I am really confused why not more people consider switching to the Conversations XMPP client (or the blabber.im fork).

It has all the features comparable to WhatsAPP/Telegram/Signal/Matrix etc. but is fully libre, e2ee, decentralized and by far the most privacy preserving. And you can easily use a XMPP Desktop client like Gajim or Dino with the same account.

And there are tens of thousands local and non-profit XMPP servers to use and self-hosting a XMPP server for your and your friends & family can be easily done on a RasberryPI from home or really cheap VPS (contrary to Matrix).

There is really no comparable alternative out there, so it is really baffling that it gets recommended so rarely.

  • @jelbana@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    I would recommend Quicksy for most people that I communicate with rather than Conversations. Whatsapp/Signal have demonstrated that phonebook contact discovery is quite effective in getting the network effect by easing the burden of sign-up and adding contacts.

    Personally, I’m using Conversations, and then gauge by whether or not I’m likely to lose the interest of a friend by adding the extra step of signing up on a server and then manually adding contacts before I decide which of Conversations/Quicksy to recommend.

    I wish there was an iOS Quicksy equivalent, all the iOS xmpp clients lack the polish of Conversations and the ease of sign-up of Quicksy. Unfortunately, for most of my friends on iOS I’ve resorted to using Signal until something better emerges.

    • poVoqOP
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      43 years ago

      I don’t recommend Quicksy as I disagree with the phone-number use, but sure, it is Conversations made to work with phone-numbers, even by the same developer.

      As for iOS… generally iOS should be avoided, but there are supposedly two relatively nice XMPP clients for it: https://siskin.im/ https://monal.im/ (I never owned a iOS device, so no idea how they hold up in praxis)

      • @jelbana@lemmy.ml
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        33 years ago

        I also disagree with phone-number use, but there’s a trade-off with what we want everyone to use and what we want to personally use. Phone-number based signup is more effective for most people to sign-up and it’s not possible to compete with that no matter how much you explain why it’s worse.

        I agree with avoiding iOS, I wouldn’t buy an Apple device, but I can’t do anything about my friends and family who use Apple. I’ve found Monal to be better than Siskin for OMEMO and push-notifications (anecdotes from a friend on iOS who puts up with me insisting on using xmpp). That said Conversations is more feature complete and nicer.

  • @adhoc@lemmy.ml
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    53 years ago

    Our smartphones come with conversations. It’s by far the best choice in our opinion.