Ok, but what is XMPP?
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Denshi explains the basics of XMPP: The future of decentralized messaging.Taken from a presentation I did on 2023/10/23.This presentation is made using Suckl...

I recently saw Alex’s video about XMPP and I got curious.

I am using Element and Schildichat a bit, trying Element X and curious about the new Development here. It seems vibrant, they rewrite stuff in rust, the Apps are fancy and all.

But I tried Conversations and it seems based too, has transparent encryption, it is damn fast, usable, supports groups and files and all. Probably doesnt use the latest fancy Android SDKs but it seems solid.

I was surprised about how fast it was, as Matrix drastically varies per server. But also I found many dead communities, and in general I dont see XMPP at all, while many Projects (if not using Discord, bruh…) have a Matrix room.

How secure is OMEMO in todays standards? Or OpenPGP, compared to Matrix or Signal Encryption? I heard it also has rotating keys and all.

There are other things, like permission systems, chosen federation, privacy, bridge support and more, that are interesting. Are there advanced modern WebUIs for XMPP you like?

I saw that it uses up waaay less resources, why is that? Really, is “simply encrypted mail” somehow worse in an important way?

Similar to IRC, where I never found nice usable apps for my taste, I thought XMPP was deprecated, but that doesnt seem so?

What can you tell me about XMPP, is it modern, secure, privacy friendly?

  •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
    17•8 months ago

    XMPP is much more popular for private messaging, so you don’t have many large public group chats like on Discord (and lesser extend Matrix). It can do it, but clients are not really optimized for that to be honest.

    You can btw learn more on https://joinjabber.org

    As for the specific questions on e2ee: OMEMO as it is currently implemented in most clients is very similar to Signal in security, but like Signal it does not encrypt metadata. There is an updated OMEMO standard that does encrypt metadata as well, but it hasn’t been adopted by any popular XMPP clients yet. However both versions are significantly more secure than Matrix’s MegOLM, which has chosen to sacrifice a lot of security for user convenience IMHO.

    XMPP is actively developed, but it doesn’t have much funding for the open-source efforts, so it lacks PR and some things don’t develop as quickly as what you might be used from VC funded for-profit companies like Element/matrix.

    I like the Movim webclient, but most current users seem to prefer the native clients for XMPP.

    XMPP uses way less resources because it was designed to scale to billions of users for chat, instead of being some over-engineered failed experiment to use a DACS for chat, which really isn’t a good idea and never was.

  •  electric_nan   ( @electric_nan@lemmy.ml ) 
    9•8 months ago

    XMPP is too fragmented with all the addons or whatever they’re called (edit: XEPs). Chatting with people on different servers, or even different clients is a crapshoot whether basic features like encryption are enabled. I have a lot of hope for Matrix as they work out the bugs.

    •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
      5•8 months ago

      Try using Matrix with a non-synapse / non-element client setup and you will have as much if not more fragmentation issues. Heck, Synapse doesn’t even follow the official Matrix standard, so things break all the time on other Matrix servers like Conduit.

      XMPP had a lot more time to iron out federation issues between different implementations, and it shows.

      E2e encryption works more hassle free in my experience with XMPP as well, at least for private chats and small groups.

      •  electric_nan   ( @electric_nan@lemmy.ml ) 
        2•8 months ago

        I’m basically still ‘testing’ both of them out. Neither is good enough for me to lobby my friends to use. I use Cheogram for XMPP, mostly for it’s integration with SIP/jmp.chat. Years ago I spent a bunch of time on Movim. I’d be very happy for XMPP to be a consistent experience.

  •  EngineerGaming   ( @EngineerGaming@feddit.nl ) 
    9•8 months ago

    I am hosting a two-person XMPP server now, and it’s pretty light on resources. Matrix, however, I am not even sure my VPS would even handle: I’ve seen multiple people talk about how their servers would explode when someone tries to join a large room. And also there’s an issue of every participating server storing chat history/media: my disk is small, I need it for the media on my site!

    I am also concerned about how overly prevalent the central matrix.org server is.

    •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
      9•8 months ago

      Complete BS, sorry to say. XMPP is mainly targeting a different use-case so the feature set is not 1:1 comparable to Matrix, so in some areas it has significantly more features, in others less.

  •  thepaperpilot   ( @thepaperpilot@beehaw.org ) 
    4•8 months ago

    I’m also still interested in the xmpp vs matrix debate. I’m using matrix ATM because it seems more actively developed and used, but I know some people still swear by xmpp. Ultimately I really just want a decentralized alternative to discord, but beyond that I feel like I’ll just want to go to whichever alternative has the most users, since that’s pretty useful for chatting software.

    I’ve heard feedback that matrix doesn’t seem to be very united, with different groups implementing different competing features proposals etc., which does seem to be a pretty big issue.

    I’m also pretty optimistic about a lot of the new stuff being built on matrix. I recently became aware of Commune, which is about making sections of matrix servers web searchable, and that sounds incredible - one of my biggest issues with discord is how often it gets used as effectively game wikis, collecting all these guides and information that’s only accessible through a proprietary discord account. No anonymous search.

    •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) 
      5•8 months ago

      Matrix is probably closer to Discord if you use that mainly for public group chats. But actually you will be surprised how nice IRC can be for that as well, including modern looking webclients.

      XMPP is more of an replacement for WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram right now.