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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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The fascist noose is tightening the world over thanks to proprietary big tech. We have to escape now while we can to open-source alternatives.
Currently the best self-hostable, private (encrypted) and federated communication platform is XMPP/Jabber, which I recommend switching to as soon as possible.
Armed with an XMPP account, you will be able to log into any open Movim instance, which is an XMPP client that offers 90% of the features of Discord, including group video calls, group texts, and even screensharing with audio (must use a Chromium based browser currently to share the audio). The only feature missing is discord-style rooms, which the dev is currently working on to release as fast as possible.
For a more complete guide to swapping proprietary apps for safe open-source ones, I suggest referring to this post: https://lemmy.cafe/post/18663514
This is a very subjective opinion. I consider XMPP to be useful for small groups that have a knowledgeable admin to offer help, but a poor fit for the unguided public if a rich feature set and long-term accounts are important. YMMV.
Oh no, how did we use it for decades and were even able to talk to Google Chat users.
Your comment is rude and misleading at best.
The thing you're referring to was called Google Talk, introduced in 2005. XMPP was viable for the unguided public at that time mainly because Google Talk and Facebook Messenger were large public XMPP servers, with clients integrated as first class features in the world's largest social networking sites, supplementing the small independent servers to form a healthy ecosystem. This allowed anyone to easily discover the network, sign up to use it, and be confident that they and their contacts would remain reachable for more than a few years.
Google Talk was replaced in 2013 by Google Hangouts, bringing an end to their XMPP support. Facebook Messenger added XMPP support in 2010 and ended it in 2015. Jabber.org, which was the only significant independent host (but still relatively small), stopped offering new accounts in 2013. The healthy ecosystem vanished over a decade ago.
Also, the rich feature set being discussed here includes modern end-to-end encryption (OTR doesn't qualify), persistent message history with multi-device support, voice and video chat, and a variety of other things that were not supported by XMPP back then, if ever.
So no, you were not doing this with XMPP for decades.
You can get most of those features today if you have an XMPP server implementing a pile of specific XEPs on top of the base protocol, and if you and your contacts also use clients with the same extensions implemented just right. This might be great for a small group with a well-informed system admin, or for the tiny minority of people who might stumble into a service provider that makes it easy for them, but the vast majority of the unguided public are not going to navigate those waters successfully, and even those few who do will have no reasonable assurance that their accounts will last longer than summer vacation.
I miss Jabber's heyday, too, but to believe it can make a comeback is just wishful thinking. It doesn't have the support that would be required for that, and there's no sign that it ever will. That's why I don't recommend it outside of small groups.