Threads for CynicusRex
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Public offices using open standards should be the norm.
It is sad that this isn’t the case, and thus still makes the news.
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Public offices using open standards should be the norm.
Exactly. Ever since I can remember I couldn’t comprehend why governments, even the army, so willingly use social media, plaster their logo on their website, and so on. It’s such an obvious bad idea. I mean, why would one willingly make oneself dependent on massive for-profit corporations with a history of scandals every fortnight.
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…so willingly use social media…
Because that’s where the people are. If your goal is to reach, or be available to, as many people as possible, then using social media sites is necessary (though, I would also argue, insufficient). That being said, I agree that governments shouldn’t allow their data to become trapped in walled gardens and the like, hence the “insufficient” bit.
Edit: As an example, the county I live in posts notices and such on Instagram. They also post the information on their web site, but honestly, I only see them on Instagram. I don’t want them to stop doing that just because Instagram is problematic in various ways. It still exposes me to interesting info that I wouldn’t otherwise go out of my way to find.
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I’m still sad about the state of messengers. One one hand you have Telegram and Signal which are two walled gardens with a closed-source server. (Signal being slightly worse as the author does not want it to be packaged for fdroid, and released a few versions without publishing the source code prior to integrating his cryptocurrency-scam in it.)
On the other hand, the decentralised alternatives are miles behind WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal. Jami just does not work for me and my friends (messages are not going through) and is a battery killer. (Messages are not being received) Tox has one of the worst UI/UX I’ve ever experienced (let alone push notifications being broken) And Matrix’s support for E2EE is not widespread.
I appreciate the community effort, but unfortunately I still use Telegram :( .
I’m not sure it’s fair to place Telegram and Signal in the same category, at least not if E2EE is important to you.
The vast majority of Telegram’s chats are stored in plaintext on their servers. Group chats cannot be end-to-end encrypted, and you have to manually start a secret chat between two people if you want E2EE. In spite of this, Telegram continues to be seen as a secure messenger – which is why a 2017 study found that many Telegram users mistakenly think their chats are end-to-end encrypted when they’re not.
I did not realise this and now it makes sense to me that they can delete group chats.
Yes. Telegram has to be used with over mitts, I agree. I don’t do any group chat, and only secure chats.
I have no expectation that Telegram is actually secure. I just find it moderately interesting it’s one of the few modern IM services with open client APIs.
I’m with you on the Telegram and Signal, though I still use both for some contacts. What has been working better for me, though, was setting up a hosted Snikket instance and then I got my family using that. It’s XMPP/Jabber (with OMEMO for the e2ee, which is based on the Signal protocol), and actually has good mobile clients. It’s one of the few ways the iOS family members get consistent notifications and experience. Might be worth a try if you’re ever up for trying another one.
matrix works great for me.
People keep saying this, but I don’t know when it’ll actually be the case. Every time I try it, I get disappointed by mediocre clients, resource hogging server, and inadequate moderation tools for groups.
I tried matrix about 3 years ago I think, it worked, but it wasn’t great. In fact I self-hosted a matrix server, and while playing it filled my server with garbage from IRC-bridges, etc… So after one year or so, I uninstalled matrix, and just used a self-hosted IRC server, and for my group of geeky friends it was ok.
Then, after a while, IRC show some limits, so we’ve tried to use matrix again, about 1 year ago, and there were a lot of progress. The client is a lot better, the server too, I just forgot about it, and it “just works”. The e2ee user interface is a lot better than a few years ago.
So if you haven’t tried matrix in a while you should really try it again. Really, now I think matrix is ready.
conduit.rs has been running flawlessly for me, for a couple months now - way less resource-hungry than the Synapse stack (albeit, with some missing features).
If you haven’t tried element in, say the last 3-4 months, then you aren’t up to date.
I have and it’s still not great. The interface is a bit confusing (i.e. the multiple levels of hierarchy for chat, the weird spaces thing that’s trying to paper over federation, etc.) and lacks this je ne sais quoi other clients have that makes it feel wrong for lack of a better term.
just wanted to say: matrix/element has come a long way. Due to it being used across orgs without federation (work vs family) I’d say the biggest downside is that there is no recommended way for multiple accounts on one device (especially mobile). Otherwise it works great.
It REALLY has. But sadly I think the fact that @acatton did a whole ‘state of messengers’ and didn’t even mention Matrix is a great example of how it’s gaining mindshare, but VERY slowly and not with non technical users.
The clients are IMO finally ready for that to happen, now we just need more people to actually try the updated versions and figure out how good it can be.e
Meanwhile sadly 99% of the communities I actually want to chat on are Discord or Slack :(
If you’re ever in the mood to try again, I suggest exploring Snikket.
I use prosody xmpp server with Conversations from f-droid on mobile. It works great for me and my friends and family. It is also very fast and easy to setup. Server to server works flawlessly so I can connect with others easily and without creating an account.
Can you provide more context or links around Signal’s cryptocurrency-scam that you mention? I could only locate a Verge article, but nothing more technical. Thanks.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments
This is using Mobile Coin which is basically a pump and dump by Moxie Marlinspike:
I hope this answer your question.
Thank you. Yes, it does.
I know it wasn’t your intention, but just to clarify, this makes it seem as if these three are of similar quality. However, Telegram is miles ahead of WhatsApp.
This is pretty valid though. F-droid’s whole build process is really strange. It also isn’t built with security in mind.