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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

#371

Post by teekert »

broodbucket wrote: post #350
teekert wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't use it for signal indeed, for whatsapp though... can't wait to throw it of my phone!! I didn't dive into it, but can you also self-host this? Looking forward to some docker-compose snippets in that case :)

Here you go: https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/whatsapp/setup/docker.html Element One uses a modified mautrix-whatsapp, which means that your phone needs to be connected to the internet for the bridge to work - so you can't quite throw it off your phone. I don't have to regularly open the app or anything, though.

Hmm, ok, but I could keep it on a spare, empty, old phone at home then perhaps. Still, would have been nice to get rid of it entirely, but I see how that is impossible indeed.

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

#372

Post by josteink »

lvass wrote: post #99
josteink wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which bridge is it? Mautrix/whatsapp does require an Android instance of whatsapp.

Nah. You can pair it up to an real WhatsApp-account using your phone and from there on, it’s go-code only.

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

#373

Post by hansel_der »

zepto wrote: post #365
tshaddox wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conversation partner's device could also be compromised remotely.

Yes, but that’s in no way comparable to a centralized server where potentially millions of conversations can be compromised at the same time.

like google and apples notification systems? or the state of whatsapp backups encryption?

whataboutism for sure but i uphold the view that the expectation of privacy from smartphone based internet chat should be very low for tech-literate people.

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

#374

Post by gorgoiler »

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/

Pidgin? Pffff! That’s some casual stuff right there.

Real Scotsmen used bitlbee and irssi to enable their IRC addiction, long after everyone else had moved on to harder stuff.

:)

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

#375

Post by gorgoiler »

iOS notifications unifies all my chat apps pretty nicely already, but I would still be really interested in running this on my own host, to keep a live archive of all my chats.

The thing I don’t have centralized is search, and too often some critical piece of information — which in the past would have been sent and later found by email — is buried in an IM from two years ago. If Element One’s search tools are up to scratch that could be killer. Support for Instagram DMs would be a must too.

Dare I say it, support for email too? I’ve often wondered what that would look like, especially with buffering so that I can send a few messages and have them batched into one email. Most emails these days begin with one round of “Dear X, … All the best Y” but quickly become one liners, trying to get something done.

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

#376

Post by TeMPOraL »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #354
TeMPOraL wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps if we normalized messenger interoperabiltiy, there would be less churn in "all-in-one" clients. That churn exists mostly because platforms actively fight their users on this. And still, periodically changing an all-in-one messenger is still better than keeping and changing half a dozen messengers.

Unless those official clients have features not available in the all-in-one client. Like encryption, which this one apparently lacks.

The benefit of an all-in-one client is that they can port/shim/polyfill[0] missing features between the backing platforms.

--

[0] - Whatever is the most appropriate webdev word of the day.

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

#377

Post by axelthegerman »

JasonFruit wrote: post #291
jeltz wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then these bridges are fine. Virtually everything is better than raw SMS.

But Signal is better than Signal over these bridges, and it's easy too. Just because you don't want to run your own service doesn't mean you have to choose a poor option over a pretty good one.

But not everyone I talk to is on Signal. And I don't want to remember which app to open to message a certain person.

What's the difference between Element offering these bridges, people deploying their own bridges or others having 3rd party clients that you can't trust with your E2E encryption?

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

#378

Post by axelthegerman »

tiagod wrote: post #140
IceWreck wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How can I verify you're running unmodified, unhooked source in your server if I'm a user?

How can you verify what the latest update of Google Play Services is doing on your Android that's running a proprietary WhatsApp client just so you feel happy you have "E2E" encryption?

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

#379

Post by axelthegerman »

tremon wrote: post #136
arianvanp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the bridge is not hosted by me but by them. I need to trust matrix not to MITM me

Yes, in the same way that you need to trust Whatsapp not to MITM you. What's your perceived difference between these trust levels, other than one is something you pay for with money, and the other doesn't require money?

THIS "in the same way that you need to trust Whatsapp not to MITM"

And on top of that Google or Apple or whoever you "trust" with your mobile operating system of choice.

Speaking of mobile OS, Element will likely run fine on mobile Linux whereas you can be sure Whatsapp will never release a Linux client

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