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your family and friends care enough to download and set this up?
by kyawzazaw 2y ago
your family and friends care enough to download and set this up?
- eddieroger 2y agowhy would they need to download and setup a server? can't they just log in to OP's with the client of their choice?
- kyawzazaw 2y agoi am asking about download the client and even registering and entering a password
- scrapcode 2y agoAlthough I understand your point, and certainly have some friends that would feel like they're hacking the gibson connecting to an irc server, is Discord et. al really that much different?
- kyawzazaw 2y agodiscord is totally different. I assure you they are not going to download Signal, Whatsapp. there is massive network effect involved and inertia Even getting people to use a different messaging app (such as Facebook Messenger) already installed on their phones is difficult.
- mikepurvis 2y agoIt’s an inertia issue. I already have iMessage, FB Messenger, WhatsApp, and Signal as “primary” messaging apps, plus Instagram and LinkedIn and Teams as secondary— my tolerance would be basically zero for installing something else to connect with a specific person or friend group.
- prmoustache 2y agoThat is because you already have an absurd lots of them though. I have whatsapp and conversations and that's it. I only use teams on my professional computer, you will never see me install "work" on my personal smartphone and nobody needs a linkedin app, the website is enough.
- mikepurvis 2y agoiMessage is needed for texting, Messenger for neighbours and FB Marketplace, WhatsApp for group chats, and Signal to have a non-meta option. I agree about LinkedIn and will probably get rid of it; I mostly installed it as I was going to a conference and wanted the easy option for swapping contact details using camera codes.
- donio 2y agoYes, they just download the app and enter the server name, username and pw. It's a private server and I manage the accounts so there is no registration step. And they only need to worry about any of this when they get a new phone.
- crtasm 2y agoIsn't it just: install app, enter myserver.net and username+password ?
- kyawzazaw 2y agoyeah, this part itself. How easy it is to get them to do it?
- brabel 2y agoAny app that requires a login will be exactly the same? What's exactly your point? That people can't login to phone apps?
- Mashimo 2y ago> That people can't login to phone apps? Probably that they don't bother to have another chat app just for a few people. A older family member has WhatsUp and Signal and gets sometimes confused. I have WhatsUp, signal, telegram, discord, meta messenger and would be .. hesitant to install an IRC client for like 3 people.
- mavhc 2y agoWhatsapp wins because it doesn't require a username and password, that's too complex for many people
- prmoustache 2y ago> wins because it doesn't require a username and password And lose because you can't give it to a kid that doesn't have a mobile phone number. I have shared custody of my daughter and we communicate via xmpp on a tablet they carry over there when they spend a week at their mother's.
- mavhc 2y ago
- phillipseamore 2y agoThe last line of OP: "The built-in websocket support is another key feature for me since it lets me to provide a web client just by serving some static files (I use Gamja for this)." https://github.com/Libera-Chat/gamja https://github.com/Libera-Chat/gamja
- donio 2y agohttps://codeberg.org/emersion/gamja https://codeberg.org/emersion/gamja is probably what you want, the repo above seems like a local branch and it's a few months behind.
- rollcat 2y agoMy fam chat is currently on Telegram, but there recently (Durov's arrest) was a long discussion about that; everyone is actually interested in switching to something E2EE and/or self-hosted. But we want to keep the core features: share photos/videos, keep a history, 1-on-1 voice/video calls, etc. So the main alternatives are WhatsApp, and (distant second) Signal - the latter doesn't offer history for newly joining devices. If self-hosting in general wasn't such a PITA, I'd probably research the options and set something up. But honestly, I'm burnt out with trying to maintain even the most basic setups. I have a Raspberry Pi with NixOS under my desk that hosts Miniflux over Tailscale, and I can forget it exists 99.7% of the time - until I accidentally unplug it, and 6 hours later, wonder wtf happened again. Now multiply the problem by the average funny cat video size and crappiness of my residential uplink. Won't happen.
- dazed_confused 2y ago> Signal doesn't offer history for newly joining devices This is a great feature for privacy though
- rollcat 2y agoThis is not a feature, this is a limitation. It would've been a feature if Signal offered you a choice of whether the history should be synced up or not (perhaps with a default of "no" for existing users, to maintain the established expectation). As it is, this is a limitation.
- rekabis 2y agoIn order for Signal to provide this history, said history would have to be stored on their servers, massively nerfing one of their core competitive advantages. This “limitation” is the ultimate advantage from the perspective of Signal’s core competency.
- devjab 2y agoIt could be saved on devices and supplied as needed from that device history. They wouldn’t need to keep it on their servers. I don’t think you can fault signal for not wanting to do that, but it also means signal is a terrible communications platform if you want that sort of thing.