start with a discord clone

make it e2ee

make it federated

i feel like it shouldnt be this hard, but I'm not the one developing matrix, nor XMPP, nor the 3rd smaller option you the reader is wanting me to list that I am unaware of

They're taking about switching to Jabber/XMPP, which is what those two bridges are for, and they're saying XMPP servers are lightweight.

It's a bit confusing in context, I'll admit.

XMPP doesn't change very very often, but there's actually tons of XEPs that are in common use and are considered functionally essential for a modern client, and with much higher numbers than XEP-0004

The good news, though, is that mostly you as the user don't need to care about those! Most of the modern clients agree on the core set and thus interoperate fine for most normal things. And most XEPs have a fallback in case the receiver doesn't support the same XEPs.

I'm general XMPP as a protocol is a lightweight core that supports an interesting soup of modules (in the form of XEPs) to make it a real messenger in the modern sense. And I think that's neat! But you can't really judge the core to say how often things change.

I always liked the concept of Matrix, and still actively use it, but there’s some serious jank.

I use Element as well as Beeper, which is at its core an Element client based on network bridging. I'm a big fan of Matrix, but it isn't as approachable as other messaging services and requires some technical know-how to use effectively.

It seems like the Linux of messaging services.

From an outsiders perspective, element has never worked for me and never been stable enough to get anywhere close to discord. Joining servers is buggy AF and Element X is severely hobbied on mobile.

I've been refusing to use discord for about 6-8 months and am often invites to join various discords by IRL friends and online communities. I wish Matrix / Element was a viable alternative but I've never been able to get it working for anythung other than DMs, and I'm already happy with Signal for that honestly.

As a non developer I want to be sensitive to the amount of work involves, and the number of cooks in the kitchen, but the fact that we don't have a FOSS- federated slack / discord killer app is leaving so much interaction on the table.

I've heard of Revolt but it doesn't seem to be there with encryption

Don't fucking clone the godaweful mess that is Discord. Please, for the love of God start with something else.

Counterpoint: this is just some random blogger and you don't need to follow any of their advice.

You got PeerSuite as a newcomer, and a pretty promising one with the concept of not having any servers tied to it at all, at that.

XMPP works, but there are no video calls. Matrix has those, and they are very good. But since it is not possible there to see the online state of my friends (turned off everywhere due to horrible performance), it defeats the purpose. I want to see if they are at their computer, not if they own a mobile phone.

Oh. I did misread that. Thanks for pointing it out!

Signal itself is solid. For now.
The issue is that signal is a centralized infrastructure service that is based in the US.

While it's rather unlikely that something shady is going on and the current administration manages to pressure someone into installing back doors without anyone noticing, there is a growing chance that at some point the Orange Hitler or his cronies aim at Signal - and simply shut the whole thing down in a single sweep.

Which would mean the whole thing is lost - in theory they of course could rebuild a foundation outside the US, but that would also mean they need people not residing in the US (not like Proton which claims to operate from Switzerland and in reality are US based) and find funding there - enough funding to cover the costs and that is not impeded by US pressure.

This is the scenario that makes Signal a problematic candidate - and sadly the foundation is doing nothing against it.

Shit, I had such high hopes.

I am talking about xmpp servers

Yup! Someone else pointed that out to me; I thought you were talking about the puppets and missed that you were talking about Jabber.

My bad!

Subjectivr experience against another. I switched an peer group from skype to matrix when matrix went offline. It was way better than i would have expected. Perhaps the timing was better. The element client seems really good, beside some minor jank(like screen share doesn't work) that was probably waylands fault, its a very good experience.

Does this come with fewer mental health issues than conduwuit? Because I remember the latter had an author that was a... Mtf puppydog? And had 4 years of work experience at like 19? Who claimed that the entirety of the nix, queer and some other communities were waging a conspiracy against her and her users?

Self hosted matrix works great. /thread

Not impossible, although, sadly - any system where anonymity is the prime focus will also invite fucked up shit in addition to legitimate use, without any complicated motives behind it. There's just a relevant fraction of humanity who are, sometimes essentially, sometimes temporarily, messed up fucks. Which is why I think providing ways to combat abuse has to be a high priority for the underlying development of any project like it, unless it explicitly doesn't aim for mainstream adoption.