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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 e

by 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
  I recommend (a recent) ejabberd if you don't know anything about XMPP: it does an excellent job coming with good default, clear, commented and foolproof config and once it's running you can literally forget about it. XMPP does manage offline message catch-up across all devices, and with good mobile clients I've never felt the need to redirect to email (especially these days with ubiquitous E2EE, that's not something you would want the server to be capable of doing), that said I believe it would be "easily" scripted up.
- MattJ100 6y ago
  I'm the developer, but simple self-hosted XMPP is the goal of https://snikket.org/ https://snikket.org/ There's no forward-to-mail, but happy to consider a feature request.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Could you elaborate more about Matrix's metadata distribution? What exactly is being distributed and when? I'd like to see that if you have it as I wasn't aware of this. PS: I'm not trying to contradict you here, on the contrary. I'd like to deep dive into it as it is indeed a big issue. If Matrix really takes off (which I hope it does) I would want to avoid dataminers just federating to it and grabbing data that way. Of course some metadata would need to be able to be shared for the federated network to function. I understand that too.
- ezst 6y ago
  Sure! The first "practical"* difference between Matrix and XMPP is that Matrix' chatrooms are "necessarily decentralized" (whereas in XMPP that's optional [1]). How it works is that users involved in a given room have their servers synchronize the room's state with each other (room state is messages, presence status, read receipts, "is composing" status, …) so when one server goes down/netsplits, messages, join/leave events, read markers, … can keep flowing among online users (and when the server goes up again, it might attempt to merge its state with that of the network while catching-up). This looks and behaves very much like a blockchain: you end-up with distributed "copies since origins" of the room + all its metadata all over the network (plus distributed inefficiency, but I digress). *: I put that quotes, because I don't believe it matters the slightest in practice. XMPP nodes can be easily distributed, which addresses the same reliability concern, but at a layer better suited to handle the complexity. WhatsApp runs on a fork of ejabberd (erlang), while Matrix homeservers, especially matrix.org are notorious for their terrible QoS/resources-hungriness while handling a fraction of the concurrent users. [1]: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0289.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0289.html
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Thanks, I'll have to dig into the protocol, maybe do some sniffing on my homeserver :) I assume not every node gets the metadata for all the rooms in the world, just the ones its users participate in? Anyway looking forward to investigating this.
    - 6y ago

by ezst 6y ago

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
I recommend (a recent) ejabberd if you don't know anything about XMPP: it does an excellent job coming with good default, clear, commented and foolproof config and once it's running you can literally forget about it. XMPP does manage offline message catch-up across all devices, and with good mobile clients I've never felt the need to redirect to email (especially these days with ubiquitous E2EE, that's not something you would want the server to be capable of doing), that said I believe it would be "easily" scripted up.
MattJ100 6y ago
I'm the developer, but simple self-hosted XMPP is the goal of https://snikket.org/ https://snikket.org/ There's no forward-to-mail, but happy to consider a feature request.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Could you elaborate more about Matrix's metadata distribution? What exactly is being distributed and when? I'd like to see that if you have it as I wasn't aware of this. PS: I'm not trying to contradict you here, on the contrary. I'd like to deep dive into it as it is indeed a big issue. If Matrix really takes off (which I hope it does) I would want to avoid dataminers just federating to it and grabbing data that way. Of course some metadata would need to be able to be shared for the federated network to function. I understand that too.

ezst 6y ago
Sure! The first "practical"* difference between Matrix and XMPP is that Matrix' chatrooms are "necessarily decentralized" (whereas in XMPP that's optional [1]). How it works is that users involved in a given room have their servers synchronize the room's state with each other (room state is messages, presence status, read receipts, "is composing" status, …) so when one server goes down/netsplits, messages, join/leave events, read markers, … can keep flowing among online users (and when the server goes up again, it might attempt to merge its state with that of the network while catching-up). This looks and behaves very much like a blockchain: you end-up with distributed "copies since origins" of the room + all its metadata all over the network (plus distributed inefficiency, but I digress). *: I put that quotes, because I don't believe it matters the slightest in practice. XMPP nodes can be easily distributed, which addresses the same reliability concern, but at a layer better suited to handle the complexity. WhatsApp runs on a fork of ejabberd (erlang), while Matrix homeservers, especially matrix.org are notorious for their terrible QoS/resources-hungriness while handling a fraction of the concurrent users. [1]: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0289.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0289.html
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Thanks, I'll have to dig into the protocol, maybe do some sniffing on my homeserver :) I assume not every node gets the metadata for all the rooms in the world, just the ones its users participate in? Anyway looking forward to investigating this.
  - 6y ago