15 ms·

WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

204 points by sysoleg 6y ago

andrewclunn 6y ago
Nope. Only one has facebook selling your data. Not even close.
luplex 6y ago
Matrix is eating the world of messengers. I'm very bullish on the protocol. There hasn't yet been a lot of thought around the economic incentives of matrix, like who is supposed to run a Homeserver?
- kenniskrag 6y ago
  I think the same people, wwo run own mail servers. You get better latencies if you will use it for calls for example.
- zaik 6y ago
  If you believe the account of [0] then running a Matrix server is much more costly than running a XMPP server. [0] https://wiki.404.city/en/XMPP_vs_Matrix https://wiki.404.city/en/XMPP_vs_Matrix
  - luplex 6y ago
    I would suspect so, since matrix is not about message passing, but about state synchronization, which is more data-intensive.
airza 6y ago
I wish that the author had spent more time really thinking about _why_ communication has moved away from email, or why XMPP/IRC never really caught on despite being vastly older than these app competitors (hint: it is because they are federated, and so making sweeping changes to the protocol/client in the name of UX becomes intractable.) It is _very_ frustrating that the internet has had messenger fragmentation since the beginning of time, but why can Matrix solve this problem if XMPP cannot? Signal just works.
- cheph 6y ago
  WhatsApp just works also.
- argvargc 6y ago
  Isn't the fact neither XMPP nor IRC are e2e-encrypted a factor in them catching on? Nobody wants to use a messenger that's public, or that with a single centralised compromise/hack could make all their messages become so. To me that disqualifies them as even being potential solutions to the problem. Matrix has significant usability issues in its currently-available form(s) - but it at least meets the most basic of requirements that user messages are private, and does so fundamentally.
  - mouldysammich 6y ago
    XMPP has omemo for encryption which is support by default by both major severs and every client i've tried -- especially the ones that aim for user-freindlyness likes conversations
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    XMPP lost popularity long before the public became (unhealthily) obsessed with encryption.
    - argvargc 6y ago
      Care to explain? I can't think of a single example where encrypting a private message passed over a public network would be unhealthy.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        Users do not understand that E2EE means no easy device syncing and no serverside search, they just want to feel 'safe', but are not ready to perform such necessary things as fingerprint verification. And without verifying the identity of the remote party, E2EE is totally meaningless. Telegram's far better UX than Whatsapp is possible because they do not have e2ee on anything but Secret Chats (and I've never seen anyone on Telegram using them). See, for most users the promise of security is better than actual security and all attached UX problems.
ezst 6y ago
I wanted to like this piece for calling Signal for what it is: WhatsApp with better marketing (with a lot of security and privacy backed by obscurity), but if everyone is jumping ship from WhatsApp out of data syphoning concerns, I'm not sure that Matrix's insistance on replicating and distributing as much metadata as possible across its nodes is much better. The end game is probably P2P with "dumb" servers doing little more than just passing packets across the network (which kind of goes against battery efficiency on mobile devices), but in the meantime I'd rather bet on XMPP (which has diverse client+server implementations, tiny footprint even on a RPi, approachable and standardized protocol one can implement in a weekend) that's getting really good and hassle free to self host at a family & friends level.
- kenniskrag 6y ago
  Can you recommend a self hosted setup? I want chat + forward to email if I'm offline.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    Google Delta Chat. It’s a chat protocol/server/client based on email. You only need the client - it will use your existing email account (and your recipients’); if you use the Delta client, it will appear as chat; if you don’t it will just be 2 line emails - and similarly for your addresses. When/if the actual server comes of age, you’ll have additional features like online indicators and stuff. Bit it’s already usable today (if somewhat wasteful in bandwidth and storage compared to e.g. Signal) and there are no new accounts to register or discover — it’s usable with standard email as transport.
    - comeonseriously 6y ago
      I wish this were more popular. I love the idea of using the email protocol for chats. Email servers are ubiquitous and, better, everyone can email everyone else and your contacts and you don't have to be on gmail or yahoo or anything else.
  - ezst 6y ago
lordnacho 6y ago
I installed element the other day, clicking through what I thought were the most common settings. Am I supposed to see which of my friends are on it? I see none at the moment, and one of the main things that told me that Signal was gonna happen was when I started to get notifications about yet another non techie friend getting on it.
mojuba 6y ago
Yes but email also used to be fragmented and walled garden'ed back in the early days of networking. Chat is still in its infancy as a technology. We are still trying to figure things out: what's the minimal necessary feature set? What should a server API provide to clients? And a myriad of behavior/feature/privacy questions that different messaging systems handle differently, for example: what happens when I leave a group chat - should others see me leaving? Can I leave quietly? Should I have a choice? Or: when I join a group, do I get access to the entire message history? Or: what happens when I block someone and then later message them - should the message history be restored? This and many other privacy related problems are handled in as many ways as there are messaging systems in wide use. Let alone handling of audio and video calls. Messaging and its feature set should stabilize as a standard way of communication before we can say to everyone: OK so now there's no reason you shouldn't use a standard protocol. If you don't, you are definitely a bad guy. Today though it's still not easy to make a case for standardization, in my opinion.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  Chat is not in its infancy, it has been around almost as long as email.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  Isn't having a well-specified protocol how you get features to stabilizes?
- mprovost 6y ago
  ICQ came out in 1996, AIM in 1997, and MSN in 1999. I don't think it's fair to give the people working on this a pass by saying this is a new problem - working products have been shipping for over 20 years. Some of the devs working on Signal and Matrix were probably born after ICQ was released. The reality is that all of these systems, including email, tend towards becoming walled gardens. Otherwise you end up with the same problem that email has which is that a huge percentage of it is spam. At this point email is basically a few connected walled gardens from the major providers. Before that the amount of spam was even larger.
  - 6y ago
cassepipe 6y ago
The reason why Signal is not an open protocol like email has been argumented by Signal creator Moxie before (can't find the article please help). It has pros (evolution is faster and thus it's easier to compete with proprietary solutions) and cons (single point of failure) and Signal devs are well aware of that. We should stop acting like Matrix and Signal are competing with each other. I happily use Matrix but my grandma will not, ever, not in this world. And my mother has a hard time figuring out what a browser is. If we want everyone to be somewhat protected, adoption cost must be lowest.
- capableweb 6y ago
  The problem with statements like "I happily use Matrix but my grandma will not, ever, not in this world" is that Matrix is more of a protocol than anything. So of course, your gradma would never use HTTP, but since browsers are now user friendly enough, everyone is using HTTP indirectly. Same can (will? Might?) happen with Matrix, where a popular applications get written on top of Matrix, and users don't even need to know about Matrix, just that stuff works. And when they move to another client, they can bring everything with them and stuff keeps working automatically.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    > Same can (will? Might?) happen with Matrix When will this happen, if ever?
    - capableweb 6y ago
      Well, no one knows when a new popular app appears, gain traction and how it looks like, otherwise we'd all be rich by now! What is sure is that people said the same thing about Matrix, Bitcoin (and more) that people were saying about HTTP/the web back in the day.
  - mvanbaak 6y ago
    And when a popular application get written, it will become the next walled garden. whatsapp uses xmpp. whatsapp became a closed system. PerfectClientXInTheFuture uses matrix. PerfectClientXInTheFuture becomes a closed system. Why? Because that way they can make more money. It's sad, but true.
CJefferson 6y ago
I really sympathise with this point of view, but when it comes to messaging with family and friends, I just don't really care. Matrix seems to want to be an IRC replacement rather than a one-to-one / small-group chat app. That's fine, but often not what I want. Teaching my mother in law to use Signal: Install. Accept permissions. Choose a PIN. I can send you messages. You can see your friends who already use Signal. Well done! Matrix: When you start you will get to choose from [matrix.org], swirly symbol "element matrix services" (the biggest and middle option, but not the one you want), or other. Choose matrix.org (nothing else, or we will get very confused). Then click "sign up". Then enter a username and password (need a username which no-one has used before, you can't use your email address. Make sure to remember it). Oh, but do put your email address in the next page, which is how people in practice are going to find you. Bonus feature: How do you join a room? Click on it. How do you leave? Maybe long-press the room name, or swipe? Nope, you enter the room, click on the triple dots, settings, scroll down, leave room. Bonus feature 2: Once you join a popular room, all users of that room are added to "Known users", making the list completely without value. How do I actually find people I know?
- maxwellito 6y ago
  +1 Also about Matrix, the confusion when the client app doesn't have the same name as the protocol is so unfriendly for the non tech-savy users.
  - junon 6y ago
    I was designing something similar to Matrix at one point several years back. The different names confused even myself when I was dabbling into Matrix. Matrix is cool, there's no doubt. The packaging is terrible, IMO. They really need a product manager.
    - anticensor 6y ago
      Do you have any links to share?
      - 6y ago
maxwellito 6y ago
The reason people move out of WhatsApp : to leave Facebook data collection. People are happy with walled gardens. Look at Apple success.
- comeonseriously 6y ago
  People (normals) are happy with software that just works. If Apple's software stopped "just working", people would leave.
patrickaljord 6y ago
The problem with WhatsApp and Signal is that even though it's e2e, it uses your phone number as id which is the least privacy friendly id they could have picked.
- alexmingoia 6y ago
  It’s also impractical for digital nomads like myself who don’t use phone numbers at all. I haven’t used Signal, but what do I do if every X months I have a new phone number? Will it still work if I swap SIM cards?
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    It will, but you need to keep the sim card with the old number topped up so it doesn't expire, in case you ever need to log in again. The only way is to receive a text or call on that number, just like whatsapp.
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    Whatsapp has an option to change your number.
  - Strom 6y ago
    Not sure about Signal, but you can definitely change your phone number on WhatsApp. You will show up as a different person (with the same name) for other people though. The real effect of it is that the chat history will be split between these "persons" for others.
  - Marsymars 6y ago
    Not having a stable phone number seems impractical in general. (e.g. You can’t set up 2FA for Apple or Google accounts without a phone number.) More practical is porting a regular number to a SIP service so that you can receive important things via app. (2FA short codes typically don’t work with numbers that are assigned to SIP providers, but work fine you you port over a number from a regular carrier.)
    - 6y ago
antihero 6y ago
"Why does everybody wanting to exchange messages need the same client?" Gee I don't know, maybe standardisation has some sort of benefit that leads to a cohesive, consistent experience for all users as opposed to having a bunch of clients that all implement varying levels of the spec to various standards...
- cheph 6y ago
  > Gee I don't know, maybe standardisation has some sort of benefit that leads to a cohesive, consistent experience for all users as opposed to having a bunch of clients that all implement varying levels of the spec to various standards... Supporting only one application is quite the opposite of standardization, it is vendor lock in. If it was standardized it would open up the opportunity to have more than one client.
bjarneh 6y ago
> Sadly it’s not really used yet This is so hard to overcome. Many problems have technical solutions, but are still almost impossible to implement due to all sorts of other obstacles.
nuker 6y ago
> The origin of mail were a couple of geeks who wanted to exchange messages on ARPANET No, Inventor Of Email is this guy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai
- Hammershaft 6y ago
  Unfortunately that guy is a hack who pretended to have developed email to boost his credibility and now spends his days releasing videos using cherry picked and debunked statistics to claim the election was fraudulent.
  - nuker 6y ago
    You missed capital /S in my post
ppf 6y ago
They don't mention the other issue - Whatsapp and similar are, if anything, the worst form of social media. You have shallow conversations that dribble your attention away throughout your entire day, yet you have not gained any meaningful interaction.
- iamben 6y ago
  But on the flip side I have shallow conversations that dribble my attention away throughout my entire day. The first time I worked for myself - pre social media - was really, really lonely. This pandemic and lockdown is really, really lonely. I can silence my phone, I can turn the screen away from me. I can focus when I want to. But it's truly a blessing knowing I have WhatsApp groups with friends just bantering away throughout the day. Doesn't have to be meaningful, it's just great having that "water cooler" interaction.
  - ppf 6y ago
    That should frighten you. If Whatsapp went away tomorrow, would you have any friends?
    - iamben 6y ago
      I would, in exactly the same way I had friends the first time I was working from home. There's precisely nothing that stops me calling any one of them and having a "proper catch up". But sometimes we just need background chatter. Friendship is not defined by membership of a WhatsApp group. So no, it doesn't frighten me in the slightest.
- Strom 6y ago
  This does not match my experience at all. There's no limit to the amount of text I can send and it's not ephemeral. Thus there's really nothing preventing me from typing out thoughtful messages, which I do. As for attention, anything can suck away attention if you let it. I don't find WhatsApp (or other similar chat apps) to be any worse than e-mail or snail mail. I look at them when I want to and no more. Again, there's no real rush, because the messages aren't ephemeral. [1] There are social media sites that truly lead towards shallow conversations, like reddit where a quick joke gets more upvotes, or twitter where you have a tiny character limit and your message gets immediately drowned by everyone else's latest angry tweet. What's more, I've seen plenty of shallow conversations face to face. Thus I think it depends very much on the specific human to human match whether they will have any meaningful deep conversations. If the humans are capable of it, they can do it on WhatsApp as easily as face to face. [2] -- [1] Unless of course you specifically configure them to be ephemeral, e.g. in Signal. [2] Yes I realize that face to face has the benefit of body language, but WhatsApp has the benefit of remoteness and asynchronicity. Thus I'll call it a wash.
networkimprov 6y ago
See also TMTP, from the mnm project. Its stated goal is to replace SMTP & IMAP. https://mnmnotmail.org https://mnmnotmail.org https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail
- paulcarroty 6y ago
  > You’ll need an invitation to a TMTP service. Nice step for SMTP & IMAP alternative.
  - networkimprov 6y ago
    You have to be a member of an organization that provides you with a TMTP account. Email is the same. I'm working on a live demo that runs from the website. Follow me on twitter to hear when it's available. https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Yep Matrix FTW! It's really where we should be heading as it solves much more fundamental issues with IM than just the lack of privacy.
- zaik 6y ago
  We are already there with XMPP.
ComodoHacker 6y ago
To be fair, Telegram's protocol is open and there are many open-source clients with their established userbases. There's even a separate team at Telegram developing an official alternative client (Telegram X) to foster competition. Also, there's Matrix-Telegram bridge in development. So the article's point is only partially applicable to Telegram. >Why does everybody wanting to exchange messages need the same client? Why not go a step further and ask why everybody need the same protocol?
- ezst 6y ago
  Would that bridge not require you to hold a telegram account? If not, then that's some true federation there, and they have my respect and praise (as an XMPPer).
  - ComodoHacker 6y ago
    You can't post anything to Telegram without an account. No bridge can change that.
    - ezst 6y ago
      Then Telegram is no better than other silos, and just slightly better than the worst of them in the sense that it lets you use a (puppet) third party client.
annadane 6y ago
In fact, didn't Facebook when they bought Whatsapp remove some of the interoperability features? Very in line with the scumbags they are
mercacona 6y ago
“Walled gardens” are worth for stuff like communications. No one likes to speak in X and being “hacked” by someone that knows how to trick the speech so people will understand or see a different message. The downfall of email is a byproduct of “smart-ass” clients that add spy pixels, scheduled messages, automatic reminders, Rich HTML emails that looks horrible on mobile, etc. An standard protocol, and a standard app, is good for the people who just wants to communicate something with someone; may be hackers doesn’t get it, but I’m happy some like moxie does.
netfortius 6y ago
Isn't this a known trajectory for all such [solutions]: ease of use, multi-platform, originally advertised privacy and security concern, critical mass gain ==> sell / be acquired (latter requiring a little extra $$$ effort from the acquirer part) to FB/Google/Amazon/etc.?
haolez 6y ago
Kind of off topic, but why is Matrix better than XMPP? Genuine question. Just curious.
- Zash 6y ago
  They're just subtly different. Why is X better than Y?
- ezst 6y ago
  As of today, XMPP has a more diverse ecosystem of clients and servers implementations, that makes it much more versatile and resilient. Matrix addresses the theoretically interesting issue of distributed chatrooms, which makes the protocol and its implementation very complex and inefficient… while not adding much in practice (that's only my opinion, but I think this self-inflicted complexity has done nothing but a disservice to Matrix)
bikamonki 6y ago
Sadly, only governments can break monopolies.
flas9sd 6y ago
One-on-One chat windows, Group Rooms - the representation itself is very similar in most messengers. People wouldn't care about having multiple messengers installed if they only need to thumb one launcher icon. I think "non-agenda" oriented platforms like Signal and Matrix would be in a position to allow for such interfaces to be called up from. As with mail desktop app interfaces, chat-window design patterns have solidified on handhelds. I read about Beeper and am eager to learn about its inner workings, but what about platform support that the messenger Apps can open up to?
eluusive 6y ago
https://stampchat.io https://stampchat.io does not suffer from these problems.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
scotty79 6y ago
I think we dropped the ball by awarding copyright protections unconditionally. We should try to imitate patent protection and award copyright protections only if and for as long as software author publishes full description of the file formats and network protocols his software uses. That was idea with patent protections. You get protection on the condition that you disclose details of your design to enable interoperability by future inventors, manufacturers and users.
toUser5 6y ago
To most users Matrix is a walled garden under computer expert influence The only difference between any of them to the end user is some are privately funded/operated As technical inventions they’re all black boxes most users won’t understand Am I to audit all the code to make sure some Matrix node hasn’t figured me out? All blog posts like this do is reiterate for me that as clever as their understanding of a particular abstraction, programmers are opinionated humans looking to manipulate based upon the perception their insight is somehow better, like everyone else Someone somewhere can figure out who you are because you merely use a technology. It can all be traced back to a purchase or a manufacturer or a radio tower Pretending software can hide physical reality is weirdly cognitive dissonant
zelphirkalt 6y ago
I usually see being connected to FB, the most notorious offender of data protection, as one major issue of WA. Not sure how the alternatives share that problem.
throw7 6y ago
I only use SMS/RCS, for the walled garden reason. The other reason is is I can't stand the "social media" feature of having yourself broadcasted to all your "friends/contacts" the moment you join: HEY look everyone, your good buddy is here! Absolutely the worst.
shmerl 6y ago
Agreed, decentralized and federated IM should really replace the horrors of walled gardens that remain in the dark ages to this day. But common greed and unscrupulous developers prevent progress. We are very lucky e-mail managed to break through this.
harry8 6y ago
I wonder if signal ever really came under serious attack whether Moxie has a plan he's sitting on to decentralise it with its existing userbase? Of course people want to use these things with their phone. That's kind of 99.999% of the point. Apple and Goog have shown they control what the general population runs on their phone. Any doubt about their ability and willingness to unilaterally enforce that without due process and without even a full and thorough justification at a moment's notice has been removed along with parler from the app/play store. The sudden change in censorship stand in line with the democrats views happened exactly when it became clear the democrats were going to have control. They're coming for signal and will use domestic terrorism as the wrapping paper. There might be also some "think of the children" and "Isis terrorism" involved so be sure to be ready to be accused of being a sympathiser white supremacist, islamic terrorist, pedo is if you like your messaging private /because/ you /must/ have something to hide! (From people who work at a building that celebrates J. Edgar Hoover - how could you want to hide anything from them?)
- Craighead 6y ago
  Oh no! The application and service used to attempt to coup the government was banned? What ever will happen to the free world now!?
ymolodtsov 6y ago
The problem is that federated protocols and platforms don't really evolve that well with a few exceptions. We had XMPP and it died. Then WhatsApp and Telegram showed us what truly modern messengers could be. When you can't make a change at the client level you won't be able to advance. So, even if you believe Matrix is the future and Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram have a drastic flaw, we couldn't get here without them.
Molly666 6y ago
I also want to add the Utopia p2p https://u.is/ https://u.is/ application to this list. It is an all-in-one application, in addition, it guarantees anonymity and complete security of personal data. Unfortunately, so far there is only a desktop version, but I have never used Slack from a mobile phone. Well, plus this app is free.

204 points by sysoleg 6y ago

Nope. Only one has facebook selling your data. Not even close.

Matrix is eating the world of messengers. I'm very bullish on the protocol. There hasn't yet been a lot of thought around the economic incentives of matrix, like who is supposed to run a Homeserver?

kenniskrag 6y ago
I think the same people, wwo run own mail servers. You get better latencies if you will use it for calls for example.
zaik 6y ago
If you believe the account of [0] then running a Matrix server is much more costly than running a XMPP server. [0] https://wiki.404.city/en/XMPP_vs_Matrix https://wiki.404.city/en/XMPP_vs_Matrix
- luplex 6y ago
  I would suspect so, since matrix is not about message passing, but about state synchronization, which is more data-intensive.

airza 6y ago

I wish that the author had spent more time really thinking about _why_ communication has moved away from email, or why XMPP/IRC never really caught on despite being vastly older than these app competitors (hint: it is because they are federated, and so making sweeping changes to the protocol/client in the name of UX becomes intractable.) It is _very_ frustrating that the internet has had messenger fragmentation since the beginning of time, but why can Matrix solve this problem if XMPP cannot? Signal just works.

cheph 6y ago
WhatsApp just works also.
argvargc 6y ago
Isn't the fact neither XMPP nor IRC are e2e-encrypted a factor in them catching on? Nobody wants to use a messenger that's public, or that with a single centralised compromise/hack could make all their messages become so. To me that disqualifies them as even being potential solutions to the problem. Matrix has significant usability issues in its currently-available form(s) - but it at least meets the most basic of requirements that user messages are private, and does so fundamentally.
- mouldysammich 6y ago
  XMPP has omemo for encryption which is support by default by both major severs and every client i've tried -- especially the ones that aim for user-freindlyness likes conversations
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  XMPP lost popularity long before the public became (unhealthily) obsessed with encryption.
  - argvargc 6y ago
    Care to explain? I can't think of a single example where encrypting a private message passed over a public network would be unhealthy.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
      Users do not understand that E2EE means no easy device syncing and no serverside search, they just want to feel 'safe', but are not ready to perform such necessary things as fingerprint verification. And without verifying the identity of the remote party, E2EE is totally meaningless. Telegram's far better UX than Whatsapp is possible because they do not have e2ee on anything but Secret Chats (and I've never seen anyone on Telegram using them). See, for most users the promise of security is better than actual security and all attached UX problems.

ezst 6y ago

I wanted to like this piece for calling Signal for what it is: WhatsApp with better marketing (with a lot of security and privacy backed by obscurity), but if everyone is jumping ship from WhatsApp out of data syphoning concerns, I'm not sure that Matrix's insistance on replicating and distributing as much metadata as possible across its nodes is much better. The end game is probably P2P with "dumb" servers doing little more than just passing packets across the network (which kind of goes against battery efficiency on mobile devices), but in the meantime I'd rather bet on XMPP (which has diverse client+server implementations, tiny footprint even on a RPi, approachable and standardized protocol one can implement in a weekend) that's getting really good and hassle free to self host at a family & friends level.

kenniskrag 6y ago
Can you recommend a self hosted setup? I want chat + forward to email if I'm offline.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Google Delta Chat. It’s a chat protocol/server/client based on email. You only need the client - it will use your existing email account (and your recipients’); if you use the Delta client, it will appear as chat; if you don’t it will just be 2 line emails - and similarly for your addresses. When/if the actual server comes of age, you’ll have additional features like online indicators and stuff. Bit it’s already usable today (if somewhat wasteful in bandwidth and storage compared to e.g. Signal) and there are no new accounts to register or discover — it’s usable with standard email as transport.
  - comeonseriously 6y ago
    I wish this were more popular. I love the idea of using the email protocol for chats. Email servers are ubiquitous and, better, everyone can email everyone else and your contacts and you don't have to be on gmail or yahoo or anything else.
- ezst 6y ago

lordnacho 6y ago

I installed element the other day, clicking through what I thought were the most common settings. Am I supposed to see which of my friends are on it? I see none at the moment, and one of the main things that told me that Signal was gonna happen was when I started to get notifications about yet another non techie friend getting on it.

mojuba 6y ago

Yes but email also used to be fragmented and walled garden'ed back in the early days of networking. Chat is still in its infancy as a technology. We are still trying to figure things out: what's the minimal necessary feature set? What should a server API provide to clients? And a myriad of behavior/feature/privacy questions that different messaging systems handle differently, for example: what happens when I leave a group chat - should others see me leaving? Can I leave quietly? Should I have a choice? Or: when I join a group, do I get access to the entire message history? Or: what happens when I block someone and then later message them - should the message history be restored? This and many other privacy related problems are handled in as many ways as there are messaging systems in wide use. Let alone handling of audio and video calls. Messaging and its feature set should stabilize as a standard way of communication before we can say to everyone: OK so now there's no reason you shouldn't use a standard protocol. If you don't, you are definitely a bad guy. Today though it's still not easy to make a case for standardization, in my opinion.

bosswipe 6y ago
Chat is not in its infancy, it has been around almost as long as email.
rebuilder 6y ago
Isn't having a well-specified protocol how you get features to stabilizes?
mprovost 6y ago
ICQ came out in 1996, AIM in 1997, and MSN in 1999. I don't think it's fair to give the people working on this a pass by saying this is a new problem - working products have been shipping for over 20 years. Some of the devs working on Signal and Matrix were probably born after ICQ was released. The reality is that all of these systems, including email, tend towards becoming walled gardens. Otherwise you end up with the same problem that email has which is that a huge percentage of it is spam. At this point email is basically a few connected walled gardens from the major providers. Before that the amount of spam was even larger.
- 6y ago

cassepipe 6y ago

The reason why Signal is not an open protocol like email has been argumented by Signal creator Moxie before (can't find the article please help). It has pros (evolution is faster and thus it's easier to compete with proprietary solutions) and cons (single point of failure) and Signal devs are well aware of that. We should stop acting like Matrix and Signal are competing with each other. I happily use Matrix but my grandma will not, ever, not in this world. And my mother has a hard time figuring out what a browser is. If we want everyone to be somewhat protected, adoption cost must be lowest.

capableweb 6y ago
The problem with statements like "I happily use Matrix but my grandma will not, ever, not in this world" is that Matrix is more of a protocol than anything. So of course, your gradma would never use HTTP, but since browsers are now user friendly enough, everyone is using HTTP indirectly. Same can (will? Might?) happen with Matrix, where a popular applications get written on top of Matrix, and users don't even need to know about Matrix, just that stuff works. And when they move to another client, they can bring everything with them and stuff keeps working automatically.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  > Same can (will? Might?) happen with Matrix When will this happen, if ever?
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Well, no one knows when a new popular app appears, gain traction and how it looks like, otherwise we'd all be rich by now! What is sure is that people said the same thing about Matrix, Bitcoin (and more) that people were saying about HTTP/the web back in the day.
- mvanbaak 6y ago
  And when a popular application get written, it will become the next walled garden. whatsapp uses xmpp. whatsapp became a closed system. PerfectClientXInTheFuture uses matrix. PerfectClientXInTheFuture becomes a closed system. Why? Because that way they can make more money. It's sad, but true.

CJefferson 6y ago

I really sympathise with this point of view, but when it comes to messaging with family and friends, I just don't really care. Matrix seems to want to be an IRC replacement rather than a one-to-one / small-group chat app. That's fine, but often not what I want. Teaching my mother in law to use Signal: Install. Accept permissions. Choose a PIN. I can send you messages. You can see your friends who already use Signal. Well done! Matrix: When you start you will get to choose from [matrix.org], swirly symbol "element matrix services" (the biggest and middle option, but not the one you want), or other. Choose matrix.org (nothing else, or we will get very confused). Then click "sign up". Then enter a username and password (need a username which no-one has used before, you can't use your email address. Make sure to remember it). Oh, but do put your email address in the next page, which is how people in practice are going to find you. Bonus feature: How do you join a room? Click on it. How do you leave? Maybe long-press the room name, or swipe? Nope, you enter the room, click on the triple dots, settings, scroll down, leave room. Bonus feature 2: Once you join a popular room, all users of that room are added to "Known users", making the list completely without value. How do I actually find people I know?

maxwellito 6y ago
+1 Also about Matrix, the confusion when the client app doesn't have the same name as the protocol is so unfriendly for the non tech-savy users.
- junon 6y ago
  I was designing something similar to Matrix at one point several years back. The different names confused even myself when I was dabbling into Matrix. Matrix is cool, there's no doubt. The packaging is terrible, IMO. They really need a product manager.
  - anticensor 6y ago
    Do you have any links to share?
    - 6y ago

maxwellito 6y ago

The reason people move out of WhatsApp : to leave Facebook data collection. People are happy with walled gardens. Look at Apple success.

comeonseriously 6y ago
People (normals) are happy with software that just works. If Apple's software stopped "just working", people would leave.

patrickaljord 6y ago

The problem with WhatsApp and Signal is that even though it's e2e, it uses your phone number as id which is the least privacy friendly id they could have picked.

alexmingoia 6y ago
It’s also impractical for digital nomads like myself who don’t use phone numbers at all. I haven’t used Signal, but what do I do if every X months I have a new phone number? Will it still work if I swap SIM cards?
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  It will, but you need to keep the sim card with the old number topped up so it doesn't expire, in case you ever need to log in again. The only way is to receive a text or call on that number, just like whatsapp.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  Whatsapp has an option to change your number.
- Strom 6y ago
  Not sure about Signal, but you can definitely change your phone number on WhatsApp. You will show up as a different person (with the same name) for other people though. The real effect of it is that the chat history will be split between these "persons" for others.
- Marsymars 6y ago
  Not having a stable phone number seems impractical in general. (e.g. You can’t set up 2FA for Apple or Google accounts without a phone number.) More practical is porting a regular number to a SIP service so that you can receive important things via app. (2FA short codes typically don’t work with numbers that are assigned to SIP providers, but work fine you you port over a number from a regular carrier.)
  - 6y ago

antihero 6y ago

"Why does everybody wanting to exchange messages need the same client?" Gee I don't know, maybe standardisation has some sort of benefit that leads to a cohesive, consistent experience for all users as opposed to having a bunch of clients that all implement varying levels of the spec to various standards...

cheph 6y ago
> Gee I don't know, maybe standardisation has some sort of benefit that leads to a cohesive, consistent experience for all users as opposed to having a bunch of clients that all implement varying levels of the spec to various standards... Supporting only one application is quite the opposite of standardization, it is vendor lock in. If it was standardized it would open up the opportunity to have more than one client.

bjarneh 6y ago

> Sadly it’s not really used yet This is so hard to overcome. Many problems have technical solutions, but are still almost impossible to implement due to all sorts of other obstacles.

nuker 6y ago

> The origin of mail were a couple of geeks who wanted to exchange messages on ARPANET No, Inventor Of Email is this guy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai

Hammershaft 6y ago
Unfortunately that guy is a hack who pretended to have developed email to boost his credibility and now spends his days releasing videos using cherry picked and debunked statistics to claim the election was fraudulent.
- nuker 6y ago
  You missed capital /S in my post

ppf 6y ago

They don't mention the other issue - Whatsapp and similar are, if anything, the worst form of social media. You have shallow conversations that dribble your attention away throughout your entire day, yet you have not gained any meaningful interaction.

iamben 6y ago
But on the flip side I have shallow conversations that dribble my attention away throughout my entire day. The first time I worked for myself - pre social media - was really, really lonely. This pandemic and lockdown is really, really lonely. I can silence my phone, I can turn the screen away from me. I can focus when I want to. But it's truly a blessing knowing I have WhatsApp groups with friends just bantering away throughout the day. Doesn't have to be meaningful, it's just great having that "water cooler" interaction.
- ppf 6y ago
  That should frighten you. If Whatsapp went away tomorrow, would you have any friends?
  - iamben 6y ago
    I would, in exactly the same way I had friends the first time I was working from home. There's precisely nothing that stops me calling any one of them and having a "proper catch up". But sometimes we just need background chatter. Friendship is not defined by membership of a WhatsApp group. So no, it doesn't frighten me in the slightest.
Strom 6y ago
This does not match my experience at all. There's no limit to the amount of text I can send and it's not ephemeral. Thus there's really nothing preventing me from typing out thoughtful messages, which I do. As for attention, anything can suck away attention if you let it. I don't find WhatsApp (or other similar chat apps) to be any worse than e-mail or snail mail. I look at them when I want to and no more. Again, there's no real rush, because the messages aren't ephemeral. [1] There are social media sites that truly lead towards shallow conversations, like reddit where a quick joke gets more upvotes, or twitter where you have a tiny character limit and your message gets immediately drowned by everyone else's latest angry tweet. What's more, I've seen plenty of shallow conversations face to face. Thus I think it depends very much on the specific human to human match whether they will have any meaningful deep conversations. If the humans are capable of it, they can do it on WhatsApp as easily as face to face. [2] -- [1] Unless of course you specifically configure them to be ephemeral, e.g. in Signal. [2] Yes I realize that face to face has the benefit of body language, but WhatsApp has the benefit of remoteness and asynchronicity. Thus I'll call it a wash.

networkimprov 6y ago

See also TMTP, from the mnm project. Its stated goal is to replace SMTP & IMAP. https://mnmnotmail.org https://mnmnotmail.org https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail

paulcarroty 6y ago
> You’ll need an invitation to a TMTP service. Nice step for SMTP & IMAP alternative.
- networkimprov 6y ago
  You have to be a member of an organization that provides you with a TMTP account. Email is the same. I'm working on a live demo that runs from the website. Follow me on twitter to hear when it's available. https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail https://twitter.com/mnmnotmail

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Yep Matrix FTW! It's really where we should be heading as it solves much more fundamental issues with IM than just the lack of privacy.

zaik 6y ago
We are already there with XMPP.

ComodoHacker 6y ago

To be fair, Telegram's protocol is open and there are many open-source clients with their established userbases. There's even a separate team at Telegram developing an official alternative client (Telegram X) to foster competition. Also, there's Matrix-Telegram bridge in development. So the article's point is only partially applicable to Telegram. >Why does everybody wanting to exchange messages need the same client? Why not go a step further and ask why everybody need the same protocol?

ezst 6y ago
Would that bridge not require you to hold a telegram account? If not, then that's some true federation there, and they have my respect and praise (as an XMPPer).
- ComodoHacker 6y ago
  You can't post anything to Telegram without an account. No bridge can change that.
  - ezst 6y ago
    Then Telegram is no better than other silos, and just slightly better than the worst of them in the sense that it lets you use a (puppet) third party client.

annadane 6y ago

In fact, didn't Facebook when they bought Whatsapp remove some of the interoperability features? Very in line with the scumbags they are

mercacona 6y ago

“Walled gardens” are worth for stuff like communications. No one likes to speak in X and being “hacked” by someone that knows how to trick the speech so people will understand or see a different message. The downfall of email is a byproduct of “smart-ass” clients that add spy pixels, scheduled messages, automatic reminders, Rich HTML emails that looks horrible on mobile, etc. An standard protocol, and a standard app, is good for the people who just wants to communicate something with someone; may be hackers doesn’t get it, but I’m happy some like moxie does.

netfortius 6y ago

Isn't this a known trajectory for all such [solutions]: ease of use, multi-platform, originally advertised privacy and security concern, critical mass gain ==> sell / be acquired (latter requiring a little extra $$$ effort from the acquirer part) to FB/Google/Amazon/etc.?

haolez 6y ago

Kind of off topic, but why is Matrix better than XMPP? Genuine question. Just curious.

Zash 6y ago
They're just subtly different. Why is X better than Y?
ezst 6y ago
As of today, XMPP has a more diverse ecosystem of clients and servers implementations, that makes it much more versatile and resilient. Matrix addresses the theoretically interesting issue of distributed chatrooms, which makes the protocol and its implementation very complex and inefficient… while not adding much in practice (that's only my opinion, but I think this self-inflicted complexity has done nothing but a disservice to Matrix)

bikamonki 6y ago

Sadly, only governments can break monopolies.

flas9sd 6y ago

One-on-One chat windows, Group Rooms - the representation itself is very similar in most messengers. People wouldn't care about having multiple messengers installed if they only need to thumb one launcher icon. I think "non-agenda" oriented platforms like Signal and Matrix would be in a position to allow for such interfaces to be called up from. As with mail desktop app interfaces, chat-window design patterns have solidified on handhelds. I read about Beeper and am eager to learn about its inner workings, but what about platform support that the messenger Apps can open up to?

eluusive 6y ago

https://stampchat.io https://stampchat.io does not suffer from these problems.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

scotty79 6y ago

I think we dropped the ball by awarding copyright protections unconditionally. We should try to imitate patent protection and award copyright protections only if and for as long as software author publishes full description of the file formats and network protocols his software uses. That was idea with patent protections. You get protection on the condition that you disclose details of your design to enable interoperability by future inventors, manufacturers and users.

toUser5 6y ago

To most users Matrix is a walled garden under computer expert influence The only difference between any of them to the end user is some are privately funded/operated As technical inventions they’re all black boxes most users won’t understand Am I to audit all the code to make sure some Matrix node hasn’t figured me out? All blog posts like this do is reiterate for me that as clever as their understanding of a particular abstraction, programmers are opinionated humans looking to manipulate based upon the perception their insight is somehow better, like everyone else Someone somewhere can figure out who you are because you merely use a technology. It can all be traced back to a purchase or a manufacturer or a radio tower Pretending software can hide physical reality is weirdly cognitive dissonant

zelphirkalt 6y ago

I usually see being connected to FB, the most notorious offender of data protection, as one major issue of WA. Not sure how the alternatives share that problem.

throw7 6y ago

I only use SMS/RCS, for the walled garden reason. The other reason is is I can't stand the "social media" feature of having yourself broadcasted to all your "friends/contacts" the moment you join: HEY look everyone, your good buddy is here! Absolutely the worst.

shmerl 6y ago

Agreed, decentralized and federated IM should really replace the horrors of walled gardens that remain in the dark ages to this day. But common greed and unscrupulous developers prevent progress. We are very lucky e-mail managed to break through this.

harry8 6y ago

I wonder if signal ever really came under serious attack whether Moxie has a plan he's sitting on to decentralise it with its existing userbase? Of course people want to use these things with their phone. That's kind of 99.999% of the point. Apple and Goog have shown they control what the general population runs on their phone. Any doubt about their ability and willingness to unilaterally enforce that without due process and without even a full and thorough justification at a moment's notice has been removed along with parler from the app/play store. The sudden change in censorship stand in line with the democrats views happened exactly when it became clear the democrats were going to have control. They're coming for signal and will use domestic terrorism as the wrapping paper. There might be also some "think of the children" and "Isis terrorism" involved so be sure to be ready to be accused of being a sympathiser white supremacist, islamic terrorist, pedo is if you like your messaging private /because/ you /must/ have something to hide! (From people who work at a building that celebrates J. Edgar Hoover - how could you want to hide anything from them?)

Craighead 6y ago
Oh no! The application and service used to attempt to coup the government was banned? What ever will happen to the free world now!?

ymolodtsov 6y ago

The problem is that federated protocols and platforms don't really evolve that well with a few exceptions. We had XMPP and it died. Then WhatsApp and Telegram showed us what truly modern messengers could be. When you can't make a change at the client level you won't be able to advance. So, even if you believe Matrix is the future and Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram have a drastic flaw, we couldn't get here without them.

Molly666 6y ago

I also want to add the Utopia p2p https://u.is/ https://u.is/ application to this list. It is an all-in-one application, in addition, it guarantees anonymity and complete security of personal data. Unfortunately, so far there is only a desktop version, but I have never used Slack from a mobile phone. Well, plus this app is free.