Mastodawn

Aral Balkan Oct 29, 2022

Even if you run your own instance, like I do, you have no #privacy on the #fediverse.

Only I get to read the direct messages received at my instance but I have no control over who sees the direct messages I send to other instances.

So, again, until end-to-end encryption is mandated by the core protocol (ActivityPub), remember:

Treat all posts on #mastodon / the fediverse as public and use an end-to-end encrypted messaging app like Signal if you want to have private conversations with people.

Luna Saphira Dragofelis 🐱Oct 29, 2022

@aral Other messenging alternatives with end to end encryption are Matrix and XMPP. Those two are even decentralized like the fediverse.

@LunaDragofelis @aral Must we always have this conversation? XMPP and Matrix will unfortunately never reach mainstream. And this post is quite clearly aimed at the mainstream. Signal has the best chance to succeed in this space, by a wide margin too.

"XMPP and Matrix will unfortunately never reach mainstream"

Define "mainstream",

@LunaDragofelis @aral

Oklahom-sky

@selea @dusnm @LunaDragofelis @aral I kinda hate how we measure a technology's success by "mainstream" or how many people uses it. It doesn't say anything about how useful a technology is itself.

@selea @LunaDragofelis @aral @dusnm Virtually nothing would change if the entire world used XMPP versus if no one used it. It would still remain the same, just as with ActivityPub arguably.

@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea If a tree falls in a forest and nobody’s around to observe it, did it fall at all? You can have the most useful technology on the planet, but if nobody’s using it that itself renders it useless. We don’t need alternatives, we need the alternative, singular. Too much choice is paralyzing. Focus on Signal, because it’s familiar to what people already use.

I really dont understand that argument in this case tbh,

@dusnm @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea I wish we had a universal standard but that's why technology is awesome! Lot's of different ways to do different things. No one is perfectly satisfied with a universal standard and there will always be someone who will complain.

It's why we have XMPP, Matrix and IRC. It's why we have ActivityPub, Pump.io and OStatus. It's why we have mp3, ogg and flac.

Not a single one is perfect on its own.

pump.io

Well said,

@dusnm @LunaDragofelis @aral @selea People will inevitably invent new things, just for the fun of it, even if they are not useful or popular. That's why Matrix and XMPP matter too, even if they're not "mainstream"

@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea The point is that most people are satisfied. We’re talking about communication here. Nobody uses WhatsApp because they particularly like it, they use it because all of their contacts use it. So yeah, it may be a bummer, but people prefer one big centralized platform over a distributed one.

Oh I have meet plenty of people that uses whatsapp and they genuinely like it.

@selea @dusnm @aral @LunaDragofelis My own family uses WhatsApp, my attempts to get them to switch to Signal has failed sadly.

@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea It’s a catch 22. Nobody will switch to Signal because their friends aren’t there.

@dusnm if nobody bothers to switch to CIAgnal anyway .. why shouldn't i try to have them switch to something actually good and federated in the first place? in fact xmpp or matrix have one more friend there than signal: me.
@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

@bonifartius @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea CIAgnal, funny. I'm very skeptical of federation. Not because it's not good, it is, but because people ultimately don't care. And Eugen is very right when he makes Mastodon hide the decentralized aspect of it as much as possible. You don't sell people on technicalities, you sell them on community.

@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

@dusnm
if you are skeptical about it, why are you even here? just use twitter, it's what the people use!

we will be stuck in the mediocre world of the lowest common denominator forever. so many good ideas died because of this reasoning, especially in IT.

@bonifartius @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea The community is smaller and more attuned to my needs and interests. That's the number one reason I'm here on Fosstodon.

Unfortunately, we need to design systems with the lowest common denominator in mind if they are to have the broadest appeal possible. There have been and indeed still are people who design systems that cater to elites in whatever field, so finding your niche shouldn't be an issue.

@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

@dusnm
i don't get the reasoning that things have to _match_ the already existing taste and knowledge of people.

some time ago, people were first using whatsapp, or telegram or android or an iphone. they just learned how to use those things.

if something else requires learning, people will learn it if it has something in exchange. things like "cloudflare is broken, again, but i still can send messages here, cool".

if we are stuck in perpetually replicating commercial software, we will forever fail. we don't use our greatest strength that we don't have to amass "sales".

look, the normies managed to ruin everything even when NOT using linux. the _idea_ of "normies will use this" gave birth to so many things (consolekit, pulse, systemd, etc.) that are technically unsound, it's not even funny anymore.

thus i'm heavily opposed to cater to their needs. either people want to use good tools, or they don't. not showing them in the first place is the wrong choice.

@bonifartius @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis

@bonifartius @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea I want a world where my grandma can use the technology I help create. I'm not against people learning new things, but it's my idea that we can streamline the process until it becomes intuitive for most people.

My mother in law uses Element/Matrix, and finds it very convenient.
Calls work, video-calls work, 1:1 chat works, group chats work.

She is not technical, but has understood the concept after a 3 minute explanation.

@dusnm
i think that the problems software solves can't be made easier infinitively. at some point making things "easier" means cutting functionality. you can optimize the representation of a problem (and solution), but going further will change the problem.
@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

@bonifartius @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea I agree in principle. But I would say that if cutting functionality helps make the core of what the program is meant to do more intuitive then I'd certainly consider it. I myself use Vim for almost all my typing, and that's fine, but I can't expect my grandma to go through the trouble of learning it, just to write an email. See what I mean?

@dusnm
i do see the comparison, i'd argue that instant message protocols are a bit different: you don't choose a tool which has no influence on others, but on everyone using it.

people receiving the mail can read it in a web mail UI or in mutt. if there just is no federation in a messenger, i have no choice but to use a single server.

the editor example is pretty good: you can write a mail with notepad or with vi, as the interface is "text". just to compare, you can't have features like "doesn't break when cloudflare breaks" or "can't be taken down completely by governments" with centralized protocols.
@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

@bonifartius @dusnm @oklomsy @aral @selea And that's where user manuals used to come in. Up to Windows 7, there was one included directly in Windows itself. I think it was called "help and support", I only know it was called "Hilfe und Support" in the German version.

A feature doesn't have to be immediately intuitive to use, it only needs to be easy enough to learn quickly by reading a user manual.

Something that pisses me off about pretty much all software is that it just assumes a familiarity level. This sucks for my mom who is still very unfamiliar with her smartphone, but all the functions just have a symbol without a description. This makes helping her very difficult, especially over a phone call: "You have to press the arrow button" "No the other one"

@dusnm @bonifartius @oklomsy @aral @selea I honestly find XMPP not very difficult to use. The only major difference is usernames including a server domain, but normies should already know that from email.

Also, services don't need to be immediately intuitive to be usable by normies. There used to be a thing we called a "user manual", but apparently those things have been forgotten because capitalist corporations have become too lazy to write them.

khw✅Oct 29, 2022

@dusnm
I Don't agree. Not any more. If it is easy to do, people will opt for the David Not the Goliath. And If there is an alternative, that doesn't sell my Data...why shouldn't I use it. I think it is about usability.
@bonifartius @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

@khw @LunaDragofelis @selea @oklomsy @bonifartius @aral Not sure what you're trying to say? Do you think people have some kind of bias towards the little guy? Is that what David is analogous to here? On the topic of usability and freedom, Signal is very usable and respects both your freedom and your privacy.

khw✅Oct 29, 2022

@dusnm
Yes, that was the Point.
And I use Signal myself and Like it. So my Point ist: we need to try it...who, If Not the people who are some how techsawy
@LunaDragofelis @selea @oklomsy @bonifartius @aral

4223 Nov 19, 2022

@bonifartius
YMMD "CIAgnal" 🤣
@dusnm @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

@dusnm @oklomsy @aral @selea Nobody has to "switch" from using exactly one service to using exactly one other service. It's very much possible to use multiple services at the same time. For example, I use four currently, not counting twitter and fedi DMs: (From most preferred to least preferred) XMPP, Matrix, Discord, Whatsapp.

getimiskon

Oct 29, 2022

@oklomsy @dusnm @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea I got my mom to use XMPP for some time. She told me it was easy to use. Unfortunately, her phone couldn't run Conversations for some reason, which couldn't let her use the voice/video calls function I had on my server at that time.

4223 Nov 19, 2022

@oklomsy
Parts of my wider family use WA. They chat with us only via #xmpp.
@dusnm @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

jordan Oct 29, 2022

@dusnm @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea not everyone is worth communicating with. we should probably be a little more discerning on who we connect with. just because "everyone" is on something doesn't mean i want to talk to everyone.

@wagesj45 @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea The more people are on a platform the more chance that people you do want to communicate with will be on that platform. It's simply how we humans work. We're social animals, we don't want to miss out on things. Chat platforms are no exception.

@oklomsy @dusnm @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea https://xkcd.org/927

BrBr.Prime Oct 29, 2022

This forever

xkdc.org does not load for me atm, but I guess it is that IRC comic

@oklomsy @dusnm @aral @LunaDragofelis

@selea @bryanbrake @oklomsy @dusnm @aral https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/927:_Standards

there's a website that explains xkcd comics and since they include the actual comics, they're effectively a xkcd mirror

🌸🌹2ck 🌱🐇Oct 30, 2022

@selea xkcd is a .com... @bryanbrake @oklomsy @dusnm @aral @LunaDragofelis

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Oct 30, 2022

@selea No, #xkcd927 is the "let's create a new standard to replace all these standards" one. =)

@aral @dusnm @bryanbrake @LunaDragofelis @oklomsy

BrBr.Prime Oct 30, 2022

@clacke @aral @selea @dusnm @LunaDragofelis @oklomsy you lost me a 'i wish there was a universal standard...'

beta3 Oct 29, 2022

@dusnm @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea Imagine the situation that I want to move a conversation I started with someone from Mastodon to an end-to-end encrypted alternative. I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with giving them my private phone number to contact me on Signal, even less so if this is in a professional context.

Signal is excellent, but is mainly meant talk to people I know (family, friends, ...)

@beta3 @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea Yeah, neither would I. That’s why I keep an entirely separate phone number for professional correspondence. Signal could fix it by introducing usernames.

beta3 Oct 29, 2022

@dusnm @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea Usernames for Signal would be great, but that's unlikely to happen, as far as I understand.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that both Signal and Matrix have very different use cases for me. Matrix and XMPP are more similar from my perspective.

@dusnm @oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea

Raven9 Oct 30, 2022

You might check out Session. I think it is an improvement on Signal in that although it uses similar encryption standards it does not require any sign up or phone number and it uses onion routing to mask ip addresses.
https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android

@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis @selea Is it useful if nobody’s using it? See, I can move goalposts too.

I may live in a bubble, but 90% of my contacts use it.
So it is "mainstream" for me

And to add to that, they use it extensively too on their communication with their friends

sj_zero Oct 29, 2022

That's a great point. Who cares if someone we don't know uses a social technology? As long as the people we know use it, we're good.

And the flipside of that is that if enough of the people we know stop using some big tech solution and move to open distributed solutions, it doesn't matter how many users are here or there, the people who count are where you need them to be.

Dušan 🇷🇸Oct 29, 2022

@selea you probably do because 90% of my contacts don’t even know Matrix/XMPP exists and once they get inteoduiced to it, they don’t really bother switching. People use what people they want to talk to use. If that’s Matrix/XMPP they’ll use it but if it’s not, it’s not very likely in my experience that the whole group would switch to a different platform. Usually there shoud be a “boss” that says which platform is going to be used, I’ve seen no other way.

4223 Nov 19, 2022

@dusan
Thats how it works. Reach me via #xmpp, SMS, mail, phone or not.
Everyone is the boss of its own freedom of choice.
@selea

Alexandre Oliva (moved to @[email protected])Oct 30, 2022

100% of my fedi contacts are on fedi
weird, that, ain't it? :-)