Matrix has bridges for every other chat service, so all your friends who refuse to switch don’t have to.
I’m resigned to friends and family being almost impossible to get off WhatsApp. Despite being Meta it is also quite difficult to enshittify. If they manage it, I might be able start a conversation but until then it has to stay.
For everything else Fediverse related I’m using Matrix as most Lemmy business happens there (Lemmy uses it for secure DMs so it makes sense). I will try and move people across from other chat platforms to Matrix on an ad hoc basis.
SimpleX is the best alternative right now, email is a very bad protocol
with these its more about whos using it
Yeah. Bit hard to switch messenger apps when they don’t talk to each other if nobody you’re talking to switches with you.
I’ve tried a ton, and DeltaChat came close, but there is no edit option for messages, since under the hood, it uses email. The apps on both iPhone and Android also had issues with notifications. I convinced a few family members and friends to use it and then had to convince them again to move to Signal. Lost a few of them in the process.
The point of my story is to say… If you think you’ll have a hard time convincing people to get off WhatsApp/Texting, just go to Signal. It is much more mainstream and at least it isn’t Facebook.
Basically it’s an Open source Whatsapp, but you use Email, instead of a phone number
Never heard of DeltaChat why not signal??
It’s a good one (Signal as well, though). My favorite design decision was to tie it into the email ecosystem, so if anyone tries to block it, they will have to block email, which their business buddies won’t be happy about.
Some more here:
Because Signal is not decentralized nor anonymous
Not federated, but definitely anonymous. All Signal messages are E2EE, and Signal can’t even access your messages. They literally have a page where they list every time they’ve been asked by the government to give info, and they can’t. https://signal.org/bigbrother/
Wait that’s really funny
so I found it interesting and checked it out. the protocol is all well and good but the problem is social. I’m simply not going to send people my delta chat Id and ask them to message me there instead if they have delta chat installed. I had the same problem with session messenger.
when I meet someone irl I’m trading phone numbers. not asking if they have app X installed.
this might be useful for open source projects where you can use ur delta chat id instead of ur email. but it’s not something I would use unless it’s a requirement to join some community I wanted to.
the problem signal solves by tieing accounts to your phone number is contact discovery. thanks to user IDs you no longer have to share your phone number with people u want to chat with, and can only share your user id
plus signal guarantees the metadata is encrypted. is the same true for delta chat?
Fragment it’s the first time I hear about Delta chat
Did anyone tell the WhatsApp users?
How can we tell them if we aren’t in Whatsapp?
Join obv. 😜
Try meeting more people.
Eww
@[email protected] currently I try to get my Employer to the fediverse. He would use TikTok to promote the profession with the help of trainees
You want them to shill to the fewer people here? That sounds bad for both sides.
Well, my only concern is that on the one hand the company is very meticulous about the internal network, but on the other hand messengers such as WhatsApp, etc. are used for internal communication. That doesn’t go together. TikTok is just a new addition.
It’s clear that Peertube etc. don’t have the reach.
there’s also session
unfortunately privacy and usability are inversely related. session is private. I loved it. but I had no one to chat with 😃
I had no idea if any of my contacts were on session or not.
Doesn’t delta use email under the hood, an insecure protocol?
You’re better off using something like Matrix, XMPP, SimpleX or Signal.
Email? So its just encrypted SMS?
Might come down to the metadata, then, like SFTP vs FTPES or GET vs POST.
Sms and email are not remotely the same
I’ve worked with both in my career. Tell me more…
I guess so. It’s encrypted data sent over email from what i understand. Tbf i’d rather trust software built with protocols specifically built for secure and private messaging, and email is known to not be that.
The protocol doesn’t really matter when you send encrypted messages over it like Delta Chat. Signal is not private nor decentralized and SimpleX doesn’t have encrypted group chats last time I tried
The protocol doesn’t really matter when you send encrypted messages over it like Delta Chat
Maybe. My comment was based off of what i understood from the website
Signal is not private
Could you elaborate on this? haven’t heard of this point (is it due to the jurisdiction on a 5 eyes country?)
SimpleX doesn’t have encrypted group chats last time I tried
It actually does now. It’s a very solid choice i’d say :)
You need a phone number to sign up which requires identification in most countries.
Also anyone who knows your username can ping where you are at any time: https://gist.github.com/hackermondev/45a3cdfa52246f1d1201c1e8cdef6117
You are confusing privacy with anonymity. You aren’t anonymous because your user is linked to a phone number, but your communications are private due to how their encryption works.
On the location attack: it is a matter of configuration and your location will be as ambiguous as thousands of miles.
Finessing the terms does not stop them forcing us to give a phone number.
They are right. Terminology is important in this discussion.
Precise language is important if you want to understand and communicate truth. It helps a lot to understand the difference between privacy and anonimity there is a scenario where a person doesn’t care that an adversary knows their id, but does care about the content of their messages. In which case, differentiating tools that provide that particular service requires language to discuss it.
They clearly do care about the phone number.
Interesting, thanks. I think SimpleX fixes a lot of signal’s issues, but the only problem i have that it is funded by VC and quite new.
They are open source and decentralized and indeed there are already a few forks.
Yup that’s why it seems great :) though i haven’t heard of forks. I think i’ll wait a little more till i switch to it, just to see if it gets itself in hot water. It’s too early to tell
Ah so they are just capturing users currently and will have to make return on investment later? That’s a no from me.
Yeah it’s a shame, though i’m going to wait before switching to it to see if it gets itself into any hot water.
So like matrix?
Yea but not in vc debt so without the incentive to sell out users
What VC money has Matrix taken? Genuinely curious
30 million dollars https://element.io/blog/element-raises-30m-as-matrix-explodes/
You can argue that element is not matrix but you’re fooling yourself. Others even have to look at how element implements stuff instead of following the matrix spec
Good to know, thank you for the link
It’s email, adapted to a chat UI.
Oh that’s good.
I’ve often wondered how could I make my instant messaging less instantaneous, while giving a new app access to my banking emails.
If you struggle making more than one email address, this is not for you.
Right? I did try Delta many years ago, and I really recommend using a new email account for it.
You can now also choose to just be assigned a new email account when you start using Delta Chat (only drawback is that you can’t send unencrypted emails with that email account so you can’t use it for anything other than chatting)
Oh, cool. TBH I don’t think that’s a drawback, just customised to the very specific usage. So you get a [email protected] email or something?
You can choose any chatmail server just like when you sign up for lemmy you can choose which instance you’re gonna have your account on. And you can also run your own instance and allow people to sign up on there.
I’m not going to lie, “chatmail” made me snort 😄
Using mail protocols for chat always seemed like a natural, pragmatic solution to a problem that people have been overthinking for decades.
Back when I tried Delta first, it was a bit janky (can it really be 10+ years ago?), so I’m glad they’ve smoothed out the kinks and getting people onboard more easily.
