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> I hope this should be the kickstart for a change in how communication apps are built We've had this since 1988. Its name is IRC. Anyone could communicate on

> I hope this should be the kickstart for a change in how communication apps are built We've had this since 1988. Its name is IRC. Anyone could communicate on a protocol shared by any kind of app you wanted (not that I'm arguing that IRC is the gold standard of chat protocols necessarily - Matrix seems an improvement to me - but it was an open chat protocol before most of what we now think of as the internet existed). The fact commercial chat apps aren't interoperable is a decision they made to screw the user for corporate interests (i.e. force everyone who wants in on the network onto their app that they can track and advertise on), not because cross-app communication is a new or novel concept. But yes, I believe this is the way to go. Unfortunately it will never be the way the mainstream goes because the ad money from the walled-garden apps funds their own marketing campaign to keep them in the forefront of users' minds, but both ecosystems will probably exist side by side in perpetuity (at least until the walled-garden lobbyists convince the government that open apps have to be outlawed because of children or terrorism or something).

kqr 4y ago
There are plenty of commercial chat apps (particularly ones embedded in other applications) that use IRC under the hood. You don't always know that this has happened, though. In fact, almost every non-IRC chat app around starts out as some variant of "trying to improve on drawback X of IRC." For a long time, IRC was the default choice and you only did something different if you wanted to fix one of the problems with IRC. I hope matrix can become this new default.
Gigachad 4y ago
The removal of cross app communication was a UX improvement for the average person. When Discord rolls out a new feature, you can trust it to work for everyone on day one. There is no querying available features for the other side, it just works. And you know it shows up how you imagine on the other side every time. IRC spent most of the last decade rolling out the V3 spec which came with hard hitting features like logging in to accounts (SASL), away notifications, showing the time a message was sent rather than the time it was received by your client. Still working on signing up for a new account on the todo list. The glacial pace of open standards like IRC is the reason proprietary tools which can just get things done took over.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Do users really care about those shiny new features? For me most of it was stupid stuff. Stickers, shaking windows.. The ability to turn that crap off is entirely why I'd want a different client. And it's not really like you can have your feature available everywhere on day 1 really, even on a proprietary client. People often lag behind updating their apps on their devices. I managed a fleet of 60k mobiles of which 40k byod (personally owned). and we often ran into issues with people not updating even included apps like chrome for years and we'd have to email them and even ban them when a serious vulnerability was found in the wild.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The stupid stuff is all important to someone. The stickers on telegram are the main reason furries use the platform over discord for example. And mobile platforms auto update now so while it’s possible there could be an old version out, not much effort is put in to making it work. Telegram shows a basic text showing the message is not supported on your version and prompts you to update. Even the stuff that is hardly a feature but more a UX prompt is important. Discord voice channels are not that much functionally different to traditional group calls, but that way they get used is dramatically different because the UX is. Imagine if someone bridged discord to some other IM app and when someone joins a voice channel, it starts a group call on the other app which opens a ringer on that persons phone. The compatibility is close enough right, but that minor difference is enough to make users very upset.
  - Saris 4y ago
    Given that Discord and Telegram are the go-to chat clients for a huge number of people, I suspect shiny new features are important to them. Even if they don't technically end up using them or really need them, it clearly helps get people using the platform. I use Telegram because of the stickers and generally great UI experience on both mobile and desktop. Even though I know Signal or Matrix are a better choice from a privacy/security standpoint.
- cma 4y ago
  > And you know it shows up how you imagine on the other side every time. For years syntax highlighting hasn't shown on discord mobile, but does on discord via browser.
pkulak 4y ago
But IRC isn’t meant to be a global system, right? There aren’t even usernames. Connecting even a few servers together creates netsplit problems and traffic spikes. I’d say XMPP is the real alternative.
usrusr 4y ago
But IRC is also looking back on three decades of completely separate networks without even the tiniest bridge and the number of networks that have grown big enough that users forget that other irc networks exist has been been increasing ever since. Yes, they do share roughly the same protocol, yes, clients can be connected to more than one of the networks at the same time, yes, most (all?) of the big networks are federated within themselves on the server side. IRC itself is an example of existing side by side.

kqr 4y ago

There are plenty of commercial chat apps (particularly ones embedded in other applications) that use IRC under the hood. You don't always know that this has happened, though. In fact, almost every non-IRC chat app around starts out as some variant of "trying to improve on drawback X of IRC." For a long time, IRC was the default choice and you only did something different if you wanted to fix one of the problems with IRC. I hope matrix can become this new default.

Gigachad 4y ago

The removal of cross app communication was a UX improvement for the average person. When Discord rolls out a new feature, you can trust it to work for everyone on day one. There is no querying available features for the other side, it just works. And you know it shows up how you imagine on the other side every time. IRC spent most of the last decade rolling out the V3 spec which came with hard hitting features like logging in to accounts (SASL), away notifications, showing the time a message was sent rather than the time it was received by your client. Still working on signing up for a new account on the todo list. The glacial pace of open standards like IRC is the reason proprietary tools which can just get things done took over.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
Do users really care about those shiny new features? For me most of it was stupid stuff. Stickers, shaking windows.. The ability to turn that crap off is entirely why I'd want a different client. And it's not really like you can have your feature available everywhere on day 1 really, even on a proprietary client. People often lag behind updating their apps on their devices. I managed a fleet of 60k mobiles of which 40k byod (personally owned). and we often ran into issues with people not updating even included apps like chrome for years and we'd have to email them and even ban them when a serious vulnerability was found in the wild.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  The stupid stuff is all important to someone. The stickers on telegram are the main reason furries use the platform over discord for example. And mobile platforms auto update now so while it’s possible there could be an old version out, not much effort is put in to making it work. Telegram shows a basic text showing the message is not supported on your version and prompts you to update. Even the stuff that is hardly a feature but more a UX prompt is important. Discord voice channels are not that much functionally different to traditional group calls, but that way they get used is dramatically different because the UX is. Imagine if someone bridged discord to some other IM app and when someone joins a voice channel, it starts a group call on the other app which opens a ringer on that persons phone. The compatibility is close enough right, but that minor difference is enough to make users very upset.
- Saris 4y ago
  Given that Discord and Telegram are the go-to chat clients for a huge number of people, I suspect shiny new features are important to them. Even if they don't technically end up using them or really need them, it clearly helps get people using the platform. I use Telegram because of the stickers and generally great UI experience on both mobile and desktop. Even though I know Signal or Matrix are a better choice from a privacy/security standpoint.
cma 4y ago
> And you know it shows up how you imagine on the other side every time. For years syntax highlighting hasn't shown on discord mobile, but does on discord via browser.

pkulak 4y ago

But IRC isn’t meant to be a global system, right? There aren’t even usernames. Connecting even a few servers together creates netsplit problems and traffic spikes. I’d say XMPP is the real alternative.

usrusr 4y ago

But IRC is also looking back on three decades of completely separate networks without even the tiniest bridge and the number of networks that have grown big enough that users forget that other irc networks exist has been been increasing ever since. Yes, they do share roughly the same protocol, yes, clients can be connected to more than one of the networks at the same time, yes, most (all?) of the big networks are federated within themselves on the server side. IRC itself is an example of existing side by side.