Well in this case I just realised over the last two exchanges it wouldn’t be THAT much of a privacy gain actually, even if it does seem to be a big difference. I mean even in the favorable scenario WhatsApp would still see who is (let’s say) v@e (let’s say coming from another “network”, more privacy friendly) talking to inside their network just as they’d see if your phone (let’s say 12345) talks to some users (if you use a gateway/multi-client). Sure, one might argue that a phone number is more “personal” than a (universal, like an email) IM address but IMHO it isn’t THAT much difference, it’s kind of a win something lose something.
As far as presence and everything else is concerned with a gateway at least that’s supposed to run on some always-on machine just by the matrix server (at least this is in current implementation). So it’ll be connected all the time but they won’t necessary have any presence data about you (even if the gateway is supposed to take it from the matrix client I’m sure there is an option to prevent it from passing it to Whatsapp).
Phone numbers leave trails all over the place. An identity, let’s say V@V, which is totally under one’s own control does not and, therefore, cannot be cross referenced to anything else.
I just want to comment on Matrix/Riot (apparently since renamed to Element?).
I used it for a bit along with some of my friends, but messages take up to 7-10 seconds to send on the main server.
As dumb as this may sound as a reason to not use something, it was really annoying anytime anyone wanted to have a conversation. The official reason is that “there are a lot of users” and a fix is “coming soon”, and the company who makes the code for the server also happens to run a server hosting company and (to the surprise of no one) they make it super hard to configure your own server, instead asking for you to give them loads of money for a conveniently pre-configured server, so we all just switched back to telegram.
I honestly don’t know if the paid servers from Element would even fix it (although I know that my own VPS running server software would), or if they would just host the paid ones alongside the public-instance ones to save money.
I haven’t looked into it in a while, but I would imagine this is still the case.
Edit: I just looked at their site and did a test with a friend that happened to just keep the app installed. At least in the US, message send times are still ~5-7 seconds on the main public instance.
Also, I just want to note that having the main public instance be so prominently placed in their app just turns this from a decentralized standard into something no better than telegram encrypted where everyone is just on an instance run by one company, and these load-related issues are just a side effect of this.
I am using my own matrix/synapse server on a raspi (3b+) with freedombox. Until now we are just a few users using this server. But message speed is instantly. Setup was quite easy.
I am using my own server with yunohost on an ancient atom based net top. I’ve tested messages between myself & a test user and results are quick. The problem is that most other users I talk with are on the matrix.org server so performance over all is not much better. Yunohost includes the metronome xmpp server by default and this goes like greased lightning. I encourage xmpp use over matrix use.
I think they (matrix) aren’t AT ALL prepared to run it on a larger scale and the only reason the service is running at all is because it’s used by next to nobody. As there is no local history in the clients (except for some cached blobs) all the clients are having just a “view” on the server and have to download from there everything, that includes all the attachments! I tried to find out what’s the quota and retention policy (it can’t be that they’ll keep everything forever, you could be sending or receiving like 200MBs of pics or whatever other documents 10 times per day every day). Well, there’s no word about that even in the paid “pro” plans: https://element.io/plans-and-pricing/pro . By random searches it looked like there wasn’t (at least a while ago) even the vaguest support in the software for it, just some people putting together some “find” scripts to nuke on the servers the largest/oldest files. This can’t work for any serious use.
I’m using my own matrix server (synapse) on an ubuntu 20.04 with a 2Mbps half duplex home internet link and element on my and my family phones.
The text and audio/video calls are fast and reliable.
Hmm, I was under the impression server setup was difficult. It’s possible that has changed since I last looked at it a few years ago. I’m going to look into setting up XMPP or Synapse and getting everyone to switch back…
I tried to use the prebuilt packages but that didn’t work so I installed it from source following the tutorial in https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/develop/INSTALL.md .
After the installation I had only to make it come up on boot and made my own scripts.
If you need any help, DM me.
I’m a big Matrix fan, because of their focus on bridges, but unforunately they do not have a function yet where you can register and login with your phone nr + finding contacts via your contacts list. THis is a must for mainstream users (moms and dads), imo
I just found this: Quicksy https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/im.quicksy.client/
To my knowledge, this is the only messaging app around now that allows for registering and logging in with your phone nr + finding contacts via contacts list + that is open-source and federated. Does anyone know any others?
After a long time deciding over what to keep as messaging I decided to keep only Telegram and Element (Matrix)
I decided to move away from Signal because they are not so FLOSS friendly, as far as I read.
I keep Telegram just for the easy-plug and play for people that are still bound to a phone number.
And Element (Matrix) is my main bet for definite free / safe messaging platform for the long run.
WhatsApp deleted, account deleted and now hoping that more people migrate to the solutions above, preferably Element.
Hi @Mihira, can I ask you, just out of curiosity, how many of the people you know, use matrix?
I installed it recently and I kept it for a few days, but then I realized that I wasn’t doing anything with it because I don’t know anyone who uses matrix, so I’m curious to hear about the experience of others.
(same thing for xmpp unfortunately)
Personally, I have an account set up for some of these services.
However, for anyone who still can’t fully escape whatsapp (which looks like case for me, for the time being), looks like we’ll be able to log into the same account across devices in the near future.
This potentially means we could set it up on a different device, then use something like Web To Go to use the service without having zuck malware on our main devices.
(It can be done already, but you’d be required to keep this “whatsapp device” online 24/7 in order for it to work.)
Hi @mihira, i now use Matrix, Whatsapp, Telegram and Quicksy. I can recommend the latter: it is XMPP, which is used a lot, + it allows people to register as they do with whatsapp and Telegram and Signal: with their phone number and a confirmation SMS, and then find other XMPP users in their phone book. A big plus in getting mainstream users to an open messaging solution. https://quicksy.im
