go on then

How complicated is a federated messenger? Because it feels like matrix is the only one but there's always an issue

As long as most rooms of the entire matrix network are replicated on the matrix.org homeserver

Is this a dealbreaker for people though?

It feels like there could/should be a good modern chat protocol and voice protocol and you just pick which interface you want to use, much like email currently does, except for chatrooms.

I'm not who you replied to, but there is a big stack of ansible playbooks for it that make it pretty pushbutton. They primarily use docker. This is what I used and I got it setup in like an hour.

Add voice to IRC. ‍️

For me, the reason why Delta Chat hadn't caught up on me is stickers. There's a sticker picker on desktop, but not on mobile, and its behind more settings. Weird that it doesnt do it like WhatsApp where stickers are added to personal collections (favorites) that only sync between accounts and can be added manually; it's not necessary to make it like Telegram or Signal where you can add a collection from a repository.

For chatting it is really enough. Like email.

There is not much they can do about it short of shutting down the entire server. Due to how matrix functions internally any sufficiently large federated homeserver replicates most of the entire network.

There is: XMPP

yeah I did the ansible. You just fill out a config file & point it at any Linux server with python installed and it’ll set things up for you

Good idea. That makes me wonder if voice over IRC is a thing. I feel like there might only be four people who know how to use it, but I bet I would enjoy hanging out with those four people.

Edit: Poe's law applies, apparently:
https://github.com/asiekierka/voirc

That last part is the "problem", I just need something to text and send memes and files, but convincing the people around me to leave animations and stickers behind would be impossible.

I've been using Keet for a couple of months now, really like it. Still in beta, but you can ask questions to the devs in the open chat rooms and they actually give you sound answers

Also there's Jami which looks good, but haven't tested it

There is -- jabber and jingle. And for a ver-ry brief few weeks, Google's jabber/jingle worked openly with Facebook's, and everyone could message each other. And then BOTH arbitrarily broke it with some sparkle-junkie resume-bait software 'up'grade and neither worked with anything else after that.

It was glorious.

modern

But i also feel like xmpp got feature creeped. Not to long ago, basically every messenger spoke its own subset of xmpp, basically.

Honestly, I get why one would be discouraged by signal, but as long as your threat model is not "NSA and mossad have a price on my head", I think it is still the best non-federated alternative. I'd rather take a flawed messenger with well regarded encryption than a beta version that nobody with time and crypto knowledge ever looked at.

It's not any worse than the differen't feature support levels of different Matrix clients. But especially on Android, XMPP has nice modern clients with all the features you would expect, including a/v calls and reactions/stickers.

The main issue right now are up to date Windows desktop clients, but on Linux desktop there are some good options.

Here's Matrix CEOs answer to this article: https://lobste.rs/c/jekh0n -- good discussion in that thread in general

Well... Matrix. I don't think it requires self-hosting? It's E2EE and there are plenty of public servers.

I find it really frustrating that supporters of Open Protocols appear to live in cognitive dissonance of both wanting to be "used by everyone" and "to be a small gated community".

You can't keep money out forever and with that does come influence which I know. But eventually wouldn't you like to talk to your mother on a protocol you trust, with a client she understands?