Signal
www.jwz.org
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Because of the ongoing fucktastrophe, the cries of "Use SIGNAL!" are constant and unavoidable. And I get it, it may be the least-bad option in a sea of terrible options. If, that is, you choose to ignore the advice of "don't use your phone for that shit" (the Stringer Bell Rule). But out of curiosity, because I haven't been keeping up, has the Signal Corporation addressed: The fact that they ...

Is there a better alternative? I don’t see anything conclusive in the link on that front

Conversations is very simple

breadguy
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412d
  • matrix if you want cloud storage for conversations
  • jami or briar if you’re okay with p2p
  • simplex for the most secure cryptography and “just works” better than p2p

Why do you claim simplex has the “most secure” crypto? Why is it more secure than the standard double ratchet everyone else uses?

breadguy
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312d

it is using double ratchet but heres the most recent tob. the fact that they use distributed self hostable relays and no user identifiers is more secure imo

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Last time I tried SimpleX, you had to scan a QR code to go from Desktop to mobile and vice versa, any chance of them changing that? Otherwise it did look promising.

breadguy
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512d

yeah you can only use one device at a time because simplex doesn’t have accounts, just devices. but you can make another account per device and add them to your chats

Wowww that’s bad design

breadguy
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312d

yeah it’s annoying, but they’re pretty committed to the no user id thing

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davel [he/him]
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912d

I sure don’t know. SimpleX is suggested, among others: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html#good-alternatives

Could you explain/elaborate to a know-nothing (me) on the following from your link?:

Caveats of federation: Metadata leaking

When using federation, Matrix’s room states (containing a lot of Metadata) get replicated and stored indefinitely on every homeserver any user connects with or connects to. While this is a feature for enabling distributed chat rooms, it comes at a serious privacy cost.

To avoid this, you can either disable federation, or make sure that your users signed up with no linkable identifiers other than their user names.

The author of that essay (@dessalines@lemmy.ml) is one of the main devs of lemmy, so you’re asking in the right place lmao

poVoq
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612d

Matrix is not really a chat system, but rather a distributed database that pretends to be a chat system. As a result all servers participating in a room get a full copy of the room metadata all the way back to when the room was created, which is a serious privacy issue.

This is not a general problem of federated systems though, and XMPP for example basically only shares the metadata that other participating servers strictly need to function.

@easily3667@lemmus.org
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12d

How…do you think chat systems with storage are supposed to work? They store data. In a database

What specific fields are shared by matrix but not xmpp?

The main difference is that in Matrix, a chat’s history and media is stored indefinitely on every participating server, while on XMPP it’s only the duty of the one “hosting” it. And to my understanding, in 1-to-1 chats, the server doesn’t even retain the messages after delivering them, since there’s a separate module for “syncing” the history between devices (that you can set the retention time for).

poVoq
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212d

Yes in a local database, not a distributed one.

The main difference is that XMPP (like most other federated systems) is based on passing messages, so if a new server joins a chat, it gets send messages from that point onwards.

In Matrix that is different. When a new server joins a chat it exchanges the entire database for that chat, and for DAG consistency reasons this means all the metadata since the chat was first created, often years ago.

davel [he/him]
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412d

I’ve never looked into how Matrix works at all, so I can’t really speak to that.

That could work, it looks like it was a lot of features like reacts and video calls. How easy it is to setup and ‘plug-and-play’ will determine whether I’ll be able to convince people to use it

sunzu2
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112d

It is still in early stages but the bones are good.

I would not advise for people who expect shit to just work.

Maybe next year. A lot of progress since last time I tried it.

It’s like a politician, “Look how bad the others are” and then not proposing anything better (because at this moment, there isn’t).

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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