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Decentralize Messaging

rodarmor.com

21–30 of 103 posts

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#21
Completely agree. For anyone who hasn’t come across it, check out the exciting work being done by developers of the Secure Scuttlebutt protocol:

“Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a peer-to peer communication protocol, mesh network, and self-hosted social media ecosystem. Each user hosts their own content and the content of the peers they follow, which provides fault tolerance and eventual consistency.[5] Messages are digitally signed and added to an append-only list of messages published by an author.[6] SSB is primarily used for implementing distributed social networks, and utilizes cryptography to assure that content remains unforged as it is propagated through the network.”

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt

Join us! There is a fully functioning client, and bustling Solarpunk community: http://scuttlebutt.nz

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#22
post #5

I don't know why everyone hates XMPP. There are multiple solid open source server and client applications for just about every platform. It is decentralized and works well but without google, apple, and facebook making it practical for grandma to use, it doesn't catch on. Well the big players have no incentive to cede control to decentralization.

I moved to xmpp only for instant messaging over a year ago. At first it was met with great resistance by my contacts, but by now my family and almost every relevant friend installed conversations on their smartphone. I helped with the setup and provide them with access to my personal server. The growing public knowledge about privacy violations of the big services has made it very easy for others to grasp the reasoni…

Yes, Synapse is resource hungry - but it also does a lot more than a typical XMPP server. Meanwhile, we're finally making progress with small footprint homeservers for Matrix. shrug

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#24
post #20

Make using standardized and simply enough protocols, such as IRC, Message Send Protocol, NNTP, Zephyr, etc

Like gtalk using XMPP?

XMPP uses XML. IRC is simpler and can be used without any specialized software, and was designed like that, so that you can use without specialized software (I have used IRC on computers before installing a IRC client)

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#26
post #5

I don't know why everyone hates XMPP. There are multiple solid open source server and client applications for just about every platform. It is decentralized and works well but without google, apple, and facebook making it practical for grandma to use, it doesn't catch on. Well the big players have no incentive to cede control to decentralization.

I moved to xmpp only for instant messaging over a year ago. At first it was met with great resistance by my contacts, but by now my family and almost every relevant friend installed conversations on their smartphone. I helped with the setup and provide them with access to my personal server. The growing public knowledge about privacy violations of the big services has made it very easy for others to grasp the reasoni…

From a privacy point of view, I would be more comfortable with google reading my messages than one of my buddies. Is your xmpp e2e?

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#27
post #11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issues mostly stem from: 1) not knowing what is supported on the server, or the other users server. 2) not handling mobile clients well (heavy battery use, weird deliverability issues.)

1 can be queried. 2 is BS with capital letters. See Converations and it's forks.

Could you please expand on push notifications? So far I've only found https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html and it does not look great.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 is not BS, but not for the given reasons (heavy battery use/weird deliverability issues). 'Not handling mobile clients well' is true. Did you ever wonder why there are no (to date) XMPP clients on iOS that are not complete and utter shit? As a person who has first-hand knowledge of the matter, managing a team member tasked with the development of an iOS XMPP app (which is supposed to be NOT complete and utter shit)…

Perhaps Apple deserves some of the blame here? Is the protocol just too chatty?

My understanding is it's because XMPP expects the client to be able to maintain a connection to the server, which is typically not possible on iOS. Apps on iOS are generally not permitted to run in the background, with a few limited exceptions.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#29
It feels like we are saturated by messengers and social networks. Twitter, fb, slack, discord, matrix, signal, whatsapp, wechat, telegram... I am not sure what decentralization could bring there.
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