Element isn't perfect, but what's a better alternative? A giant Signal group would be a horrible idea, since everyone's phone numbers would be exposed to the other members (plus there's a 150 group member limit), and Discord is obviously much worse than Element (from a privacy perspective).
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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@sp6 oh i'm not suggesting Signal, though i trust it and use a FOSS client version of it. i agree with you there and would never pitch Discord either, but Element seems much more open to data leakage (bc of the bridges feature) than any other platform and lacks true decentralization (since everyone just uses the main homeserver) and ephemeral messaging, which makes it a non-starter for me.
i think Briar, Cwtch, Session, Simplex, and Tox are where we should be looking, no? or even @syphon over Element if Matrix is what we're set on using (based on privacy policy).
Just a quick glance at all of those:
-Briar, Tox, and Cwtch don't have iOS clients
-SimpleX ~~doesn't have a desktop GUI~~ has issues with big groups (see comment below)
-Session has a 100-person group chat limit
-Syphon's own github states they are "still in alpha and we do not recommend using it where proven and independently verified security is required." Plus, they haven't had a release in over a year, so I'm not sure it's still maintained.
Element (or most Matrix clients) don't have any of those issues. Like I said, it's not perfect, but I see why it's recommended. All decent alternatives have significant downsides
Everyone doesn't use the main HS sure it is alot of people but alot also don't use it
Bridges only work in rooms that aren’t encrypted, I think.
Some bridges support encryption and even if they don't there's a tool to make it so they do pantalaimon
they host on AWS
You're supposed to host on whatever you want.
data collection & sharing practices
Fork it if you want, remove what troubles you.
>You’re supposed to host on whatever you want.
sure, but if the messages are stored on servers you don't fully trust or control?
>Fork it if you want, remove what troubles you.
can't argue with this, except that becomes it's own point of vuln if you're not adept in development or have sec experts vetting your setup, which make this easy to say and impractical to implement
(lol sorry for the spamming there... can't figure out blockquotes)
The only thing a regular person will do on element is lose their key and cry softly into a pillow.
xmpp with omemo hasn't been mentioned but I would be perfectly happy if we all switched to that
@commie ya same. i didn't mention it bc it seems like there was an exodus from XMPP to Matrix for some reason
matrix is VC funded and therefore has a big marketing budget. the XMPP foundation is community maintained and XMPP itself is a public domain standard, so there are not such interests nor capitals investing in it to make promotion.
There hasn't, it's just that matrix gets a lot of publicity and every other day someone falsely claims the death of XMPP or that Google killed it.
i agree with the analysis about the ledger being copied across servers. it seems wildly inefficient and like a major security concern. i actually deleted an account on a FRIEND's server because i joined some pretty-active public channels on onther servers and they found that i was using some not-insignificant portion of their server resources just to log channels i would pop into on occasion.
Element doesn't do shit.
What about IRC or darkirc?
XMPP+OMEMO