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Ugh. At least the world has managed to have "Email" as a standard, a medium, that is not controlled by any huge corporation's grubby claws. Why not with chat?

Ugh. At least the world has managed to have "Email" as a standard, a medium, that is not controlled by any huge corporation's grubby claws. Why not with chat? What happened to this? Why is there a war for my data with these big companies, who do NOT have our best interests in mind, and never will? Why can't we have a federated standard for chat, controlled by no one? It seems that we have come close at various times but it has never happened. Will it ever happen? Or is it already too late?

w8rbt 12y ago
And email is under constant attack. Especially corporate/business email, but personal accounts are now targets as well. Basically anyone with a bank/ebay/paypal account is a target if they have an email address. Spam, malware and phishing are huge problems with email. I doubt it will exist forever in its current form. I expect more and more restrictions (on sending and receiving) and more and more walled gardens as corporations and people attempt to better defend themselves.
- pjc50 12y ago
  This is indeed why people retreat to the safety of "platforms". It's Bruce Schneier's "feudalism" argument: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht... IMO the theoretically best way out of this is the user-owned cooperative, but there's very little traction for that.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Meh, I don't trust a large "user-owned cooperative" much more than I trust Google. Then incentives of the owners may be more aligned, but the incentives of the people who actually run it aren't. For an example, see the collapse of the Spanish banking system, much of which was composed of mutual banks. I'd trust a small cooperative, but then you still have the problem of federating between those, which brings you back to square one.
- coolguy43 12y ago
  That is true. I learn spanish on skype free at http://preply.com/en/spanish-by-skype http://preply.com/en/spanish-by-skype and I always worry about email hacking. especially my accounts that I use are there.
crdoconnor 12y ago
XMPP?
Morgawr 12y ago
>Why can't we have a federated standard for chat, controlled by no one? It seems that we have come close at various times but it has never happened. Will it ever happen? Or is it already too late? This is why I simply love IRC.
- antihero 12y ago
  But IRC has failed, colossally, because it is old-school technology for old-school people. The vast majority of users don't want to think about servers, clients, etc. They want to at most get the app, and start talking to their mates. I mean there may be some way to do this with IRC where you don't have to piss around with ident and nicks and nets and netsplits and all this other ridiculous stuff, but the proof is in the pudding. IRC is great, for geeks.
  - Morgawr 12y ago
    IRC is old-school technology just as much as email, the only difference is that email itself has been adopted and provided to non-tech users for a very long time and has arguably been more useful for non-tech users since the days before web2.0 and social networks, whereas instant messaging has become more rampart in the newer generations where we already have newer technologies. IRC is a very transparent protocol, there are A LOT of chat applications that you see and use every day that are actually implemented using an underlying IRC protocol or variation of it and provide an IRC interface (an example would be Twitch chat). Furthermore, I've seen IRC being used in a lot of companies internally by most engineers and not. I would definitely say that IRC has NOT failed, let alone colossally. EDIT: To reply to everybody and make it easier, I fully understand that IRC isn't universally used (that is the point of the original post) and that is in a steep decline, I'm just saying that claiming it 'failed' (both as front and back end technology) is simply not true. It's old and not as used anymore, that's it. It's like saying the Nokia 3310 phone has failed colossally because not many people use it anymore.
    - blowski 12y ago
      Everyone has an email address. I know only three or four people who have even used IRC since 2000, typically for developers on open source product chat rooms like Drupal. Whatever the pros and cons of the technology, or the whys and wherefores of the reason for this lack of widespread use, it clearly has not been adopted by the mainstream. If the goal of a protocol is to be used widely, then clearly IRC has failed.
userbinator 12y ago
IRC? I think that would be the closest analogue to email. Open standard, many implementations.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  XMPP (Jabber) is probably a more direct analogy. But the idea is similar. Unfortunately most of the big providers (Google, Facebook, etc) are disabling XMPP federation for their chat services, even if they still use the protocol internally.
golergka 12y ago
Because open-source chat platforms lack features that make apps like WhatsApp good for regular users. How long does it take you to set up a Jabber client? Can you add a person to Jabber using just their phone number?
- sspiff 12y ago
  It depends on the client. TextSecure is an open-source XMPP/Jabber client for Android which does end-to-end encryption (OTR?), and adds contacts based on your address book automatically. It also supports adding a new contact by phone number, and replaces the stock text messaging application, automatically upgrading text messages to OTR XMPP sessions if the other party is on the same network. It doesn't do federation though, as far as I know.
  - golergka 12y ago
    No iOS version.
    - sspiff 12y ago
      Yes there is, it's called Signal[1], by the same developers. It started out as two separate products, but you can use them to chat between iOS and Android. [1]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id874139669?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id8...
antihero 12y ago
Because companies are set up to cater for a mainstream user base. They have succeeded in making it exceptionally easy to use their apps with little if at all precursory knowledge or effort.
lmm 12y ago
Because Jabber is awful but too many people were so enthusiastic about its open-source nature that it blinded them to its faults (specifically poor groupchat and a bunch of bad choices about the behaviour when logging in from multiple clients at the same time). I don't think it's too late. I know the people working on http://matrix.org/ http://matrix.org/ and I trust them to get the technology right. But as we know, popularity depends on a lot more than the technology.
- upofadown 12y ago
  What is wrong with jabber group chat? You don't like the jabber priority based method of dealing with multiple connections. What would be better?
  - lmm 12y ago
    > What is wrong with jabber group chat? The presumably protocol-level problems are that you can't "upgrade" a two-person conversation to a groupchat, and that a groupchat is an entity in its own right belonging to a particular server, which is something the user really shouldn't have to care about (and also causes reliability issues). And that there's no history. Beyond that the user experience in every client I've used is terrible: open a dialogue to list available groupchats, manually join one, accept the notification, manually rejoin if you're disconnected. And then you tend to get notifications on every message, rather than just on messages that mention you; purely a client problem, but fundamentally if there are no good clients then it leads me to suspect there's a deeper problem. Just compare with the groupchat experience in Slack or Skype or heck, AIM. > You don't like the jabber priority based method of dealing with multiple connections. What would be better? Send messages to all connected clients for the account, like virtually every other protocol does. And sync history between them. I can accept that that's hard without a centralized server, but it's vital.
    - upofadown 12y ago
      My instance of Ejabber will send to all connected clients in the case where the priorities are identical.
venomsnake 12y ago
Reclassify mesasging provider as title II telecoms and force interoperability. Problem solved :) All of our technology software giants could use some Standard Oil/Bell labbing anyway.
benihana 12y ago
Damn you're right. All we have to do is standardize an open source chat protocol. It's so simple! Why haven't we done this before? Clearly because you weren't around to point out it should be done. And not because it takes an incredible amount of influence and work to get a bunch of nerds to agree to something as simple as the name of a color, much less how a chat protocol should work. And not because it's much easier for a company that has a platform to do it since they don't have to appease every person on the standard body's whim. Nope. It was cause we didn't realize we needed one. But hey, thank god you're here to be super helpful and point out that we don't have a good chat protocol, but we should darn it. So someone (not you obviously - you have things to do I'm sure) go get it done and report back after you've made a good open source chat protocol.
pjc50 12y ago
Why is there a war for my data with these big companies, who do NOT have our best interests in mind, and never will? For the same reason as there is a war for your money by big companies. This is how capitalism works. Except with data, it's worse: because people will use free services in preference to paid services, and because network effects are so strong (you can't be the only person you know using your chat service), services have to be "free" and extract value in other, exploitative ways. Someone has to do the organisation and make it work. IRC makes the users do more of that work. This is true of open systems in general. Proprietary systems end up more convenient but with underhanded ways of paying for it: selling your data, intrusive advertising, etc.

w8rbt 12y ago

And email is under constant attack. Especially corporate/business email, but personal accounts are now targets as well. Basically anyone with a bank/ebay/paypal account is a target if they have an email address. Spam, malware and phishing are huge problems with email. I doubt it will exist forever in its current form. I expect more and more restrictions (on sending and receiving) and more and more walled gardens as corporations and people attempt to better defend themselves.

pjc50 12y ago
This is indeed why people retreat to the safety of "platforms". It's Bruce Schneier's "feudalism" argument: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht... IMO the theoretically best way out of this is the user-owned cooperative, but there's very little traction for that.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Meh, I don't trust a large "user-owned cooperative" much more than I trust Google. Then incentives of the owners may be more aligned, but the incentives of the people who actually run it aren't. For an example, see the collapse of the Spanish banking system, much of which was composed of mutual banks. I'd trust a small cooperative, but then you still have the problem of federating between those, which brings you back to square one.
coolguy43 12y ago
That is true. I learn spanish on skype free at http://preply.com/en/spanish-by-skype http://preply.com/en/spanish-by-skype and I always worry about email hacking. especially my accounts that I use are there.

crdoconnor 12y ago

XMPP?

Morgawr 12y ago

>Why can't we have a federated standard for chat, controlled by no one? It seems that we have come close at various times but it has never happened. Will it ever happen? Or is it already too late? This is why I simply love IRC.

antihero 12y ago
But IRC has failed, colossally, because it is old-school technology for old-school people. The vast majority of users don't want to think about servers, clients, etc. They want to at most get the app, and start talking to their mates. I mean there may be some way to do this with IRC where you don't have to piss around with ident and nicks and nets and netsplits and all this other ridiculous stuff, but the proof is in the pudding. IRC is great, for geeks.
- Morgawr 12y ago
  IRC is old-school technology just as much as email, the only difference is that email itself has been adopted and provided to non-tech users for a very long time and has arguably been more useful for non-tech users since the days before web2.0 and social networks, whereas instant messaging has become more rampart in the newer generations where we already have newer technologies. IRC is a very transparent protocol, there are A LOT of chat applications that you see and use every day that are actually implemented using an underlying IRC protocol or variation of it and provide an IRC interface (an example would be Twitch chat). Furthermore, I've seen IRC being used in a lot of companies internally by most engineers and not. I would definitely say that IRC has NOT failed, let alone colossally. EDIT: To reply to everybody and make it easier, I fully understand that IRC isn't universally used (that is the point of the original post) and that is in a steep decline, I'm just saying that claiming it 'failed' (both as front and back end technology) is simply not true. It's old and not as used anymore, that's it. It's like saying the Nokia 3310 phone has failed colossally because not many people use it anymore.
  - blowski 12y ago
    Everyone has an email address. I know only three or four people who have even used IRC since 2000, typically for developers on open source product chat rooms like Drupal. Whatever the pros and cons of the technology, or the whys and wherefores of the reason for this lack of widespread use, it clearly has not been adopted by the mainstream. If the goal of a protocol is to be used widely, then clearly IRC has failed.

userbinator 12y ago

IRC? I think that would be the closest analogue to email. Open standard, many implementations.

ForHackernews 12y ago
XMPP (Jabber) is probably a more direct analogy. But the idea is similar. Unfortunately most of the big providers (Google, Facebook, etc) are disabling XMPP federation for their chat services, even if they still use the protocol internally.

golergka 12y ago

Because open-source chat platforms lack features that make apps like WhatsApp good for regular users. How long does it take you to set up a Jabber client? Can you add a person to Jabber using just their phone number?

sspiff 12y ago
It depends on the client. TextSecure is an open-source XMPP/Jabber client for Android which does end-to-end encryption (OTR?), and adds contacts based on your address book automatically. It also supports adding a new contact by phone number, and replaces the stock text messaging application, automatically upgrading text messages to OTR XMPP sessions if the other party is on the same network. It doesn't do federation though, as far as I know.
- golergka 12y ago
  No iOS version.
  - sspiff 12y ago
    Yes there is, it's called Signal[1], by the same developers. It started out as two separate products, but you can use them to chat between iOS and Android. [1]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id874139669?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id8...

antihero 12y ago

Because companies are set up to cater for a mainstream user base. They have succeeded in making it exceptionally easy to use their apps with little if at all precursory knowledge or effort.

lmm 12y ago

Because Jabber is awful but too many people were so enthusiastic about its open-source nature that it blinded them to its faults (specifically poor groupchat and a bunch of bad choices about the behaviour when logging in from multiple clients at the same time). I don't think it's too late. I know the people working on http://matrix.org/ http://matrix.org/ and I trust them to get the technology right. But as we know, popularity depends on a lot more than the technology.

upofadown 12y ago
What is wrong with jabber group chat? You don't like the jabber priority based method of dealing with multiple connections. What would be better?
- lmm 12y ago
  > What is wrong with jabber group chat? The presumably protocol-level problems are that you can't "upgrade" a two-person conversation to a groupchat, and that a groupchat is an entity in its own right belonging to a particular server, which is something the user really shouldn't have to care about (and also causes reliability issues). And that there's no history. Beyond that the user experience in every client I've used is terrible: open a dialogue to list available groupchats, manually join one, accept the notification, manually rejoin if you're disconnected. And then you tend to get notifications on every message, rather than just on messages that mention you; purely a client problem, but fundamentally if there are no good clients then it leads me to suspect there's a deeper problem. Just compare with the groupchat experience in Slack or Skype or heck, AIM. > You don't like the jabber priority based method of dealing with multiple connections. What would be better? Send messages to all connected clients for the account, like virtually every other protocol does. And sync history between them. I can accept that that's hard without a centralized server, but it's vital.
  - upofadown 12y ago
    My instance of Ejabber will send to all connected clients in the case where the priorities are identical.

venomsnake 12y ago

Reclassify mesasging provider as title II telecoms and force interoperability. Problem solved :) All of our technology software giants could use some Standard Oil/Bell labbing anyway.

benihana 12y ago

Damn you're right. All we have to do is standardize an open source chat protocol. It's so simple! Why haven't we done this before? Clearly because you weren't around to point out it should be done. And not because it takes an incredible amount of influence and work to get a bunch of nerds to agree to something as simple as the name of a color, much less how a chat protocol should work. And not because it's much easier for a company that has a platform to do it since they don't have to appease every person on the standard body's whim. Nope. It was cause we didn't realize we needed one. But hey, thank god you're here to be super helpful and point out that we don't have a good chat protocol, but we should darn it. So someone (not you obviously - you have things to do I'm sure) go get it done and report back after you've made a good open source chat protocol.

pjc50 12y ago

Why is there a war for my data with these big companies, who do NOT have our best interests in mind, and never will? For the same reason as there is a war for your money by big companies. This is how capitalism works. Except with data, it's worse: because people will use free services in preference to paid services, and because network effects are so strong (you can't be the only person you know using your chat service), services have to be "free" and extract value in other, exploitative ways. Someone has to do the organisation and make it work. IRC makes the users do more of that work. This is true of open systems in general. Proprietary systems end up more convenient but with underhanded ways of paying for it: selling your data, intrusive advertising, etc.