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My biggest problem with messaging applications as a whole is that I need so many of them. I have a few contacts who are reachable with Signal, a few more who a

My biggest problem with messaging applications as a whole is that I need so many of them. I have a few contacts who are reachable with Signal, a few more who are reachable on Hangouts or whatever Google is calling its latest thing, and a few more who are reachable with Skype. That's three programs, to communicate with three different subsets of people. I'm sure if I used Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp, I'd have two more subsets of people who are only reachable through those. XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out in the early 2000s. But then all the big tech companies who build "ecosystems" decided to push their own applications, all incompatible with one another. So here we are again with this proliferation of programs that really only do one thing: communication. It's like the 90s / early 2000s with the proliferation of instant messengers: ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and on and on and on. The players are different, but the game is still the same. I suspect that twenty years from now, when the players have all changed yet again, there will still be one reliable method of reaching me: IRC. If the Googles and Whatsapps and Facebooks of the world had been around in the early 90s, you'd have one email client from Facebook for mailing Joe and Fred, an email client from Google for mailing Mary and Jane, and an email client from Whatsapp for mailing Alice and Bob. Thankfully, email became entrenched before that could happen. I want messaging to be like email, where I use one and exactly one program to communicate with all of my contacts, regardless of what server they use. People say that federation is more complicated than centralization. I'm sure that's true for developers, but in fact, federation can be vastly simplifying for an end user. I'm a fundamentally lazy person. Having to learn all these different messaging tools is frankly a waste of my time. All I want is a federated protocol and an open system, be it Matrix, XMPP, or something else. As a final aside, you know what else that bugs me? The word "ecosystem". I worked for a big tech company for a while, and the only people I ever heard use that word were people out to build a walled garden.

progval 7y ago
> XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out That's also what Matrix said it would solve when it started. Except now it's yet another protocol with its own chatrooms that are not reachable from any other protocol by default (even rooms on matrix.org); and bridges are at best in "beta" (except the Telegram bridge, which is "late beta"): https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/
- Leer10 7y ago
  In practice those bridges function very well. It's common to find channels in the Matrix ecosystem that have IRC and Discord users that aren't even aware that there's Matrix participants.
  - progval 7y ago
    The IRC bridge between matrix.org and freenode disconnects almost every week, showing sometimes hundreds of clients disconnecting, then reconnecting a few hours later. I didn't check it personally, but I heard they (understandably) have issues enforcing bans: if one of their users is banned but another one is in the channel, the banned user can still read messages.
    - zaarn 7y ago
      Matrix is general lacks support for community tools to handle stuff like that (unless you're running a channel with loose rules that doesn't get raided by 4chan on a weekly basis).
      - progval 7y ago
        Yes and it's perfectly acceptable for a Beta service. It's just too bad they don't have a single bridge that's of release quality yet, while it was their main promise.
        zaarn 7y ago
        I don't believe this is really fixable, on various occasions when I ask for the community tools I need, I get blown off and told that such features won't be implemented in Matrix or will depend on client support (which is unacceptable).
        Arathorn 7y ago
        better late than never: i don’t know what community moderation tools you’re talking about here. we certainly haven’t closed the door on any moderation features in Matrix, and certainly wouldn’t make them client specific. my guess is you are conflating random feedback from randoms in matrix rooms with input from the actual matrix core team. https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation/ https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation/ is the official moderation guide, which is evolving fairly constantly, and we have a tonne of work on communities & moderation coming up in Feb/Mar.
stiray 7y ago
And those are the reasons I use phone calls, sms and email. It is more than enough to keep contacts and to arange where you will meet in-person. For distant relations I prefer email, I always loved a well formed letter where sender has actually put some thought into it. Yeah, I dont have 999 friends but those 10 good friends is all I need. And they DO call, sms, email me. For everyone else I dont care.
- balladeer 7y ago
  Personal emails also help with the urge to reply "right then" and there are no single, double, blue, grey ticks.
nirui 7y ago
I guess most of the people that you mentioned can be reached through Email? Email is a very good system, completely decentralized and yet still agile. It is sad that the protocol (SMTP, POP and IMAP etc) is stopped advancing into today's world. If somebody from IETF is watching, maybe consider renewing the email protocol standards to make it more modern (like what you guys did in HTTP/2: Binary protocol, multiplex, better security etc)?
Vinnl 7y ago
> I want messaging to be like email I'm not sure if I want that. Most of my communication over email can be read by Google, regardless of myself using Google. Moreover, there's the risk of things like AMP for email unilaterally changing the protocol in ways that as a user I might not like, but that I can't really influence through my choice of client. I don't believe matrix.org will become such a thing, but if Matrix becomes as successful as email, I fear it's practically inevitable for a Google, Facebook or whatever to arise and become the dominant player, whereas that is practically impossible with, say, Signal. I do see the value of the world that's made possible by technologies like Matrix, but I'm not so sure if they're possible with social processes evolving the way they do. I feel like Signal may be the best we can get. (Though I'm certainly happy that Matrix is trying to prove that wrong.)
kitd 7y ago
A 'chat' client in the style of eg WhatsApp, but based on S/MIME over SMTP/IMAP, seems perfectly doable, and appropriate for most people's needs, with the obvious advantage of being supported by traditional email clients as a fallback. Additionally, message threading is the feature I most appreciate in a messaging system, but which is painfully lacking in most products (and no, Slack doesn't cut it). SMTP has built-in support for it.
- jddj 7y ago
  There's an open source (GPL) client app (last updated last week) on F-Droid called Dib2Qm for exactly this, and it's apparently e2e as well. I haven't used it, I just happened across it yesterday out of sheer coincidence. Link: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.sourceforge.dibdib.android.dib2qm/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.sourceforge.dibdib.andro...
  - lazylizard 7y ago
    This too https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
    - kitd 7y ago
      Hmm, interesting. I might have a play.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  I'm old enough to remember when this was exactly how email was used. (but using a normal email client). It was acceptable to send one-word email replies, and there were email chains of hundreds of emails (I was the guy who tended to "snip" them after 20 or replies). Now email seems to have taken over from where snail mail was: bills, newsletters, and formal communication. Chat is now the norm. Though I do notice a generational divide: one of my co-founders is in his 60's, and will phone randomly (which is now considered rude), another is a bit younger and prefers email to messaging, but will message to ask if it's OK to call. My younger colleagues send formal email replies, and use Whatsapp/Keybase for all other communication. I vetoed using Slack in the organisation completely ;) I wonder if in another 30 years, chat apps will be the formal channel, and something else will have taken over for just chatting.
brnt 7y ago
I was using multi-protocol clients such as Trillian/Miranda/Pidgin for most of the 00's. It did not matter much what client/protocol somebody was using, in all likelyhood it was supported by such multi-protocol clients. At some point, reverse engineering/implementing protocols must have lost the interest of that part of the community.
Pete_D 7y ago
> XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out in the early 2000s. The really frustrating thing is that it almost did. I swear I remember at some point in the mid-2000s being able to send a message from Google Chat to Facebook. I think the option was hidden behind some account flags to enable external messages, but it was there.
m-p-3 7y ago
> XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out in the early 2000s. But then all the big tech companies who build "ecosystems" decided to push their own applications, all incompatible with one another. Facebook Messenger and Google Talk actually used XMPP back then, I'm sad it's no longer the case.

progval 7y ago

> XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out That's also what Matrix said it would solve when it started. Except now it's yet another protocol with its own chatrooms that are not reachable from any other protocol by default (even rooms on matrix.org); and bridges are at best in "beta" (except the Telegram bridge, which is "late beta"): https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/

Leer10 7y ago
In practice those bridges function very well. It's common to find channels in the Matrix ecosystem that have IRC and Discord users that aren't even aware that there's Matrix participants.
- progval 7y ago
  The IRC bridge between matrix.org and freenode disconnects almost every week, showing sometimes hundreds of clients disconnecting, then reconnecting a few hours later. I didn't check it personally, but I heard they (understandably) have issues enforcing bans: if one of their users is banned but another one is in the channel, the banned user can still read messages.
  - zaarn 7y ago
    Matrix is general lacks support for community tools to handle stuff like that (unless you're running a channel with loose rules that doesn't get raided by 4chan on a weekly basis).
    - progval 7y ago
      Yes and it's perfectly acceptable for a Beta service. It's just too bad they don't have a single bridge that's of release quality yet, while it was their main promise.
      - zaarn 7y ago
        I don't believe this is really fixable, on various occasions when I ask for the community tools I need, I get blown off and told that such features won't be implemented in Matrix or will depend on client support (which is unacceptable).
        Arathorn 7y ago
        better late than never: i don’t know what community moderation tools you’re talking about here. we certainly haven’t closed the door on any moderation features in Matrix, and certainly wouldn’t make them client specific. my guess is you are conflating random feedback from randoms in matrix rooms with input from the actual matrix core team. https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation/ https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation/ is the official moderation guide, which is evolving fairly constantly, and we have a tonne of work on communities & moderation coming up in Feb/Mar.

stiray 7y ago

And those are the reasons I use phone calls, sms and email. It is more than enough to keep contacts and to arange where you will meet in-person. For distant relations I prefer email, I always loved a well formed letter where sender has actually put some thought into it. Yeah, I dont have 999 friends but those 10 good friends is all I need. And they DO call, sms, email me. For everyone else I dont care.

balladeer 7y ago
Personal emails also help with the urge to reply "right then" and there are no single, double, blue, grey ticks.

nirui 7y ago

I guess most of the people that you mentioned can be reached through Email? Email is a very good system, completely decentralized and yet still agile. It is sad that the protocol (SMTP, POP and IMAP etc) is stopped advancing into today's world. If somebody from IETF is watching, maybe consider renewing the email protocol standards to make it more modern (like what you guys did in HTTP/2: Binary protocol, multiplex, better security etc)?

Vinnl 7y ago

> I want messaging to be like email I'm not sure if I want that. Most of my communication over email can be read by Google, regardless of myself using Google. Moreover, there's the risk of things like AMP for email unilaterally changing the protocol in ways that as a user I might not like, but that I can't really influence through my choice of client. I don't believe matrix.org will become such a thing, but if Matrix becomes as successful as email, I fear it's practically inevitable for a Google, Facebook or whatever to arise and become the dominant player, whereas that is practically impossible with, say, Signal. I do see the value of the world that's made possible by technologies like Matrix, but I'm not so sure if they're possible with social processes evolving the way they do. I feel like Signal may be the best we can get. (Though I'm certainly happy that Matrix is trying to prove that wrong.)

kitd 7y ago

A 'chat' client in the style of eg WhatsApp, but based on S/MIME over SMTP/IMAP, seems perfectly doable, and appropriate for most people's needs, with the obvious advantage of being supported by traditional email clients as a fallback. Additionally, message threading is the feature I most appreciate in a messaging system, but which is painfully lacking in most products (and no, Slack doesn't cut it). SMTP has built-in support for it.

jddj 7y ago
There's an open source (GPL) client app (last updated last week) on F-Droid called Dib2Qm for exactly this, and it's apparently e2e as well. I haven't used it, I just happened across it yesterday out of sheer coincidence. Link: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.sourceforge.dibdib.android.dib2qm/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.sourceforge.dibdib.andro...
- lazylizard 7y ago
  This too https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
  - kitd 7y ago
    Hmm, interesting. I might have a play.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
I'm old enough to remember when this was exactly how email was used. (but using a normal email client). It was acceptable to send one-word email replies, and there were email chains of hundreds of emails (I was the guy who tended to "snip" them after 20 or replies). Now email seems to have taken over from where snail mail was: bills, newsletters, and formal communication. Chat is now the norm. Though I do notice a generational divide: one of my co-founders is in his 60's, and will phone randomly (which is now considered rude), another is a bit younger and prefers email to messaging, but will message to ask if it's OK to call. My younger colleagues send formal email replies, and use Whatsapp/Keybase for all other communication. I vetoed using Slack in the organisation completely ;) I wonder if in another 30 years, chat apps will be the formal channel, and something else will have taken over for just chatting.

brnt 7y ago

I was using multi-protocol clients such as Trillian/Miranda/Pidgin for most of the 00's. It did not matter much what client/protocol somebody was using, in all likelyhood it was supported by such multi-protocol clients. At some point, reverse engineering/implementing protocols must have lost the interest of that part of the community.

Pete_D 7y ago

> XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out in the early 2000s. The really frustrating thing is that it almost did. I swear I remember at some point in the mid-2000s being able to send a message from Google Chat to Facebook. I think the option was hidden behind some account flags to enable external messages, but it was there.

m-p-3 7y ago

> XMPP was supposed to solve all those problems when it came out in the early 2000s. But then all the big tech companies who build "ecosystems" decided to push their own applications, all incompatible with one another. Facebook Messenger and Google Talk actually used XMPP back then, I'm sad it's no longer the case.