this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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A more general chat platform will really want end-to-end encryption which IRC doesn’t have. Matrix & XMPP offer decentralized rooms so you don’t have to create an account & join each server to chat, but rather your server can connect to another server.
You don't have to solve every problem in a single application. If you need privacy, use iMessage or Signal.
Public chat is by definition not secure, anyone can be sitting in the room logging, so it's not that essential as long as client-server uses TLS. Modern IRC does have SDCC chat, but not all clients will use it, so stick to secure messengers.
iMessage doesn’t exist outside the US in practice. Signal is centralized, requires a SIM and a Android or iOS primary device (i.e. you must have a phone & it must use the duopoly OS) making it a low recommendation from me.
TLS is fine for an open, public room, but not all chat rooms are public tho. Folks DM each other too an a chat platform & their talks definitely shouldn’t be un-E2EE as it probably shouldn’t be the server operator’s business.
I know what you are saying, but also why not? In the case of XMPP, it is meant to be extended to solve any communication task provided someone can engineer the theory into practice (which is usually a money limitation not a technical one).
If you can't afford an iPhone, that's tough, but I live in the US where it's 56%, and around the world it's 28%, which is not "doesn't exist". And in any case Signal exists for the others. Yes, if you use a freecycled GNU/Linux phone with not-sold-in-Shenzhen wireless chipset not supported by any carrier so it has to be hardwired to ethernet, you'll have a harder time.
And if you do try to do everything at once, you fail at everything. Which is what happened after Google EEE'd and crushed XMPP, it's unsupported in full by anyone. There's no money in open source networking, it's near impossible to fund the people who work on critical infrastructure, let alone new toys.
Meanwhile, there's a system that's been working for 35 years.
What an L-ass take. Nobody is stating IRC is bad, but stating that it’s flawed for a entire swath applications (encrypted chat) & at that rate you could say e-mail & mailing lists are older & could serve the same purpose (see what DeltaChat is trying to do).
If you think folks should be forced into Apple or Google products just for instant messaging you are a goober since chat doesn’t require that level of lock-in (see IRC as you noted existing & working before phones). Some folks don’t even want phones for being annoyances or don’t like a series of monitoring radios/sensors on their person phoning home at all times & making them get one just to talk to you due to you not wanting to pick a platform with broader reach is a dick move. …& that’s without getting into the class issues of telling folks “just buy a smart phone” ̇
XMPP isn’t crushed either. It’s used massively in commercial applications, especially in the video game industry that need… a presence & messaging protocol that is also extensible to their product needs. Extension & maintenance happens all the time from these applications opening up parts of their code bases for feedback/adoption. Has XMPP waned in personal usage post-Google’s dick move, sure, but it didn’t die & if anything has been gaining in popularity as folks look for chat alternatives with a large feature set & are self-hostable + decentralized to prevent lock-in--especially once they see how Matrix is too expensive to run.
You made an obviously incorrect claim, and now you've doubled down on "nobody should have a phone or computer", which is… no longer in reality. Thanks for not having a productive conversation.
PLONK
Incorrect claim about what? That Apple’s chat system has very minor usage outside the US (+ Canada)? Last I checked, the majority of the population is not American… with my specific phrasing “in practice” holding true. Having a phone & having a computer are two separate things due to Google+Apple’s control. They do not want to let you use the device as a general compute device & almost nobody can use it for general compute so one could definitely prefer one & not the other since they unfortunately, in practice, are two separate categories. You should be able to chat with a phone & without a phone, with a personal computer & without--any platform that requires you must use one or the other is a bad technology.
Awful take