Privacy

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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 Pantherina@feddit.de to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Try contributing to the Matrix specs. It literally has a paywall (only contributing foundation members can do it) and basically any proposal that does not further the business goals of Element gets shot down by the overwhelming majority of Element employees or affiliates on the Matrix foundation board.

So while the protocol is open to use, it does not really fulfill the typical requirement of openess in so far that it is also open for contributions and changes.

This is totally different from the truly open standardisation process for XMPP where anyone can contribute freely and no single company dominates the process.

Edit: the VC funding is for Element / New Vector, but that company fully controls the Matrix Foundation.

[–] TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So is the Linux kernel not open because code has to go through review and may be rejected?

Is Gnu software not open because you have to sign over copyright or may have code rejected for ideological reasons?

Guido van Rossum was BDFL of Python until recently and had pretty much final say on anything that went into the langauge. So I guess Python isn't open?

Hopefully the XMPP Standards Foundation doesn't just blindly merge in every pull request that comes their way! I'm sure there have been plenty of people that had to beg and still had their proposal rejected.

You may not agree with the decisions being made about Matrix, but that doesn't mean it's not an open protocol or an open process. In fact it's extremely transparent as another commenter linked to their proposal pull requests on GitHub.

There's plenty to criticize about Matrix. It may be overly complicated and over-engineered. If there is significant VC involvement, then the threat of enshittification is very real. Element is also quite slow in larger rooms and the search is pretty terrible at the moment.

But, it's dishonest to say it's not open. I just don't want other readers to think it's somehow closed, when it isn't. Discord is closed. Slack is closed. Matrix is not.

Also, while being open is a good thing, it's not a virtue unto itself. Visual Studio Code is an open editor but I stay away from it because I don't trust Microsoft to not fuck it up. Likewise Chromium is open but I stay away from it because I trust Google even less.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You do not seem to understand the difference between source code of an implementation and the protocol specifications themselves.

I think you need to read up on that first before we can continue this discussion.

[–] TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, but that's a bit of a rude conclusion to come to considering you know nothing about me or the fact that I've been writing software for over 20 years.

Anyway, I think we've both said our piece and I'm happy to just disagree. You seem like a cool person and I'd rather not have us get upset over semantics.

Take care! :)

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net -1 points 1 year ago

No hard feelings and I didn't mean to be rude, but this was a rather factual observation.

What you are saying is basically because you have 20 years experience of driving a taxi you know how to operate a train service. Those are just two totally different things.