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

@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.

@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

@oklomsy @aral @LunaDragofelis

@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.

+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 Oct 29, 2022

@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.