Hello, I’m doing some research for my family and friends to help them navigate the tech space and recommend them some better privacy focused alternatives. I’ve been stuck with the most important piece: instant messaging.
Ideally I would like something:
- decentralised
- Foss
- Possibly not tied to phone number
- Encrypted
- Not funded by an US or Israeli company
- Fairly easy to use by not tech people
If I manage to convince them, I can’t make them change in a year or so, the alternative needs to be future-proof.
- Signal: is Foss (not completely) but not decentralised (one “wrong” update and we are back to square one) + very much american funded
- Matrix: foss and decentralised but funded by an Israeli company (sorry I really can’t)
- Telegram: phone number registration, not fully encrypted, server proprietary
- Theema: server side not open source
- IRC: no video/audio calls, not encrypted
That leaves me with SimpleX and XMPP, I think (I don’t know much about them). What do you guys use/recommend?
I’m reading [this wiki page].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols?wprov=sfti1#Table_of_instant_messaging_protocols)
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I’m surprised no-one has mentioned Session yet. Open source, not based on phone numbers, decentralised (uses Tor), based in Switzerland, otherwise it’s a lot like Signal. Exactly what you’re after, really
I didn’t understand the cryptocurrency part… is the application doing some mining on the phone??
It doesn’t run on the OG Tor network itself as I understand it - people run their own specific Session Nodes that act as the “tor-like” backbone.
The crypto part is because to set up your own node, you proof of stake a bunch of their coin, and if your node is found to be unreliable or blatantly malicious your stake is locked (or even forefitted? Not sure about that part)
After years of going full degoogle and privacy oriented I found that the best option regarding your criteria is not necessarily the good one. Non-techy people will toss aside anything that’s not as easy to use as GAFAM tech.
IMO “good enough” is often the best way to go, rather than “perfect”.
In the end, Signal is a pretty good compromise (even though your objections are completely valid).
I agree, luckily for me some close friends and family will listen to me and try weird stuff (my mum has successfully been converted to 🐧). I will probably give 2 options: the “good enough” (as you said probably Signal) and the “tech recommended” (?).
Signal is “easy” onboarding, just install and follow a wizard. I still have trouble convincing people to just download the app and try which is the hurdle. Most who bother to try it end up liking it and sticking with it since it’s easy and familiar to SMS but nicer. The people who don’t want to bother just never mention it again, or make up some excuse “won’t run on my phone” (it’s an iPhone) to stop the conversation.
Signal presumably has more users than all others combined. Don’t make it too diffucult. You better might switch them to a messaging app that appears to be useful to their other contacts too, not only for messaging with you and each other. Other alternatives: https://buy-european.net/en/alternative-to/whatsapp https://european-alternatives.eu/alternative-to/whatsapp
I posted on this a while ago. Doesn’t just apply to Signal, but all “encrypted” messaging apps.
Also interesting comments
If I recall correctly, the protocol is funded by an israeli company, but most clients (and I’m pretty sure some server implementations) are not.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect option. Matrix and signal are the least-worst.
No there is no perfect option really but this:
the protocol is funded by an israeli company
Personally, it makes my skin crawl, I really don’t want anything to do with them.
It annoys me too. XMPP is probably your best bet, it’s just very janky.
What about Delta Chat? In my experience easy to get started with for non-techy people. I managed to force my wife and kids to switch to Delta when I quit iMessage and got a Fairphone/eOS phone.
WTF that’s really nice! Do they use just the email protocol? Are they interoperable with email and xmpp?
I really like the list of funds they received on their website. Big 🆙
I use matrix, and it’s very good, where did you hear that it’s funded by Israel i’m curious to learn, about XMPP I heard that conversations is a good XMPP client however XMPP is very fragmented, and some clients adopt protocols and some don’t, like Wayland on Linux
I just googled that as well. The following site has some links: https://hackea.org/notas/matrix.html
I don’t think fragmentation is a big issue in practice. I used it for quite a while and it was mostly fine. And I mean the same thing is true for Matrix. Lots of clients don’t support threads, …or you have to wait for them to implement the new way of fetching attached images or half the images just won’t load… There are incompatibilities with the verification and some libraries, or someone can participate in a voting and someone else can’t… You’d live on a very old room version or someone is inevitably going to complain. And 90% of clients don’t support multiple accounts so I cant differentiate between private and everything else. Then we have Spaces which aren’t exactly mainstream either… I think Matrix is even more fragmented than XMPP. They also had that, but most of those annoyances were solved in many clients like >10 years ago.
Jesus it’s even worse than I thought, thanks for the link.
I didn’t know as well, I just checked Wikipedia. Funded by Amdocs.
I understand that matrix.org organisation is funded, the protocol itself is implemented by nobodies. Just don’t use matrix.org, there are plenty non-political reasons for that. Host your own, like I do.
Looks like there are some problems with data and decentralisation, even if you self host. The link the other user posted is really interesting.
I use a combination of XMPP and Signal. They do the job well enough.
XMPP is rock stable and just works.
SimpleX has a more feature rich client than Conversations for XMPP, but the whole ecosystem is developed by a single company with external funding.
Ok, but xmpp still needs servers owned by others right? Who are the trustworthy servers run by?
You can run your own and even select from multiple different servers you can use, or if you really want to you can write your own, the specs are out in the open. Check XMPP software selection for a start.
Simply use Matrix or Signal. Matrix is fully open source, why do you care who funds it? Open source belongs to everyone.
OS doesn’t belong to everyone. It usually comes with a license which states who and how it can be used. And I agree with OP, I wouldn’t touch it if it is Israel founded.
We can a) pretend I meant it in the literal sense of ownership b) take it as I meant it, meaning it’s yours because you can use it, modify it and the company creating it can’t take it away from you.
You can use it and modify it as long as license permits it. Owner could theoretically enforce the license.
Which you can with open source, that’s kinda its whole shtick. If you can’t, it’s not open source, but source available.
I really don’t trust anything Israel makes at this point. Like I wouldn’t be surprised if the protocol has somehow a backdoor and I’m not that expert I can check myself.
Such a reach you’re almost in space.
Well, the original protocol is from the US, then switched to a UK company, then to some non-profit. It never was developed by Israel.
And yeah, military country like Israel investing money into something their military can use for secret communication - what a surprise.
I get it, you’re not a fan of Israel, but this is ridiculous.
From wikipedia:
The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called “Amdocs Unified Communications”, by Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape. Amdocs then funded most of the development work from 2014 to October 2017.
I’m okay ignoring it, I honestly don’t give a fuck about their protocol, it’s not my company. There are plenty of alternatives.
You might think it’s ridiculous but the country is committing genocide, sorry if I want to sleep at night and have a bit of morals. Jeez…
No, not liking Israel is not the ridiculous thing, but you coming to the conclusion that because they invest money into a protocol, it’s bad.
Matrix (the organisation) doesn’t create the most popular server implementation, nor the most popular client.
And that’s where your hate of Israel gets ridiculous, because they happen to want an encrypted communication software (again, what a surprise for a military country), you lock yourself out of a perfectly fine solution that Israel doesn’t even touch directly at all.
Let’s put it this way, I do believe that matrix accepting money from israel is morally disgusting and I won’t use them. It could be the best system in the world, I am not using it. I’m not asking anyone to convince me, I am already convinced, can we move on now?
Jami is open source, Canadian and P2P (not dependent on a company’s servers).
Have you tried Delta.Chat?
Should tick a lot of boxes
https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html
Unfortunately I had quite some battery drain with SimpleX on Android, so unless that’s fixed by now, I’d recommend XMPP out of your list. But have a look at the messenger-matrix as well. They mostly include technical aspects, though. Not relations with countries. I use Matrix. And Signal for the friends willing to leave WhatsApp behind. But neither of those are perfect at all. I’m regularly having all kinds of small little technical annoyances with Matrix these days, and Signal needs a phone number, which I don’t like at all.
