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> Most of my contacts made the switch, and I’m now at roughly 95% Signal for day-to-day conversations Years ago, I set up a Matrix server. I got some people to
by skerit 8mo ago
> Most of my contacts made the switch, and I’m now at roughly 95% Signal for day-to-day conversations
Years ago, I set up a Matrix server. I got some people to migrate, but ultimately even my husband stopped using it because the UI and accessibility of all the applications was so poor (and he has very bad eyesight, so this was a dealbreaker)
Looking for another alternative, I ended up with Telegram. It was pretty open, easy to work with, had great UI and even a ton of funny stickers and emojis, so I got nearly all my friends to migrate. I did NOT go for Signal because I do not need end-to-end encryption all the time, and having all the same conversations available on my desktop as well as on my phone was important, and still is. Unfortunately, it's also run by a severe weirdo.
So yeah, I'm not really sure what to use now.
- Arathorn 8mo agoOn the Matrix accessibility side, Element X has improved loads over the years - https://element.io/blog/helping-to-get-everyone-in-their-element/ https://element.io/blog/helping-to-get-everyone-in-their-ele... and https://element.io/blog/element-is-accessible-by-design/ https://element.io/blog/element-is-accessible-by-design/ etc.
- simgt 8mo agoRecently came across FluffyChat (https://fluffy.chat/ https://fluffy.chat/), which works on matrix and has funny stickers and emojis ;)
- WD-42 8mo agoI've been using fluffychat for over a year. It's a nice interface and the client I used to convince less technical friends and family to give Matrix a try. Unfortunately major functionality like being able to send images becomes broken for long periods of time https://github.com/krille-chan/fluffychat/issues/2497 https://github.com/krille-chan/fluffychat/issues/2497
- fuglede_ 8mo agoAnd for desktop apps, Cinny has custom emoji/sticker support. Would be nice if they played better with Element though.
- ezst 8mo agoMatrix has gotten to a complexity threshold that makes it near-impossible to have independent client/server implementations. Element is terrible, and many contenders are better in a way or another, but all lack some essential feature to turn them into practical alternatives.
- ptman 8mo agoThere are several independent clients and servers. None of them support all features, not even synapse/element. But most keep improving steadily.
- Ar-Curunir 8mo agoSignal supports desktop clients now, no?
- jeroenhd 8mo agoHas done for years now, but its desktop support is far inferior to even Matrix chat clients. It works in a pinch but you have to lower your standards quite a lot to use it as a true alternative.
- toastal 8mo agoHow are you framing this? It’s an Electron app so it exists but doesn’t integrate or perform great. Last I recall you still were required to provide a SIM to sign up & you needed an iOS or Android primary device to even use the desktop client. Can you use a standalone, fast desktop application like you can these other protocols? I would say no, so “support” has shades of gray to it. This is how I got kicked off LINE… they had a Chromium app that I could use tethered to an app, they disabled support for LINE Lite (which had light/dark theme, E2EE, texting, voice/video calls, debatable trackers (Firebase), even stickers & sending a location @ 8MiB instead of 200MiB+ of the “heavy app”), I refused to “upgrade” as it was a downgrade to me, & since I was no longer registered with a “primary” device, I was booted from the network. I don’t think I want these mobile-duopoly-required apps to be my primary means of communication with folks—especially now that my primary phone isn’t Apple or Google (luckily Open Whisper lets WhisperFish exist).
- simgoh 8mo ago> but doesn’t integrate or perform great. Curious what you mean by this. I use the Signal Desktop app. It does what it's supposed to - send and receive messages in a timely way with no lag. What poor performance are you seeing? What doesn't integrate?
- DaSHacka 8mo agoNot GP but I've also had issues with the Signal Desktop app (installed from the Arch repos). Its overall a little sluggish in general (like most Electron apps though, in fairness) and occasionally clicking and dragging images onto the application will cause it to freeze and eventually crash. Plus, the general usability issues present in all variants of the signal client (like no easy way of restoring previous messages on a new device). It's not terrible or anything, but it's just a solid 6/10 application. I personally wish they were more open to 3rd party clients, so I could have something that integrates with my desktop environment a little better and is snappier, like my Matrix clients.
- Insanity 8mo agoTelegram is almost on the opposite end of the spectrum of Matrix & Signal so I wouldn’t really consider it an alternative.
- pavel_lishin 8mo agoHow so? I genuinely don't know, despite casually using both.
- zadikian 8mo agoOpposite end in terms of security. Telegram group chats have no E2EE, private messages aren't E2EE by default (you have to initiate it as a "secret" chat), and the encryption itself is home rolled.
- Insanity 8mo agoYup exactly, their home rolled encryption is problematic in and of itself, but the fact that it lacks E2EE means you shouldn’t even trust it in the first place.
- akho 8mo agoAlso opposite in terms of feature-richness.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
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- zadikian 8mo agoYep
- veverkap 8mo agoThey do publish https://telegram.org/blog/tdlib https://telegram.org/blog/tdlib so couldn't a client author just do shared key encryption or something?
- next_xibalba 8mo ago> Unfortunately, it's also run by a severe weirdo. Marlinspike, Acton, or someone else? Why does this matter?
- andrewflnr 8mo agoI think they're talking about Telegram for that part.
- fullstop 8mo agoYeah, Durov has some interesting takes on things and often not in a good way.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- HumblyTossed 8mo agoOver the years there's been a couple of apps that have tried to use email protocols as the backend for chat. I really wish those had gained popularity - there's a lot of overlap with messaging and email.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 8mo agoDeltaChat supposedly does that but I've never tried to interoperate it with email
- gzread 8mo agoDeltachat moved away from email, to their own protocol called chatmail
- mbirth 8mo agoIsn’t that still email/SMTP under the hood - just optimised for fast delivery?
- gzread 8mo agoI don't think so, because they're not recommending it to be used with normal email accounts.
- HumblyTossed 8mo agohttps://github.com/chatmail/core/blob/main/standards.md https://github.com/chatmail/core/blob/main/standards.md
- ibejoeb 8mo agoIsn't that just email then? I mean I guess you could wrap a bubbly UI around it, but you're not getting around the latency and spam. Those seem like dealbreakers to me.
- ezst 8mo agoSame, years ago, I set up a Matrix server, because it was advertised as the-new-XMPP (and I had done XMPP as a user, a long time before, and thought it had been quirky enough to warrant a successor protocol). What I found with Matrix was the same terrible experience you describe, so I gave old XMPP a new look, and it's been great and continuously improving since. I sleep much better at night having my whole family using XMPP over a self-hosted ejabberd than I can using Matrix to talk with them (and synapse... Forget using synapse federated).
- Flere-Imsaho 8mo agoTelegram is very much more about IRC / Discord public chat rooms, rather than private group chats.
- h4kunamata 8mo agoTelegram is the only service I join that as soon I did it so, I received SPAM, added to random groups and you name it. It has to be the worst service out there, better stick with WhatsApp over Telegram period.