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In reality, the most important thing isn't really the protocol, but how to market it. We've had open, standard, (some also federated) IM protocols that were on
by hobarrera 9y ago
In reality, the most important thing isn't really the protocol, but how to market it.
We've had open, standard, (some also federated) IM protocols that were on-par with proprietary ones at the time multiple times in the past.
The problem has always been the same: no mainstream adoption, only nerds use it, they stagnate, and a few years later, they're behind what mainstream proprietary apps use.
What we really really need to work on is how to get the general population to adopt these things rather than Facebook's next IM. And that's the really hard part!
- Tossrock 9y agoThis is part of what makes Signal exciting - great crypto backed by a lot of security folks, yes, but also mindshare and adoption, even among not traditionally security minded users. I've seen a wave of "X is now on Signal!" roll through my contact list in the past year or so.
- detaro 9y agoSadly the trend seems to go backwards with people around me, since many enthusiastically jumped to Signal and now are leaving again to more reliable messengers.
- baby 9y agoCan attest to that, most crypto and security groups I'm in have moved to WhatsApp for group messaging. In any case, people tend to be less concerned about security in group messaging since you tend to trust the group less. One-to-one discussions are still done over Signal for the most part.
- orbifold 9y agoThe signal ios app is really bad though, much worse than telegram's for example.