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The fact that Delta Chat is catching on is a sad reflection on the state of the IM tools and protocols. Compare to most IM systems Delta Chat is: - easier to

The fact that Delta Chat is catching on is a sad reflection on the state of the IM tools and protocols. Compare to most IM systems Delta Chat is: - easier to set up: you already have an email - equally private: most IM systems leak metadata anyways. A global observer can infer your peers. - compared to Signal, it does not snoop your phone number - decentralized - cheaper to run 1: managing mailservers is cheaper than managing both mailservers and IM servers - cheaper to run 2: mailservers evolved for decades and are now pretty efficient, especially compared to most IM servers

dheera 6y ago
I got banned by WeChat last week for a while for using "unauthorized plugins". They seem to also be adamant about not allowing people to run WeChat on virtual machines. Seriously, WTF? It's none of your business what device I use and whether it's virtual or not. I got a cease-and-desist from Facebook many years ago for trying to write a Perl interface to their messenger. I own and control my devices, damnit. I hate these walled garden messaging apps that seem to actively thwart innovation. All I want is a protocol (which I'm even happy to pay for!) and I will decide how messages present themselves on my end. Many years ago I used Pidgin to interface to MSN, ICQ, AIM, QQ, Gtalk, Yahoo, Zephyr, and a couple others. It was great -- I had E2E encryption (sorry Pichai and Whatsapp I had E2E encryption on ALL of my messengers before you all decided to wall-garden your apps and then do some stupid PR stunt about E2E encryption years later), automatic human language translation, automatic LaTeX rendering, and a bunch of other features, all of which I don't have now because the messenger apps everyone uses now are anti-innovation. We've taken a huge step backward.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  I got a discord account banned recently, and they wouldn't tell me why. My guess is that it has to do with my using a weechat bridge rather than their garbage client. I have to do the same for slack and for signal (which, by the way, is terrible even with signald), because they too have garbage clients. I have a much better experience when just using plain IRC.
  - spicybright 6y ago
    I'm actually a big fan of discord's interface (both windows/mac desktop + android for mobile). What gripes do you have specifically?
    - da_big_ghey 6y ago
      It's slow to start, constantly downloads a bazillion updates. Information-wise, it's not very dense. It's hard to customize; doing so requires a bunch of hacky stuff: https://github.com/AryToNeX/Glasscord/wiki/Installation https://github.com/AryToNeX/Glasscord/wiki/Installation Using a third-party client is a bannable offense under the terms of service. I hate the little "emoticon" icons that are all over the place. It set itself to auto-start on boot (this behavior may be different on win/mac). I don't like trusting it with my messages. It tries to show what applications users are running at the moment. There have been some improvements, but I still don't trust the security of electron. These are some of the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Generally, it always seemed like it was both trying to baby me and seem "cool". It's many of the things I hate in modern software in one application. It's a chat app, which should shut up and show me messages, not try to double as a social network. It's also a voice conferencing app, which should shut up and transmit/receive audio, not try to double as a social network. I know a lot of other people who seem to like it as well; good for y'all. All of this would be much less offensive if it hadn't banned me for opting out of its webshit.
    - dheera 6y ago
      > What gripes do you have specifically? I'm going to assume you ask this question because you're honestly curious about GP's discontent with Discord's interface, so this is NOT directed at you, but ... One of the things I've often noticed is that people like to shame me for being discontent with e.g. WeChat's interface or Facebook's interface. "What's wrong with it? I think it's great! [... and you're weird]" and that mentality of casting away hacker types who want to invent their own UIs is extremely toxic to creativity and innovation, but it's a pattern I've seen happen very frequently with all of these walled-garden apps. (Again this is not directed at you)
- pabs3 6y ago
  Pidgin still exists and there are plugins for lots of the modern messaging systems. Please note that OTR is no longer considered safe crypto-wise, there is an unfinished OTRv4 that fixes that. http://bugs.otr.im/otrv4/otrv4 http://bugs.otr.im/otrv4/otrv4
  - upofadown 6y ago
    >Please note that OTR is no longer considered safe crypto-wise... I could not see any discussion of the deficiencies of OTR in the titles of the OTRv4 sections. Could someone direct me to a reference? This is the first I have heard of this. I thought OTRv4 was all about usability.
codethief 6y ago
> - compared to Signal, it does not snoop your phone number Great, leaking the user's email address which, more often than not, contains their real name is so much better. /s Seriously, though, I don't think this comparison accurately reflects the differences between Delta Chat and Signal: Signal uses your phone number for account lookup but not for addressing participants. Moreover, it uses a feature called Sealed Sender[0] to conceal even the cryptographic address of a message's author. In contrast, Delta Chat leaks the email addresses of the people participating in a [group] conversation[1] (and, thus, their social network) not just to one provider (as in the case of Signal) but to all email providers involved in hosting the conversation, meaning that, as a user, you have to trust not just a single but multiple entities. Meanwhile, Signal doesn't even know how many people there are in a group conversation. [0]: https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ [1]: https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-metadata https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-me...
- MrGilbert 6y ago
  > Great, leaking the user's email address which, more often than not, contains their real name is so much better. /s So, how good is your spam filter for SMS/calls? /s Personally, I rather give my mailaddress than my phone number. I can set up a new address rather quick. I cannot switch my phone number that effortless.
  - lxgr 6y ago
    Maybe worth noting that spam calls/SMS are primarily a problem in the US. In the European countries that I've had phone numbers in, these basically don't exist, and my phone number has been part of several data breaches. (That said, I am curious if this is a problem occurring in almost all or almost no other countries!) As far as I understand, these problems are also in the process of being fixed in the US via caller ID authentication (to enable carrier-level filtering), which seems like the right approach: In the long term, it's more or less futile to keep a phone number out of data breaches or advertiser databases.
    - 6y ago

dheera 6y ago

I got banned by WeChat last week for a while for using "unauthorized plugins". They seem to also be adamant about not allowing people to run WeChat on virtual machines. Seriously, WTF? It's none of your business what device I use and whether it's virtual or not. I got a cease-and-desist from Facebook many years ago for trying to write a Perl interface to their messenger. I own and control my devices, damnit. I hate these walled garden messaging apps that seem to actively thwart innovation. All I want is a protocol (which I'm even happy to pay for!) and I will decide how messages present themselves on my end. Many years ago I used Pidgin to interface to MSN, ICQ, AIM, QQ, Gtalk, Yahoo, Zephyr, and a couple others. It was great -- I had E2E encryption (sorry Pichai and Whatsapp I had E2E encryption on ALL of my messengers before you all decided to wall-garden your apps and then do some stupid PR stunt about E2E encryption years later), automatic human language translation, automatic LaTeX rendering, and a bunch of other features, all of which I don't have now because the messenger apps everyone uses now are anti-innovation. We've taken a huge step backward.

da_big_ghey 6y ago
I got a discord account banned recently, and they wouldn't tell me why. My guess is that it has to do with my using a weechat bridge rather than their garbage client. I have to do the same for slack and for signal (which, by the way, is terrible even with signald), because they too have garbage clients. I have a much better experience when just using plain IRC.
- spicybright 6y ago
  I'm actually a big fan of discord's interface (both windows/mac desktop + android for mobile). What gripes do you have specifically?
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    It's slow to start, constantly downloads a bazillion updates. Information-wise, it's not very dense. It's hard to customize; doing so requires a bunch of hacky stuff: https://github.com/AryToNeX/Glasscord/wiki/Installation https://github.com/AryToNeX/Glasscord/wiki/Installation Using a third-party client is a bannable offense under the terms of service. I hate the little "emoticon" icons that are all over the place. It set itself to auto-start on boot (this behavior may be different on win/mac). I don't like trusting it with my messages. It tries to show what applications users are running at the moment. There have been some improvements, but I still don't trust the security of electron. These are some of the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Generally, it always seemed like it was both trying to baby me and seem "cool". It's many of the things I hate in modern software in one application. It's a chat app, which should shut up and show me messages, not try to double as a social network. It's also a voice conferencing app, which should shut up and transmit/receive audio, not try to double as a social network. I know a lot of other people who seem to like it as well; good for y'all. All of this would be much less offensive if it hadn't banned me for opting out of its webshit.
  - dheera 6y ago
    > What gripes do you have specifically? I'm going to assume you ask this question because you're honestly curious about GP's discontent with Discord's interface, so this is NOT directed at you, but ... One of the things I've often noticed is that people like to shame me for being discontent with e.g. WeChat's interface or Facebook's interface. "What's wrong with it? I think it's great! [... and you're weird]" and that mentality of casting away hacker types who want to invent their own UIs is extremely toxic to creativity and innovation, but it's a pattern I've seen happen very frequently with all of these walled-garden apps. (Again this is not directed at you)
pabs3 6y ago
Pidgin still exists and there are plugins for lots of the modern messaging systems. Please note that OTR is no longer considered safe crypto-wise, there is an unfinished OTRv4 that fixes that. http://bugs.otr.im/otrv4/otrv4 http://bugs.otr.im/otrv4/otrv4
- upofadown 6y ago
  >Please note that OTR is no longer considered safe crypto-wise... I could not see any discussion of the deficiencies of OTR in the titles of the OTRv4 sections. Could someone direct me to a reference? This is the first I have heard of this. I thought OTRv4 was all about usability.

codethief 6y ago

> - compared to Signal, it does not snoop your phone number Great, leaking the user's email address which, more often than not, contains their real name is so much better. /s Seriously, though, I don't think this comparison accurately reflects the differences between Delta Chat and Signal: Signal uses your phone number for account lookup but not for addressing participants. Moreover, it uses a feature called Sealed Sender[0] to conceal even the cryptographic address of a message's author. In contrast, Delta Chat leaks the email addresses of the people participating in a [group] conversation[1] (and, thus, their social network) not just to one provider (as in the case of Signal) but to all email providers involved in hosting the conversation, meaning that, as a user, you have to trust not just a single but multiple entities. Meanwhile, Signal doesn't even know how many people there are in a group conversation. [0]: https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ [1]: https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-metadata https://delta.chat/en/help#how-does-delta-chat-protect-my-me...

MrGilbert 6y ago
> Great, leaking the user's email address which, more often than not, contains their real name is so much better. /s So, how good is your spam filter for SMS/calls? /s Personally, I rather give my mailaddress than my phone number. I can set up a new address rather quick. I cannot switch my phone number that effortless.
- lxgr 6y ago
  Maybe worth noting that spam calls/SMS are primarily a problem in the US. In the European countries that I've had phone numbers in, these basically don't exist, and my phone number has been part of several data breaches. (That said, I am curious if this is a problem occurring in almost all or almost no other countries!) As far as I understand, these problems are also in the process of being fixed in the US via caller ID authentication (to enable carrier-level filtering), which seems like the right approach: In the long term, it's more or less futile to keep a phone number out of data breaches or advertiser databases.
  - 6y ago