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Decentralize Messaging

rodarmor.com

51–60 of 103 posts

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#51
I'm working on a sort of ancillary project which may help with this at Valyrio [https://valyr.io]

Counter-intuitively, the current goal is to centralize the messaging interface, providing a common platform for users who are willing to pay for a consolidated system that saves time and confusion, and to reduce the waste of niche use cases (e.g. having the entire [name here] messaging app on your phone because one weird family member or friend insists on using it)

Bringing email, text, and (aspirationally) all other messaging systems into one.

In doing this, we cannot possibly hope to uniquely integrate each of the countless hundreds of services with their weird quirks and formats, so I aim to establish a standardized language for async messages equipped with the basic common features and extensions for prevalent (but not universal) features like read receipts, "liking/reacting" to messages, etc

It would be really cool to open up that standard to the world if we do a good job of designing it, or collaborate with anyone else who wants to participate in this goal. Our core service will be a niche, paid, closed system, but the underlying language I would like to be open source and interoperable with whatever else turns out to develop (Twitter's new endeavor and Matrix are the two efforts I am most aware of)

After all, Valyrio means Language

I've also been working on an adjacent concept with [https://jwmza.com/polymath], which is a new comprehensive markup language meant to define long-term compatible, human readable documents and websites/document structures which intermix existing standards like (La)TeX, HTML, CSS, Markdown etc.

Perhaps the underlying language and concepts here will mix with the effort to decentralize messaging as well, as messaging is fundamentally the asynchronous bidirectional transfer of documents of mostly text and sometimes other media or information.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. It is. https://omemo.top/

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#53
I miss the days when one chat app could easily connect to multiple protocols. I didn’t care if my friends had AIM or Yahoo or ICQ or whatever, they all showed up as a tab in Adium’s window and a name on its floating buddy list.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#54
I talked to Twitter's CTO, Parag.

He said the move is to specifically reduce fragmentation in public conversation.

I'm in the decentralized (dWeb) community (we have 10M+ users monthly, in-production, running thru GUN) and admittedly, I think we all get distracted with the war cry of privacy, p2p-for-sake-of-p2p, etc. but is not many other people's end goals.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#55
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the PoW energy costs of things like this would be negligible compared to that for cryptocurrencies, but I haven’t justified my guess.

You’re correct. Besides, proof of work in Aether is user adjustable, everyone can choose their own threshold. No need to turn it up unless you see spam. As you turn it up it becomes harder for other computers to pass your filters, which will cut down on spam (or anyone who’s trying to create too many posts for any reason).

I presume it should also be possible to reduce the threshold for my contacts/friends... so that strangers emailing me for the first time need proofs, but frequent contacts don’t.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#56
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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)…

Ah. You were thinking ios as mobile. ios is not the only mobile. Xmpp is fine on android.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#57
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re correct. Besides, proof of work in Aether is user adjustable, everyone can choose their own threshold. No need to turn it up unless you see spam. As you turn it up it becomes harder for other computers to pass your filters, which will cut down on spam (or anyone who’s trying to create too many posts for any reason).

I presume it should also be possible to reduce the threshold for my contacts/friends... so that strangers emailing me for the first time need proofs, but frequent contacts don’t.

That is a great idea, but that’s not in there yet. I took note of it.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#58
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the PoW energy costs of things like this would be negligible compared to that for cryptocurrencies, but I haven’t justified my guess.

You’re correct. Besides, proof of work in Aether is user adjustable, everyone can choose their own threshold. No need to turn it up unless you see spam. As you turn it up it becomes harder for other computers to pass your filters, which will cut down on spam (or anyone who’s trying to create too many posts for any reason).

While reading this, an idea popped up in my head about monetization. Sending a message needs spending a PoW token that can be mined or bought. The price is set by the recipient and can be different for different senders. Zero for friends, a high number for potential spammers. The author, however, has a private key that can produce PoW tokens cheaply, but still in a limited amount to retain trust and prevent diluting everyone's share to nothing. Some companies may want to send spam and will be happy to buy PoW tokens. Users that suddenly start getting spam, raise the bar, as it costs them nothing. Those companies now need more tokens and they come to you. This is inflation. As long as SEC understands what's going on, it shouldn't have problems with this sandbox economics.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#59

Protocols and privacy and chat features are all great, but let's not lose sight of the two absolutely killer essential features of every successful chat app / system: (1) The address book. (2) The easiest possible signup and setup. More generally for #1, whatever method(s) you use to find people's contact information and connect with them. Without that, you could have created the perfect chat experience in every way,…

1 - this is a good point, but I'd like to expand on it - it does not have to be address book.

I have helped thousands of people exchange contact info after meeting in various niche chat rooms first, but you can flip that and have your irl friends meet you in decn-chat dot org click the 808game room, we can meet in there and pm/dm a code word or something and make each other contacts in various ways.

Your point is something to keep in mind though, ultimately I think we also need apps that can display a qr code like a one time pad to give someone contact details or any chat rooms to meetup in, Other methods of exchanging info about contact and chat room / chat app options should be added to whatever is going to be really good.

2 - I really agree with this, I spent some money and time on rocketchat development to give an optional 'open lobby' to anyone who enters, just pick a name and you are in.. then if you want extra abilities you can add an email or verify or whatever.

easy to get in is important indeed.

Re: Decentralize Messaging

#60

I miss the days when one chat app could easily connect to multiple protocols. I didn’t care if my friends had AIM or Yahoo or ICQ or whatever, they all showed up as a tab in Adium’s window and a name on its floating buddy list.

I’ve been using Franz for a while for this purpose. While it’s not exactly the same (it launches a process per application), it is very convenient to have all of them in a single place.

https://meetfranz.com/

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