Lance R. VickSep 19, 2025

A communications tool must have censorship resistance (decentralization), anonymous signup without requiring a phone, and have an official way to obtain binaries signed by the community instead of by corpos that can be forced to insert backdoors.

Signal fails on every single one of these criteria and that is why we must stop recommending it to our friends and family who have a very limited tolerance for technology changes.

Choose decentralization.

Use matrix, or make something better.

Show threadRoamin' ChemicalsSep 19, 2025
@lrvick Is there a reason you choose Matrix over XMPP? I did some research on Discord alternatives a while back. I was way in over my head, but Matrix had some red flags for me. It seemed more centralized, harder to host servers for, have security holes, share unnecessary info between federated servers (chat logs, for example) and be run by crypto bros. XMPP, while a little less accessible atm, didn't seem to have these issues. Am I off base?
Show threadLance R. Vick

@roaminchemicals Matrix has IMO much more modern/competitive clients, easier federation, mobile battery usage, better key verification UX, better interoperability with other services, and much more work on protocol investment for things like scale and metadata protection.

XMPP is just a very bulky protocol by comparison IMO, reflective of its 90s origins.

But also, matrix is compatible with XMPP, as it is with most protocols, via bridges.

I would sooner use XMPP than Signal though!

Sep 19, 2025 at 6:06pmWeb
Show threadRoamin' ChemicalsSep 19, 2025
@lrvick Thanks! Yeah, usabilty and modernity were some big positives I noted at the time too. I had heard it was *worse* when it came to meta data protection, though. Maybe I should look into things again. Matrix is more popular than modern XMPP, so I guess I'm going to hear more criticism of it just based on that.
Show threadLance R. VickSep 19, 2025
@roaminchemicals I am not aware of any outstanding metadata protection issues with matrix vs XMPP but if I am wrong on that by all means let me know.