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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

#381

Post by topdancing »

tigroferoce wrote: post #317
mdavis6890 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also want utmost security for my money, which is why I put it in a bank rather than holding the cash myself.

And you want utmost security for your body, which is why you go to the doctor instead of self threat. And also doctors go to other doctors when they are ill. The sad reality is that things are complex and you probably get suboptimal results trying to do everything yourself, what other spend their lives trying to accomplish the same. WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers, but there were 50 people working…

If you've ever used Docker or deployed an nginx server - then you can very easily deploy a chat server. Pretty much the same thing but over a different protocol.

Server getting compromised - that's largely unimportant with end-to-end encryption through OMEMO. Distros also apply security patches (just keep things up to date).

You do not require 50 engineers to run a chat server for Here's a guide on how to install everything needed onto a raspberry pi: https://samhobbs.co.uk/2016/09/installing-prosody-instant-me...

As with anything else, it's a fun learning experience and something new to try.

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

#382

Post by KoftaBob »

scrollaway wrote: post #75
Steltek wrote: post #60

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…

Beeper implements Google Chat. I've been using it, it works really well. https://www.beeper.com/

Beeper's waitlist is probably the longest one I've ever had to wait on for a beta service. Still waiting, over a year later.

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

#383

Post by KoftaBob »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #71
arianvanp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. What does my hard drive have to do with plaintext messages on Element's servers?

Aj, my bad. I skimmed over the part where it says they are hosting the bridge for you. Since matrix is focused on privacy etc I assumed this is available as a container/VM I can run at home or on a VPS. Indeed then very weird why I should trust them more with my personal data than anybody else.

> Since matrix is focused on privacy etc I assumed this is available as a container/VM I can run at home or on a VPS.

It is! https://matrix.org/bridges/

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

#384

Post by krageon »

GrayShade wrote: post #108
krageon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I cannot use this service in good conscience because it touches the US, the fact that they were willing to launch a paid service made me wonder about the viability of the components.

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

#385

Post by fsflover »

xanaxagoras wrote: post #358
Steltek wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you self-host Matrix, you can still bridge to Signal while avoiding the walled garden trap and having complete control of your data? If you don't want to self-host, then you must be comfortable extending trust to someone. SaaS Matrix and Signal seem to be two sides of the same coin, in that case.

Except my messages are E2EE and signal can't read them. This bridge breaks that encryption before it's reached the intended recipient, which if that recipient is me, I very much don't appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001070

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

#387

Post by pi7h3n »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #229
pi7h3n wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how can they kill it?

They have so much money and influence, I trust them to find a way :)

With enough motivation, competitors can reverse their efforts. Reversing (competitors' job) is finding just only one flaw in a system. Hardening (WhatsApp's job) is thinking about all the possible ways it could be flawed. It can be an endless cat and mouse game though I guess.

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

#388

Post by pi7h3n »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #121
pi7h3n wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who's them?

> messaging platforms No need to pretend that what the previous comment was saying is some kind of conspiracy when it's obvious that business gonna business.

oof

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

#389

Post by skinnymuch »

idrios wrote: post #266
freeopinion wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If privacy mattered that much to you, you wouldn't depend on Signal to encrypt your messages. You would encrypt them before handing them to Signal. So you should have an encrypted message that you hand to Signal. Signal encrypts it again and hands it to the bridge. Eventually, whether at the bridge or at the other end or wherever, something decrypts the Signal message. Then the person you are communicating with appli…

This is a very all or nothing mentality. It's also kind of like saying you should put locks on your locks. Signal's core reason for existing is that it puts a focus on privacy. They say this all over their homepage [0]. One of the founders of WhatsApp donated $50M to Signal [1] out of regret for how WhatsApp shifted away from privacy after being acquired by Facebook. The entire project is freely visible to anyone on…

“Regret”. You don’t sell an app that barely makes money for $19B actually believing its most valuable asset won’t be used. Not like he isn’t currently keeping most of the billions he made from such “blood money” too.

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

#390

Post by skinnymuch »

cookiengineer wrote: post #63
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 thought about all that libpurple did back then, including OTR encryption that worked perfectly fine with others. These days I think that most services try to make money with stuff that was built decades ago already, and they're just keeping the reinventing cycle spinning. Anyone remember the franz app [1] ...which finally led to the hardfork of ferdi? [2] I feel that element one is franz all over again. [1] https:/…

Franz was mainly just web views, no? Ferdi appears to be the same. This is different.
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