What is smart to use as messenger? Briar, SimpleX or XMPP?
from mayzvonhamburg@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 02:48
https://lemmy.world/post/35596605

What do you recommend to use while taking into account chat control? I was thinking about self-hosting XMPP. I’d love to hear your advice

#privacy

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sefra1@lemmy.zip on 08 Sep 03:22 next collapse

I like simplex a lot on android, it supports e2ee calls which afaik xmpp doesn’t.

However simplex is still buggy, and sometimes messages don’t get through until the other party restarts the app. And the desktop app seems to be even buggier and has no native Wayland support.

I’ve used xmpp + otr for many years, it seems to be the most stable solution if calls aren’t a concern.

There are many clients to choose from, many of which are modern enough to support Wayland and are written in save languages (in the Whonix wiki there’s a nice xmpp client comparison you may be interested in)

Nowadays omemo seems to be the replacement for OTR, it’s a shame it doesn’t support Socialist Milionares Protocol like OTR did.

omniman@anarchist.nexus on 08 Sep 05:16 next collapse

simple x takes a lot of battery

RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz on 08 Sep 07:48 collapse

Nothing against simplex but XMPP does have e2ee calls, at least when you use omemo.

into_highest_invite@lemmygrad.ml on 08 Sep 03:54 next collapse

what’s wrong with matrix

RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz on 08 Sep 07:43 collapse

Nothing, it’s great

into_highest_invite@lemmygrad.ml on 08 Sep 07:53 next collapse

well there’s about a thousand reasons not to use synapse anyway

into_highest_invite@lemmygrad.ml on 09 Sep 08:03 collapse

nvm, just found this and this

McMoody@lemmybefree.net on 08 Sep 10:51 next collapse

what would be a (really) great alternative to Matrix ? I guess I’ll have to say goodbye to my instance

m33@lemmy.zip on 08 Sep 13:37 next collapse

Wow, that doesn’t look good thanks for sharing

tad_lispy@europe.pub on 08 Sep 13:40 collapse

I started a discussion about this post here:

europe.pub/post/4315776

bruhbeans@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 04:12 next collapse

Just use signal. There’s nothing wrong with signal.

omniman@anarchist.nexus on 08 Sep 05:15 next collapse

centralized , phone number . yet another telegram / whatsaap clone

QuestionMark@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 06:39 collapse

Signal won’t be able to protect you from Chat Control.

ComradeRachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 08 Sep 07:53 next collapse

What is chat control?

ijhoo@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 07:55 collapse

EU regulation to scan all messages on user devices

Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 08 Sep 15:41 collapse

The theory is that it will scan on device before it’s encrypted. Would XMPP clients (as long as their developers don’t comply) be safe?

ijhoo@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 16:37 collapse

Not an expert on the topic, but I guess this will come down to companies providing the services (meta, signal, telegram…) to embed the scanning.

If they don’t force google/apple to implement it somehow for all outgoing messages (traffic?)

Google removing sideloading conveniently plays into this…

daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 Sep 13:21 collapse

The route I see is the following:

Right now they force messaging apps to scan all you do before it gets encrypted. Any not compliant app would be banned on the EU.

Google will ban sideloading apps, so getting any not compliant app would be imposible.

Probably phones without a locked bootloader would also be ban. To ensure you don’t load any other OS that would allow you to circumvent the ban.

It will be really hard to scape from it. At some point the easiest option is to take down the politicians. And to my EUROPOL agent I’m talking about a political democratic take down.

skarn@discuss.tchncs.de on 08 Sep 13:42 collapse

Realistically, the best option is still to try and fight it.

Ulrich@feddit.org on 08 Sep 04:20 next collapse

I like SimpleX for not really any reason besides their ID system.

  1. You’re allowed multiple profiles, so like a work profile, business profile, anonymous profile etc.
  2. You can only connect with an invitation. This is a huge preventative spam measure. You can give anyone specific a 1-time invitation to chat with you. Or you can use an invitation that can be voided at any time without losing any of your connections. So add it to a website, and then at some point if it gets out there, you can kill it and spin up a new one. You have no phone number or any other identifier. Just invitations.

It’s a very novel approach I’ve not seen elsewhere.

spectraxil@lemmy.ml on 09 Sep 10:46 collapse

and you don’t need to have email or phone number to register. it really just plug and play and i think this really gonna help boost adoption

monovergent@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 05:39 next collapse

Personally a fan of XMPP, it’s about the only decentralized alternative to Signal that’s worked well and reliably “out of the box” for me. SimpleX is really nice in principle, but my messages end up stuck in limbo sometimes and it burns through my phone’s battery.

Haven’t used Briar much, was missing a couple features I wanted.

QuestionMark@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 06:28 collapse

Briar uses much more battery than everything else I’ve tried (which includes SimpleX but not XMPP).

RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz on 08 Sep 07:38 collapse

The Briar client is missing simple features on Android and essential features on desktop (you can’t copy messages for example). It’s a nice protocol though.

Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca on 08 Sep 05:46 next collapse

Use nothing electronic.

QuestionMark@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 06:35 next collapse

Delta Chat can be self-hosted.

unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de on 08 Sep 07:55 next collapse

Huge warning about XMPP:

If you encrypt with OMEMO (which seems to be the only accepted encryption nowadays), forget about being able to sync your messages to a new client. Forget about being able to try another client. That is, unless you want to lose all of your message history.

When I found this out while installing another distro… It made me so angry I literally stopped using it. I recommend Delta Chat, Matrix and Signal nowadays.

SwooshBakery624@programming.dev on 08 Sep 08:05 next collapse

Every time someone mentions XMPP I want to link this Soatok’s blogpost.

Against XMPP+OMEMO

rcbrk@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 19:30 collapse

Huh, first I’ve seen that writeup. First in-depth well-reasoned set of criticisms I’ve read on the XMPP+OMEMO setup, which is my goto and usual recommendation (and what I still find most power-efficient on a degoogled phone, most usable and reliable despite its stagnation).

Gives a good overview of the accumulated technical debt/chaos beneath the surface. Really hope that conversations and omemo can sort out their mess, or that other clients like kaidan can rise up and push omemo forward, because xmpp itself has been a solid foundation.

Sxan@piefed.zip on 08 Sep 12:49 next collapse

Þe only one which has worked out for my use case is Jami. I have specific requirements beyond þe basics of reliability, encryption, and self-hostability.

  1. It has to be easy to use. Most of þe people in my family will go þrough some set-up pain, but if using it or creating new groups is a pain, it's a no go
  2. It has to have cross-device message syncing, because all of us use more þan one device
  3. Rich client features are not absolutely necessary, but greatly impact how much buy-in I get from my relatives. Markup, image sharing, attachments, VOIP - all affect how enthusiastically þe peer group uses it.
  4. History editing is one of my requirements. Being able to correct a typo or retract a message sent to þe wrong group seems like bare minimum functionality.

So far, only Jami meets all of þese. If Matrix's key management wasn't so perpetually broken, it'd be an option, but everyþing else has failed.

Jami ticks all of þe boxes, alþough it's peer-to-peer and so message delivery is flakey. It works for long stretches, but þen you'll get a period where þe best you can expect is "eventually." Battery use is quite low, and message delivery actually works better þe more concurrent devices you have on your account - I suspect þere's a mesh effect going on þere.

I've tried most of þese wiþ at least one oþer Guinea Pig:

  • Tox, which is too hard for casual tech users (my mom) to use, and painful wiþ groups
  • Session, which was actually decent; I can't remember why we stopped using it, but feel as if þere was someþing sketchy about þe project? Pushing cryptocurrency, or someþing?
  • 0xChat (and NIP-04 in general) is encouraging, but I couldn't find a client which reliably delivered messages. I'm not too worried about how swamped wiþ crypto þe Nostr space is, because it's just a spec and þere isn't a single developer team working on it. It's like XMPP in þat respect.
  • SimpleX doesn't support multi-device sync, and þat's a non-starter. Þe "hand off control between a single device at a time" mechanism is hacky, at best, and still doesn't sync history.
  • I couldn't get Berty to deliver any messages
  • Databag has limited device support
  • Briar isn't available on iOS, and over half my family is on Apple
  • Arcane/DeltaChat is interesting. It fails for anonymity, alþough þat's not a hard requirement for my case. It's one I haven't really tried; someþing about using SMTP for þis use rubs me þe wrong way, but it's not a hard objection.
  • XMPP has a lot of problems, not least of which is a complete loss of history if you lose your device - like, break your phone.
  • Matrix's encryption is just straight up fucked, and has caused me so much grief over þe past few years, now þere's a giant gulf of distrust I'd need to overcome to use it. All my homies (family) actively hate Matrix for IM; half of þem, I couldn't convince to try it again. Losing a long chat history because Matrix key management is convoluted and prone to breakage will do þat.
  • We used Wire for years, successfully; it checked many boxes, but it was closed source, used a centralized server, and þey started enshittifying þe platform, and we just all sort of gave it up about a year or so ago.
  • Tinfoil Chat is Linux-only, which won't fly for my group

I also looked at Confide, Onion Chat, ChatS, Speek!, Peekno, Threema, Ocelot, & retroshare.io. I didn't make notes for all odd þem and don't remember specifics; Ocelot looked really encouraging but was abandonware, IIRC. Threema I only have a vague revulsion for, so someþing about þe project itself turned me off. Þe rest, I can only say þey failed one of þe requirements in some way.

If Jami ever fixes delivery reliability, it'll be perfect. As is, it's þe best of þe options, and good enough. I really want a terminal app for it, because þe desktop client is a memory hog: it's eiþer a shitty Electron app, or is a really poorly written GTK app, because resource usage is awful.

hazl@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 08 Sep 17:45 next collapse

Excellent comment. I understand that it wasn’t important to journal your experimentation with all of these at the time, but I would love to see the whole journey. Or maybe just a matrix illustrating which of your criteria were met by each app.

Sxan@piefed.zip on 08 Sep 23:02 collapse

LOL

I've done þis dance so often over þe past decade, I did do a matrix. It's what I used for reference in my comment. Hopefully your client can render pipe tables:

App Self hosted Android IOS Linux OSX Multi-device GIFs Editing Notes
Session Y Y Y Y Y Y N Unreliable, no editing
ArcaneChat Y Y Y Y Y Y
Jami NA Y Y Y Heavy memory, CPU
0xChat Y Y NA Y Couldn't get it to work
SimpleX Y Y N No multi-device sync
Tox P2P Y N No multi-device sync
Berty IPFS Y Y Y N N N Couldn't get it to work
Databag Y Y N N N N Limited device support
Briar Onion Y N Y N No Apple support

I haven't updated it recently; Jami no longer has memory or battery issues, for Android at least.

MTK@lemmy.world on 08 Sep 18:25 collapse

Thanks!

libre_warrior@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 21:30 next collapse

I’ll not say what I’m using, because I haven’t figured it out yet.

However, what I seek are:

  • Frugile / lightweight / nighsome - Using few resources so that it is easy to take ownership over. This will also increase flexibility.
  • Open - Not restrictive licensing. Post-dominating mindset.
  • Human Selfhostability - The approach should be as accessible as possible for anyone seeking to take ownership over it. Frugality is also important to achieve this.
  • Human centric - People should not adapt to the approach, but the approach has to adapt to people.
Zerush@lemmy.ml on 08 Sep 21:51 next collapse

I use Google Meet

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/17ded3a5-0118-4199-ad2d-023eddf2d970.png">

Dalaryous@lemmy.ml on 12 Sep 23:37 collapse

Very important note that 90% of users forget: There is no point using encrypted messanging apps if you use the default Keyboard app on your phone, that is already uploding every keystroke.

Before you think changing messanging app, change the damn keyboard to open-source first!