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Chat Apps
(kbin.run)
I use the apps my friends use but it gets tiring to keep up with so many.
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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Yeah, there was a nice period when Pidgin could easily handle all the chats. Then providers siloed their apps 🫤
That was the time when all the apps were standard XMPP. It didn't have proper encryption back then. WhatsApp is still XMPP nowadays, but excluding federation and non-standard implementation on Meta servers and so on
OTR predates all the commercial platforms adopting XMPP, so that's not exactly true.
Was OTR a protocol where the server had zero knowledge of the unencrypted content? Or was it basically like SSL?
OTR is E2E, it's the direct predecessor of OMEMO/Signal on which they are both based.
Sure, but now you show me all the clients that supported OTR back then 😜 - or now, for that matter. Besides, OTR doesn't work in multi user chats. OMEMO does, and support for it is still not exactly widespread...
Most popular clients supported OTR back then.... Pidgin, Gajim, Adium, bitlbee, Psi, you name it.
And that's at a time where absolutely no one did E2E, even SSL wasn't a given.
Yes OTR* doesn't do group chat, but now you're just moving the goalpost.
*There has been a proposal in the works for years and years, but OMEMO stole a lot of it's traction, and the last nail in the coffin was the arrest of Ola Bini in Ecuador as he was one of the main contributors.
You seem to not get that OMEMO is directly based on OTR.
Fun fact, iMessage is also XMPP based!
My brother in Christ do you know what fun means
Federated XMPP is fun yes, defederated XMPP is, indeed, not fun.
Also I'm no Christ's brother, thanks. Beelzebub maybe.
So is WhatsApp, Zoom, Jitsi
Had no idea about Zoom!
It's kind of crazy that all these services use it, and on the federated side of things, Signal killed it.
It also powers the communications / presence on many gaming avenues as well like Fortnite, League of Legends, & whatever Nintendo is using for notifications + online status (assuredly a lot more games).
XMPP is old, stable, & massively scalable for industrial applications -- while maintaining decentralization + efficiency & allowing for extensibility like OMEMO encryption which is covering most folk’s chat use cases. Since the XMPP foundation don’t put budget into marketing & hype, a lot of folks weirdly assume it’s dead or not being used. It’s strange to me how folks seem more interested in RCS & Matrix despite their histories/ownership/flaws rather than embracing what is already good.
Well said! I really miss having a huge roster on XMPP
We can start it up again. Time to nudge in the next Lemmy AMA to allow XMPP addresses alongside Matrix. You’d be surprised how little things like that can nudge adoption & pique curiosity.
While that's true, I think the people who care have inherent issues with the lack of social network graph anonimity sadly
Yeah, XMPP is great and all, but the client side is a big old mess, everything is full of friction and missing support for feature xyz. Have you tried using XMPP on iOS?
Conversations compliance test has brought most clients into an acceptable base to where most basic chat/audio/video needs are met, so if you are comparing older legacy clients then the experience will be different. The XEP system means everything is optional & can be pitched by making a spec & seeing who uptakes the idea. It also means the bar to create your own server is absoluetly minimal since everything is an extension which means you could build one in a weekend which is great for those learning to code since the barrier to entry is extremely low if Conversations isn’t the goal.
IDGAF about Apple since you have to have a wad just to publish an application on their proprietary store & the EU didn’t do a good enough job so it’s expensive to open alternative stores like F-Droid while also being antagonistic towards sideloading as well as PWAs (not to mention needing to buy their overpriced hardware to build/release applications). Heck, you can’t even publish a GPL-or-similar-licensed app on their store. This is a giant slap in the face to free/ethical software developers & probably why the clients aren’t in a good state; if you aren’t trying to make money, why would you develop in an ecosystem that is entirely hostile for you to develop in?
You can bridge to all of the apps in the image from Matrix
Or Slidge
I actually tried pidgin maybe 6 months ago just for kicks if it could handle whatsapp, signal and telegram, and whaddaya know, it could. It was ugly as hell, but it could be done.
For whatsapp, my experience with Pidgin was terrible. Stickers had to be downloaded as photos, group chats would only show up once someone sent a message, contacts would only show as the full international phone number, all existing chats were horizontal tabs, like a browser.
Yup indeed, it wasn't a pleasant experience. Self-hosting Matrix with all its bridges is kinda nice tho (although a bit lacking).