Some will curse me out for discussing decentralization and freedom. I am NOT saying the average person should be concerned with CIA spying. What I’m saying is that one should promote decentralized internet infrastructures that empower the individual over corrupt institutions, even though this threat model likely does not apply to you. XMPP is just as easy to use use as Signal. This is the same as saying you prefer Monero over Bitcoin.
If you use Signal messenger, you have to trust the Signal foundation, which uses Amazon’s AWS for the cloud. So you’re trusting CIA military contractors. I am NOT saying that Signal is a CIA tool. What I’m saying is that you are trusting and obeying a centralized authority, as opposed to being able to run code on your own server. And this contributes to the centralization of the internet and a loss of freedom.
Signal supposedly hides metadata or who talks to whom, with a system called “sealed sender”, where it puts who sent it inside the encrypted packet. However, in a paper published by NDSS, headed by Ian Martiny, these university researchers found that Signal’s “read receipts”, which lets the sender know that the receiver got the message can be used as an attack vector to analyze traffic because it sends data packets right back to the sender. In as few as 5 messages, their team identified both participants in a conversation with a replicated version of Signal’s client.
The US Military funded Signal and Briar’s development, but yet they use XMPP. XMPP is often neglected even though it’s the most secure, private, fast, and reliable framework for end-to-end encrypted messengers.
In this animated video, it discusses how XMPP works, and why it’s the best: https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/xmpp/
Monero’s official chats are on Matrix and IRC. Some will curse me out for posting this as they prefer the commercially backed project Matrix, but the Element Matrix client is objectively slower, and it’s harder and more expensive to setup your own server. We should discuss concepts and ideas without attacking me as a person. If you disagree, state what facts you’re disputing.
I don’t think that is an unpopular opinion in this sub lol
>but the Element Matrix client is objectively slower,
there are many alternative matrix clients outside of the element. You can check out https://iamb.chat , which is a TUI matrix client written in rust.
>and it’s harder and more expensive to setup your own server.
I agree matrix homeservers use more CPU and RAM. However, there is an alternative matrix homeserver written in Go which is called Dendrite. Its system resource use manageable for a personal server.
There is also another client written in Rust, called conduit. I haven’t used it, but I hear it is lightweight, too.
I don’t agree that it is harder to setup a Dendrite homeserver. The internet is awash with such guides. Here’s one: https://landchad.net/dendrite/
All in all, I don’t hate xmpp. But matrix is “good enough”. It has lots more users, many github repos that I am following has matrix rooms for help & discussion. Furthermore, working with matrix’s end to end encryption is a lot more smoother than doing the same with xmpp.
Matrix is “good enough” in decentralization and privacy, and much more easier to use than xmpp.
@SummerBreeze You felt the need to point that out…
Isn’t Mastodon a decentralized social network, the very app we are using on, the thing opposite of twitter that is scarily at the hand of a company instead of a community. 😅
