I mean, these ain't like in the old days where a few Megabytes got you #Pidgin and other Multi-Protocol Clients of the old days where everyone had to implement bespoke, custom and incompatible and *often completely undocumented, proprietary * protocols like #ICQ, #AIM, #SIPE, etc.

  • Nowadays all these do have some kind of #WebApp or Web Interface one can just login (because *none of them do proper #E2EE with #SelfCustody of all the keys!) so this should be way easier these days: All they do is do HTTP(S) GET/POST so the most critical part is to attain credentials like a #Login #cookie and to basically run a console on i.e. #Firefox to reverse-engineer the #API...

It just makes me wounder: Are modern messengers these days complicated or do the people who have the talent to write such a #MultiProtocolIM chosen that this is stupid and that like myself they'd never touch that shite in their life and make peace with it?

  • And I'm not talking about specific #API limitations like #Discord uses to force people to use their garbage client, but like #WhatsAppWeb and others...

And it's not like people and espechally businesses are unwilling to pay for good tools, cuz not only is HootSuite still around, but @tapbots, who made the excellent TweetBot nowadays make @ivory, an excellent #ActivityPub client with focus on #Mastodon that people are willing to pay a #subscription for!

  • And from what I could see from users who pay for it, they are not just happy, but it also looks and feels better than #TweetDeck in it's golden days...

https://tapbots.com/ivory/

Like: There's not much of a technical reason something similar to @zulip 's #TUI - based client could exit.

If people can build #bots for shite like #discord, #Telegram, etc. then why not make an actually good client ???