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I think you are arguing with a strawman. Signal is as centralized as Telegram and moxie has already stated that he does not care about open or federated systems

I think you are arguing with a strawman. Signal is as centralized as Telegram and moxie has already stated that he does not care about open or federated systems because of the usability trade-off required. My argument is that the inferior usability is not an intrinsic issue of federated systems, just circunstancial. Being closed/centralized on the other hand, is an intrinsic property of all major platforms, and any of these major platforms will screw its users whenever they have enough lock-in. So, I am not saying simply that open is good and closed is bad. What I am saying is that open should be preferred and promoted. And no, people working on open systems should not just sit on their asses and say "you have no other choice, so you will have to take whatever we do". People working on Matrix already have quite a lot of work cut out for them and I am painfully aware of the points were it can improve. The thing is I am also aware of how much improvement has happened already, while there is absolutely zero proprietary platform that opened up itself for public benefit.

wruza 6y ago
>open should be preferred and promoted And I’m saying that preference is a function of many parameters, and you can’t change preferences by just promoting a new parameter to the public. They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. What we think it should or should not be is effectively irrelevant to their minds. To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. This looks like a strawman because it addresses (I believe) a wrong premise.
- rglullis 6y ago
  > you can’t change preferences Who said anything about changing preferences? When I said about converting those close to me, I mean in the sense that I get them to install and use Matrix for communicating with me. If they want to use/prefer close platforms to talk with other people, I am not stopping them/thinking less of them for it. > They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. Yes, it's obvious. If they had prioritized openness and privacy over other bells and whistles they would been using already something like Matrix or XMPP. What I am saying since my very first comment is that I acknowledge that, but I also say that I prefer to use open tools and that I am willing to help them as much as possible to setup an account for them, install the apps and give basic guidance so that we can talk. I am not asking them to drop other applications nor refusing to understand the reasons they have to prefer to use closed platforms. At no point I am challenging their preferences. I am just stating mine and supporting them for the hassle that I know that I am causing. > To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. It's not an exclusive thing. I don't have to change them all of their existing tools in order to get them to talk with me. I hope that one day the open applications will be so much easier to more people will actively look to make the switch, but I am willing to invest time and effort to keep as much as I can from my communications on open platforms and that has already been enough to get a good number of close people to become continued users.

wruza 6y ago

>open should be preferred and promoted And I’m saying that preference is a function of many parameters, and you can’t change preferences by just promoting a new parameter to the public. They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. What we think it should or should not be is effectively irrelevant to their minds. To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. This looks like a strawman because it addresses (I believe) a wrong premise.

rglullis 6y ago
> you can’t change preferences Who said anything about changing preferences? When I said about converting those close to me, I mean in the sense that I get them to install and use Matrix for communicating with me. If they want to use/prefer close platforms to talk with other people, I am not stopping them/thinking less of them for it. > They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. Yes, it's obvious. If they had prioritized openness and privacy over other bells and whistles they would been using already something like Matrix or XMPP. What I am saying since my very first comment is that I acknowledge that, but I also say that I prefer to use open tools and that I am willing to help them as much as possible to setup an account for them, install the apps and give basic guidance so that we can talk. I am not asking them to drop other applications nor refusing to understand the reasons they have to prefer to use closed platforms. At no point I am challenging their preferences. I am just stating mine and supporting them for the hassle that I know that I am causing. > To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. It's not an exclusive thing. I don't have to change them all of their existing tools in order to get them to talk with me. I hope that one day the open applications will be so much easier to more people will actively look to make the switch, but I am willing to invest time and effort to keep as much as I can from my communications on open platforms and that has already been enough to get a good number of close people to become continued users.