Over the past few years I have gone through a bunch of different apps and protocols to find the best one for “securely” communicating with my family and friends.
I ended up with the amazing XMPP protocol and my family/friends frequently use its clients to contact me.
Monal for IOS and Cheogram/Conversations/Quicksy for Android. The android app I install depends on if I can get F-Droid on their phone or not.
It’s been great with OMEMO encryption and the clients/apps available for XMPP. But sometimes I have issues introducing people to it.
Jabber (friendly name for xmpp) sounds silly to say. The clients all have weird names. And after trying the Signal mobile app it feels more focused than what anyone in the XMPP community has whipped up.
But the capabilities of XMPP makes it better.
Signal Cons (immediete)
- Centralized
- Single app
- Phone numbers
XMPP/Jabber Cons
- Picking server
- Apps are sort of less friendly
What really scares me about Signal is the centralization. Any nerd can easily host an XMPP server these days. But Signal from what I’ve heard really wants us to use their server.
If XMPP gets more attention I’m sure we can get people supporting projects and creating better apps.
I keep seeing people recommended Signal instead.
This is a bit of a tired ramble. What I wanna know is why anyone is preferring Signal over XMPP apps. I assume it might be not knowing about it. Tell me what you use to message people.
i agree the bubble color trash is shitty and manipulative, but i’m unaware of any baddies using open XMPP at any bar for their messaging.
Cheogram offers a phone gateway. They don’t even know they are using XMPP.
We still probably show up as green bubbles though. Might have given the baddies the ick.
Not a real thing, you just have high bodyfat and poor eye contact skills. Hope this helps
Just an unrelenting FOSS agenda and weird aversion towards social media 😭
If you avoid technical stuff a lot of people are pretty understanding of not having socials. Instagrsm ks HITLER NOW! Everyone jokes abt it. Way I do it is I just post hiking photos on Insta and other stuff. In order to avoid booting it up yourself, it can be automated with IFTTT (proprietary but so are the datamining services you use it to reach so who care??). Problem is being responsive to notifs but I just check half of them every other day so people don’t think you died and hit like
Yeah people have been talking (real life) about their breaks from it and thoughts on leaving the social media sludge whenever I say I don’t use that stuff. It’s refreshing, but I still reject sharing my number except for work and maybe a baddie every now and then. Wish I didn’t even need to pay for one even for how cheap it is.
You know if Movim really takes off I admit that would be amazing because it’s like a hardened facebook. Public photo albums are important to people
Any good mobile apps? I’d love to have a place to share updates with my friends like social media does. Integrated with XMPP makes it all the better I’d say.
I try to get people to add me on musicbrainz and link up music services to it. It’s cool bc you can funnel music player program listens, funkwhale (which is activitypub!), scloud, spotify, yt music, apple, all of their ʜᴏᴛ ɢᴀʀʙᴀɢᴇ right, but it still works with open source shit. It can absorb lastfm which a lot of ppl have hanging around. None of this solves the reality of being at an information disadvantage vs someone who plays weird games with IG likes. But are people like that worth the stress anyways??
But if you get each other’s music recs and can dm realistically what else do you need? Am i boring? Lol
Right? Although I’d love to communicate with everybody in my community and be reachable on the ready, do I really want to give up my values for people who don’t care to understand them? If you wanna contact me outside of face to face, then use what I use. And it goes for the other way around too. Not worth the stress.
does it work with whatsapp, telegram, fb messenger and insta contacts? i didn’t find it from a quick google, but i’m sold if that’s the case. i mean, that’s what baddies are using.
Matterbridge works with some of those, but I doubt anyone wants to talk to a relay bot. Just directly get people’s real phone numbers and run the Insta from your home PC in browser. All of those apps are cancer and even in a separate profile on Graphene or some shit, I would feel like a dirty bastard.
Oh, since you mentioned Telegram, I ought to mention that it’s totally possible to puppeteer your account on there so it looks just like you are using the real app. If a lady asked me to use TG or Signal I would unironically assume she knows drug dealers 😭
It does, but that kind of thing defeats a lot of the purpose of leaving these apps in the first place. Same with bridges that work in a hacky way. I usually sandbox these apps and hope for the best.
I consider FOSS third party clients an improvement (but not a solution) in most of these cases btw, so i’m very open to alternatives that are practical while keeping my semblance of a social life.
Yeah if you want to use Signal and TG, Molly and AyuGram are a bit better than stock FYI
til about ayugram, thanks for the rec, ill try it out.
do you happen to know of anything similar for whatsapp?
None whatsoever sorry. I got made fun of as a Westoid for mentioning Whatsapp though, apparently the cool kids are on Viber now.
it’s hugely popular in my global south country, but i think they are more proactive in blocking third party clients. i hate it with a passion.