4 ms·

I wish it would come back , I really despise having 20 chat apps.

stavros 4y ago
I remember the good old days, when I had one client to talk to my friends, no matter which service they were on. The services themselves were a commodity, which I guess is exactly why this is no longer the case.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  It also wasn't difficult to set up your own server and bring your own domain, resulting in an easy to remember vanity handle like chat@lastname.tld. I hosted both prosody and ejabberd for years for friends and family, and it was orders of magnitude easier than self-hosting a mail server. Sadly, eventually everyone moved to proprietary platforms because file sending worked badly in those days, and mobile XMPP clients were simply terrible (no push notifications and such).
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  This is why I use my Matrix bridges. XMPP has bridges too, of course (that's what the Matrix bridges were inspired by) but it seems the "up and coming" status of Matrix helps the bridges be maintained better. FWIW, the EU has passed the Digital Markers Act which requires big tech companies to open up their platform. It'll take a while before it takes effect, but unless Apple, Google, Meta and all others are going the very expensive "fine me and we'll see what happens" route, we should soon see movement towards an environment where different apps can talk to each other again. The tech industry being what it is, there is no real standard for interoperability yet, though there is an IETF taskforce working on setting up a standard companies may follow: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/about/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/about/ This, critically, considers encrypted messages in a standard way so that we don't lose E2EE in the process.
  - stavros 4y ago
    Let's hope this ends up being good, I can see it taking twenty years and at some point standardizing a backend into the encryption :(
nicolaslem 4y ago
I really despise having 18 proprietary chat apps.
courgette 4y ago
Alternative are cropping up. I've been testing out solutions with other nerds. https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/ is promising. It's set of matrix bridge over 15 chat network or so. Neat.
- pkulak 4y ago
  I've been successfully using their iMessage bridge for my personal server for about a year now. It's very nice to use iMessage on my Linux machines, since that's the chat network everyone around me has decided to use.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  Is this in accordance with those services’ TOS? How can you be sure you won’t get banned? For instance, I remember hearing that Discord banned users who used alternative clients.
  - courgette 4y ago
    Good point. From my pov they can then shove their service up their ass but it’s a valid concern.
29083011397778 4y ago
20 feels like an exaggeration, but there are more than 20 Matrix bridges, so maybe I'm just less spread out than some. I've been using Telegram, Signal, Google Chat, and Discord so far, on a self-hosted server. It's not too hard to stand up, especially if you hang around here, and works a treat. Highly recommend if you want one app to message everyone from.
- justusthane 4y ago
  +1 I just set up a Matrix homeserver for the first time, and it was really slick with the Ansible playbook. I am astonished by how well the Signal bridge works — everything works! Read indicators, threads, mentions, groups…so far I have it configured as a linked device to my phone, but you can also configure it as your primary device. I really want to use the WhatsApp bridge, but that seems messier. I don’t want to install WhatsApp on my phone, so it requires running Android in a VM with a VoIP number, and apparnetly risks getting banned from WhatsApp.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

I remember the good old days, when I had one client to talk to my friends, no matter which service they were on. The services themselves were a commodity, which I guess is exactly why this is no longer the case.

5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
It also wasn't difficult to set up your own server and bring your own domain, resulting in an easy to remember vanity handle like chat@lastname.tld. I hosted both prosody and ejabberd for years for friends and family, and it was orders of magnitude easier than self-hosting a mail server. Sadly, eventually everyone moved to proprietary platforms because file sending worked badly in those days, and mobile XMPP clients were simply terrible (no push notifications and such).
jeroenhd 4y ago
This is why I use my Matrix bridges. XMPP has bridges too, of course (that's what the Matrix bridges were inspired by) but it seems the "up and coming" status of Matrix helps the bridges be maintained better. FWIW, the EU has passed the Digital Markers Act which requires big tech companies to open up their platform. It'll take a while before it takes effect, but unless Apple, Google, Meta and all others are going the very expensive "fine me and we'll see what happens" route, we should soon see movement towards an environment where different apps can talk to each other again. The tech industry being what it is, there is no real standard for interoperability yet, though there is an IETF taskforce working on setting up a standard companies may follow: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/about/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/about/ This, critically, considers encrypted messages in a standard way so that we don't lose E2EE in the process.
- stavros 4y ago
  Let's hope this ends up being good, I can see it taking twenty years and at some point standardizing a backend into the encryption :(

nicolaslem 4y ago

I really despise having 18 proprietary chat apps.

courgette 4y ago

Alternative are cropping up. I've been testing out solutions with other nerds. https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/ is promising. It's set of matrix bridge over 15 chat network or so. Neat.

pkulak 4y ago
I've been successfully using their iMessage bridge for my personal server for about a year now. It's very nice to use iMessage on my Linux machines, since that's the chat network everyone around me has decided to use.
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
Is this in accordance with those services’ TOS? How can you be sure you won’t get banned? For instance, I remember hearing that Discord banned users who used alternative clients.
- courgette 4y ago
  Good point. From my pov they can then shove their service up their ass but it’s a valid concern.

29083011397778 4y ago

20 feels like an exaggeration, but there are more than 20 Matrix bridges, so maybe I'm just less spread out than some. I've been using Telegram, Signal, Google Chat, and Discord so far, on a self-hosted server. It's not too hard to stand up, especially if you hang around here, and works a treat. Highly recommend if you want one app to message everyone from.

justusthane 4y ago
+1 I just set up a Matrix homeserver for the first time, and it was really slick with the Ansible playbook. I am astonished by how well the Signal bridge works — everything works! Read indicators, threads, mentions, groups…so far I have it configured as a linked device to my phone, but you can also configure it as your primary device. I really want to use the WhatsApp bridge, but that seems messier. I don’t want to install WhatsApp on my phone, so it requires running Android in a VM with a VoIP number, and apparnetly risks getting banned from WhatsApp.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]