I use the apps my friends use but it gets tiring to keep up with so many.
Yeah, there was a nice period when Pidgin could easily handle all the chats. Then providers siloed their apps 🫤
That was the time when all the apps were standard XMPP. It didn’t have proper encryption back then. WhatsApp is still XMPP nowadays, but excluding federation and non-standard implementation on Meta servers and so on
It didn’t have proper encryption back then.
OTR predates all the commercial platforms adopting XMPP, so that’s not exactly true.
Was OTR a protocol where the server had zero knowledge of the unencrypted content? Or was it basically like SSL?
OTR is E2E, it’s the direct predecessor of OMEMO/Signal on which they are both based.
Sure, but now you show me all the clients that supported OTR back then 😜 - or now, for that matter. Besides, OTR doesn’t work in multi user chats. OMEMO does, and support for it is still not exactly widespread…
Most popular clients supported OTR back then… Pidgin, Gajim, Adium, bitlbee, Psi, you name it.
And that’s at a time where absolutely no one did E2E, even SSL wasn’t a given.
Yes OTR* doesn’t do group chat, but now you’re just moving the goalpost.
*There has been a proposal in the works for years and years, but OMEMO stole a lot of it’s traction, and the last nail in the coffin was the arrest of Ola Bini in Ecuador as he was one of the main contributors.
You seem to not get that OMEMO is directly based on OTR.
Fun fact, iMessage is also XMPP based!
So is WhatsApp, Zoom, Jitsi
Had no idea about Zoom!
It’s kind of crazy that all these services use it, and on the federated side of things, Signal killed it.
It also powers the communications / presence on many gaming avenues as well like Fortnite, League of Legends, & whatever Nintendo is using for notifications + online status (assuredly a lot more games).
XMPP is old, stable, & massively scalable for industrial applications – while maintaining decentralization + efficiency & allowing for extensibility like OMEMO encryption which is covering most folk’s chat use cases. Since the XMPP foundation don’t put budget into marketing & hype, a lot of folks weirdly assume it’s dead or not being used. It’s strange to me how folks seem more interested in RCS & Matrix despite their histories/ownership/flaws rather than embracing what is already good.
Well said! I really miss having a huge roster on XMPP
We can start it up again. Time to nudge in the next Lemmy AMA to allow XMPP addresses alongside Matrix. You’d be surprised how little things like that can nudge adoption & pique curiosity.
Yeah, XMPP is great and all, but the client side is a big old mess, everything is full of friction and missing support for feature xyz. Have you tried using XMPP on iOS?
Conversations compliance test has brought most clients into an acceptable base to where most basic chat/audio/video needs are met, so if you are comparing older legacy clients then the experience will be different. The XEP system means everything is optional & can be pitched by making a spec & seeing who uptakes the idea. It also means the bar to create your own server is absoluetly minimal since everything is an extension which means you could build one in a weekend which is great for those learning to code since the barrier to entry is extremely low if Conversations isn’t the goal.
IDGAF about Apple since you have to have a wad just to publish an application on their proprietary store & the EU didn’t do a good enough job so it’s expensive to open alternative stores like F-Droid while also being antagonistic towards sideloading as well as PWAs (not to mention needing to buy their overpriced hardware to build/release applications). Heck, you can’t even publish a GPL-or-similar-licensed app on their store. This is a giant slap in the face to free/ethical software developers & probably why the clients aren’t in a good state; if you aren’t trying to make money, why would you develop in an ecosystem that is entirely hostile for you to develop in?
Just never interact with anyone. Christ, it’s not that hard people! (This comment doesn’t count.)
I have 3/7 and I hate it. I wish signal never removed the ability to function as sms
Even if it did, it didn’t support rcs
That’s because Google is gatekeeping the android API for RCS
Wait, I thought Google wanted Apple to start supporting RCS. So that everyone can talk to each other.
So Google is just…trying to strong arm apple to give up their proprietary protocol for their own?
That’s so fucked up.
4/7 here. I’m fine with it. Though sms should be included.
Spoken like a real android user. All my iPhone friends (and especially family) refuse to download any other app, they just complain that I physically can’t download iChat.
As an iPhone user, iChat is mid. I think it’s only in the Us that it is widely used.
Embrace the beauty of Signal now
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Yeah yeah we got it you have multiple friends quit bragging about it now
Remember E-Mail, everyone?
A lot of people around me are genuinely confused when your email is not
firstname.lastname@gmail.com, as they mostly just use it for confirming logins. That’s how bad the situation is.I recently started using a
+in my email address to make use-specific aliases, so I can more easily filter content from them or see if they’re leaking my email.I signed up for a rewards program in person the other day and the strange look I got:
Do you have an account with us?
Idk
I can look up your email
Ok, it’s foo@bar.com
I don’t see it, would you like to make an account?
Yes, but instead of that email, make it foo+yourcompany@bar.com
Uhhhhh… Ok…
Like “you don’t have an account but you have an email specifically for our business? Sus AF”
Having an untraditional gTLD like
.xyzmakes many confused as well, especially those not in IT.Damn I’m over here with like 4 emails
Personal / gaming, the professional one with my name, my collage one, and the new one I made to make it harder to dox me
Never heard of her.
she’s nice. You should check her out
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A chat app for every friend and a launcher for every game. We live in a utopia.
I miss pidgin for the cross platform chat
Libpurple had constant breakage due to proprietary apps having no incentive to keep their protocols stable. A lot of it worked easier then since no one was using e2ee either. Newer gateways exist in the space but it’s a real shame since for a brief time the earlier 2010s, most chat applications were using the same protocol—until they realized it’s harder to capture profits when the garden walls are lowered.
I miss pidgin so much. I tried to use it the other day with Discord and it was terrible. So God-awful.
Try Matrix bridges or Beeper
Random hot take, I’m at least grateful that my wife and I use an app that none of our friends use. Removes the “oh shit did I send that to the wrong person” panic.
Which app?
We need a new Trillian or Adium. Fucking anti-interop gatekeepers.
Omg trillian immediately reminds me of ICQ and MSN Messenger
I have a friend that will only chat with me on Instagram. I have his number, but he will never respond to text. He only engages in insta, it’s mildly infuriating.
…Have they ever explained why?
I really miss how windows phone allowed other chat services to plug in to it, so that you could have a single chat app for all your contacts, but open the individual apps for advanced features.
Same went for Blackberry 10 and its Hub
Just stop using the spyware ones?
Are you even a true nerd if you have so many friends?
As long as those friends have strong and inflexible opinions about chat apps then yes.
- Have friends
- Talk to them.
