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Why Signal over Jabber/XMPP? (piefed.world)

submitted 1 day ago by TurkeyDurkey@piefed.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Over the past few years I have gone through a bunch of different apps and protocols to find the best one for "securely" communicating with my family and friends.

I ended up with the amazing XMPP protocol and my family/friends frequently use its clients to contact me.

Monal for IOS and Cheogram/Conversations/Quicksy for Android. The android app I install depends on if I can get F-Droid on their phone or not.

It's been great with OMEMO encryption and the clients/apps available for XMPP. But sometimes I have issues introducing people to it.

Jabber (friendly name for xmpp) sounds silly to say. The clients all have weird names. And after trying the Signal mobile app it feels more focused than what anyone in the XMPP community has whipped up.

But the capabilities of XMPP makes it better.

Signal Cons (immediete)

Centralized
Single app
Phone numbers

XMPP/Jabber Cons

Picking server
Apps are sort of less friendly

What really scares me about Signal is the centralization. Any nerd can easily host an XMPP server these days. But Signal from what I've heard really wants us to use their server.

If XMPP gets more attention I'm sure we can get people supporting projects and creating better apps.

I keep seeing people recommended Signal instead.

This is a bit of a tired ramble. What I wanna know is why anyone is preferring Signal over XMPP apps. I assume it might be not knowing about it. Tell me what you use to message people.

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[–] JoeBidet@lemmy.ml 5 points 15 hours ago (6 children)

Many people will tell you you have to sacrifice your principles because interface, because "normies" (which is an elitist way of telling you that non-elitist people are idiots....), etc. I say: stick to your dreams!

[–] pathief@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago (5 children)

It's not elitist, it's realist. They don't want to install Signal just as much as I don't want to install Facebook messenger.

Yes you can nag people but it will more often than not have the same effect as when people try to convince me to install Facebook messenger.

[–] cdzero@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I find this resistance weird. (From the "normies", not the Signal users)

Most of them have phones filled with all sorts of crap that they download willy nilly, yet they only seem to put the walls up for Signal.

[–] pathief@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

They can say the same about me, right? I have so many communication apps on my phone, why do I draw the line on Facebook Messenger?

Most likely you're the only person they know on Signal and it makes more sense to them that you move to Facebook rather than moving their entire friend-sphere into Signal.

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