> _But why do we have only one choice of client when it comes to WhatsApp or Signal’s network? At least Telegram lets you roll your own client._ > _But protoco

> _But why do we have only one choice of client when it comes to WhatsApp or Signal’s network? At least Telegram lets you roll your own client._ > _But protocols are better, because they make it so that I have a choice of clients — choice leads to competition._ In the Signal context, all we know about Moxie's stance on third-party clients is summarized in his "Ecosystem is moving" post from 2016 https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/. It's his call to make... As for the protocol argument more generally, I was briefly caught up in the XMPP hype around 2014 and tried to run my own Prosody server. The XMPP ecosystem has the concept of "extensions" (XEP) whereby clients and servers can indicate whether they support some extension and then fail gracefully (or not) depending on that. I'd be curious how that has worked out for them—are there XEPs for mission critical things other than emojis, stickers, etc that you might want in a secure messaging application? What do you do if clients/servers are using old versions that don't/won't support them? Since Signal controls the client and server they can make breaking changes to core things without having to ask anyone. That's definitely a benefit for them (and my non-technical friends and family!)... In my experience I got tired of hosting my own server and couldn't get enough people to switch to XMPP and remember my address. Now I have dozens of contacts on Signal. If someone asks me to WhatsApp them I tell them I don't have it, and then I use a regular SMS (or email).