Discussion
@lutindiscret @hyc @liaizon Again, email is right there and how many people can you reach via email? The premise was that federation *inherently* doesn't work, and that's quite obviously wrong.
XMPP isn't more widely used due to a lack of investment, because every new messenger funded by VC money (which Signal also was) wants to be the only game in town, or at least compete directly with the largest ones. Hardly anyone dares to invest in real freedom of choice.
@raucao @hyc @liaizon I think one point you neglect is that signal has been conceived after people already tried to kill proprietary messaging. That's the whole xmpp story. Moxxie and al. knew about xmpp and saw it has a the total failure it is. They didn't want to reproduce that. The hostility toward decentralized things does not come from nowhere, it's based on experience
@lutindiscret @hyc @liaizon How am I "neglecting" that? I literally shared that perspective in the post you're replying to.
It's funny you call XMPP a total failure, because I rely on it for all of my work communication and the majority of my personal comms, too. Open protocols can only be a subjective failure to you, when you're not using them. And you never know who's successfully using them, because there are no centralized statistics for that.
@raucao @hyc @liaizon I'm happy you are successfuly using xmpp.
I'm talking about the % of the global population.
If I setup my self hosted xmpp server and create an account. How many people can I contact on that network? You are right we don't have stat but let's admit it's order of magnitude less than WhatsApp, signal or telegram. We can regret it, we can't deny it.
Moxxie always said he would be happy to be proven wrong by the success of a decentralized app. Maybe he is right 😥
@lutindiscret @hyc @liaizon Again, email is right there and how many people can you reach via email? The premise was that federation *inherently* doesn't work, and that's quite obviously wrong.
XMPP isn't more widely used due to a lack of investment, because every new messenger funded by VC money (which Signal also was) wants to be the only game in town, or at least compete directly with the largest ones. Hardly anyone dares to invest in real freedom of choice.
@raucao the premise of moxxie isn't that federation doesn't work. The premise is that one can't build a system which is 1. Decentralized 2. Secure/updatable/protocol can change 3. Massively adopted
Email prove him right too like xmpp. Because it's impossible to update email to add E2EE. That's the whole point of the article (by the way email also fail at decentralization since gmail and hotmail are now too big: they can block anyone out of the network).
Moxxie is for now right
@lutindiscret @hyc @liaizon Wrong on all counts I'm afraid.
Email is still decentralized, GMail is just one of hundreds of thousands of email domains.
I use end-to-end encrypted email every day. Some providers like Proton or Tuta encrypt incoming email and don't keep unencrypted email around, and they'll also auto-encrypt outgoing mail where possible.
Lastly, OMEMO is fairly new in XMPP, and while it took a while to gain widespread adoption, it's supported by all popular clients now.
@raucao @lutindiscret @hyc @liaizon@wake.st
#xmpp is super, but also check out #deltachat, which easy-to-use #e2ee like #signalmessenger, but #decentralized because it runs over #email (and #chatmail) servers.
@lutindiscret @hyc @liaizon It's a Silicon Valley mindset above all, and that's where the Signal folks come from.
@raucao we both want the same thing. I acknowledge signal team has a culture not hostile to the gafam like we do and I could agree cloud might not be necessary.
But let's admit that we are numerous people always yelling at them for decentralization like it was magic. Like it would solve everything.
We most must admit that the decentralized fail regularly and there might be legit reasons for that.
@lutindiscret @hyc @liaizon That said, encrypted groups on XMPP still suck, when not everyone's on each others' rosters already. However, the architecture will be much easier to use as a base for MLS than e.g. Matrix.
There's a reason I"m still using a text editor that was originally created in the early 90s, same as most people on the Internet are still using E-Mail in some capacity. Both are now considerably enhanced with new protocols and functionality. I think XMPP will be similar.
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