Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Matrix vs. XMPP, Security, Privacy, Apps, Efficiency ? (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I recently saw Alex's video about XMPP and I got curious.

I am using Element and Schildichat a bit, trying Element X and curious about the new Development here. It seems vibrant, they rewrite stuff in rust, the Apps are fancy and all.

But I tried Conversations and it seems based too, has transparent encryption, it is damn fast, usable, supports groups and files and all. Probably doesnt use the latest fancy Android SDKs but it seems solid.

I was surprised about how fast it was, as Matrix drastically varies per server. But also I found many dead communities, and in general I dont see XMPP at all, while many Projects (if not using Discord, bruh...) have a Matrix room.

How secure is OMEMO in todays standards? Or OpenPGP, compared to Matrix or Signal Encryption? I heard it also has rotating keys and all.

There are other things, like permission systems, chosen federation, privacy, bridge support and more, that are interesting. Are there advanced modern WebUIs for XMPP you like?

I saw that it uses up waaay less resources, why is that? Really, is "simply encrypted mail" somehow worse in an important way?

Similar to IRC, where I never found nice usable apps for my taste, I thought XMPP was deprecated, but that doesnt seem so?

What can you tell me about XMPP, is it modern, secure, privacy friendly?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm also still interested in the xmpp vs matrix debate. I'm using matrix ATM because it seems more actively developed and used, but I know some people still swear by xmpp. Ultimately I really just want a decentralized alternative to discord, but beyond that I feel like I'll just want to go to whichever alternative has the most users, since that's pretty useful for chatting software.

I've heard feedback that matrix doesn't seem to be very united, with different groups implementing different competing features proposals etc., which does seem to be a pretty big issue.

I'm also pretty optimistic about a lot of the new stuff being built on matrix. I recently became aware of Commune, which is about making sections of matrix servers web searchable, and that sounds incredible - one of my biggest issues with discord is how often it gets used as effectively game wikis, collecting all these guides and information that's only accessible through a proprietary discord account. No anonymous search.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Matrix is probably closer to Discord if you use that mainly for public group chats. But actually you will be surprised how nice IRC can be for that as well, including modern looking webclients.

XMPP is more of an replacement for WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram right now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, for a Discord alternative a web searchable Matrix server might me good... but not for anything private

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It is easy to cook up your own IM protocol, but for interoperability between providers (which is the whole point of using XMPP or Matrix in the first place!) we need to agree on a protocol. The way we agree on protocols is standardization. XMPP is the proper IETF internet standard for instant messaging while Matrix is effectively just another product by some startup with lots of venture capital funding for shiny clients and marketing.

Also, XMPP servers and clients are also a lot less bloated.