I use the apps my friends use but it gets tiring to keep up with so many.
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
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).
Just never interact with anyone. Christ, it’s not that hard people! (This comment doesn’t count.)
We’re all bots. You still haven’t interacted with a person.
i really fucking hate discord.
Why does EVERYTHING have to be proprietary. Fucking capitalism.
I don’t get why people like it either. It’s a mess of chats.
Because it’s the standard for gaming. I use it and would drop it in a heartbeat if it wasn’t standard for every mmo out there.
Friends don’t make friends install chat apps (besides Signal)
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The comment implies Signal is peak chat when it’s flawed & other than maybe onboarding, isn’t superior to alternatives—with the phone number being a pro for onboarding is a con for privacy. It still requires you have an Android or iOS primary device (fueling that duopoly). They don’t want you installing it from a safer space like F-Droid. They still by default send notification metadata to Google & Apple (websocket support exists but drains a fair amount of battery & they refuse to support UnifiedPush). They still ship/use Apple emoji on Android & Linux. It’s still a centralized system you can’t self-host. They still have that missing part of the source code (where I would assume the feds planted something). It still isn’t a good space large chats. And the Electron desktop apps are far too bloated.
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Hi, could you touch on why F-Droid is less safe? Is it because they package (I think that’s the term?) stuff themselves?
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Spoken like a real android user. All my iPhone friends (and especially family) refuse to download any other app, they just complain that I physically can’t download iChat.
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Matrix and bridges
Only if you tell your contacts about it, and explain to them what a bridge does
Why?
Take Signal to Matrix for example. They use different encryption protocols, which means a message sent from one end has to be decrypted, and then re-encrypted with the protocol of the recipient before they can actually receive it.
So basically, your encryption is not very e2e anymore, and the fact that someone can set this up, effectively giving encryption keys to a third party without their contacts being able to do anything about it is pretty fucked.
Oh, and different TOS between different services also come into play.
So if you do this, at least tell your contacts about it, so they can make an informed decision about whether or not that’s okay for them.
Just self host the bridges. I mean if you trust your phone more than your server, this won’t help.
Do whatever you want, but again, make sure your contacts can make an informed decision about it.
I bet none of my contacts made an informed decision about which chat app they are using. I don’t think that this really bothers one of them. Most of them do not know, what the difference between Insta-pms and Whatsapp even is, as far as security and privacy are concerned. And from my point of view I don’t know it detailed enough too. Making an informed decision about a closed source software and as a non technical person is not as easy as you may think. At least from my point of view.
You’re hitting the nail directly on the head.
Not knowing what’s going on being a bad thing is precisely my whole point
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Yup, this is what I do.
XMPP & Gateways
Wait, do you guys have friends?
Yeah yeah we got it you have multiple friends quit bragging about it now
I have a friend that will only chat with me on Instagram. I have his number, but he will never respond to text. He only engages in insta, it’s mildly infuriating.
…Have they ever explained why?
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Remember E-Mail, everyone?
A lot of people around me are genuinely confused when your email is not
firstname.lastname@gmail.com, as they mostly just use it for confirming logins. That’s how bad the situation is.Having an untraditional gTLD like
.xyzmakes many confused as well, especially those not in IT.I recently started using a
+in my email address to make use-specific aliases, so I can more easily filter content from them or see if they’re leaking my email.I signed up for a rewards program in person the other day and the strange look I got:
Do you have an account with us?
Idk
I can look up your email
Ok, it’s foo@bar.com
I don’t see it, would you like to make an account?
Yes, but instead of that email, make it foo+yourcompany@bar.com
Uhhhhh… Ok…
Like “you don’t have an account but you have an email specifically for our business? Sus AF”
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After posting I realized an exported PNG is the same size and looks much better. Enjoy.
You should be able to change the image after posting I think
Interesting. I found the option but despite editing the post and uploading the higher quality image, nothing seems to have changed.
- Have friends
- Talk to them.
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We need a new Trillian or Adium. Fucking anti-interop gatekeepers.
Just stop using the spyware ones?
That leaves you with element, signal and telegram?
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Telegram’s backend is proprietary software and they (very similarly to Discord for example) can just decide to read your chats whenever they want. It’s even worse then WhatsApp in this sense (at least as long as you trust Facebook that they actually encrypt your chats, again, there is no way to know if it’s proprietary software).
And yet no one was able to crack it.
Okay just element and signal then?
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SimpleX looks neat.
Telegram and signal are both central points of failure. Signal can be used with other servers, but the server address is hard coded in the app, so you have to deploy your own app. Matrix servers can keep a channel going even if the channel’s home server goes down. The more home servers there are, the more mirrors of public channels there will be.
