etc. What if the companies just rebase to non-US jurisdictions? Even if you make this law, it's unlikely it would actually compel anyone to comply.

> A law like this could regulate businesses out of existence.

Only if they didn't change their business model to something less incredibly antisocial than walling people in and serving them ads.

There are many ways to operate a communications business on-line. That only the bad one is used in practice is a consequence of it being the most profitable of available options. If it weren't available (say, because of being regulated away), companies would pick the next most profitable one.

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

#206

Post by ruined »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #199
zepto wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - the bridge could be compromised without your conversation partner’s involvement. I.e. the bridge is a vulnerability that enables man in the middle attacks.

From your POV, the threat model is equivalent to your partner being compromised themselves, and reporting your conversation to criminals/terrorists/law enforcement/intelligence agencies/boogeyman du jour. Bridges don't install themselves in place of platform's messengers - it's the user that has to make an active choice to use one. If you don't trust your partner making a right choice for both of you, you can't reall…

the threat model is not the same, there is an additional vector. it's not hard to see how a bridging service provides a single point of compromise and is a high value target compared to a million independent endpoints

it is literally a step back towards the centralized unencrypted messenger model

say what you will about the centralized e2e model, but you can't argue that the previous situation was better.

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

#207

Post by rkangel »

maltalex wrote: post #3

I'm happy to see that element found another potential revenue stream, but will people pay the 5$/month to unify their messaging? I don't know about others but it's not that much of a pain point for me, and I'm using all of the apps they mention - WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram as well as few others like IRC and Discord.

> I'm happy to see that element found another potential revenue stream, but will people pay the 5$/month to unify their messaging?

As one data point, I probably would pay $5 a month just for that. Combining that with all the other Matrix goodness is a bonus.

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

#208

Post by TeMPOraL »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #65
upofadown wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more like XMPP transports in that is is centralized at the server. Such things tended to end up centralized as it is a lot of work to keep up with the efforts of the people running the services to remain incompatible with the bridges. These days few XMPP servers bother with transports to commercial IM services. I suspect the same thing will happen in the Matrix case.

Transports work against your platform. Running a WhatsApp transport, you enhance WhatsApp's network effect and dilute your own.

Transports work for you when you're an upstart, because it makes it less risky for users to adopt your platform. They work against you only once you get significant market share.

See e.g. Slack, which propelled itself to success by offering an IRC transport, which prevented strong opposition for technically inclined people, and then promptly killing it when they became a major player in the office IM space.

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

#210

Post by surajrmal »

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.

Meebo was a service that did roughly the same thing as pidgin (leveraging libpurple to do so iirc). It's a shame it was turned down.
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