The reason why we as consumers get held to ransom by Big Tech is because they are the one’s who create walled gardens of their apps to ensure it is very difficult to leave their service and to maintain any communication with your friends or family who stay behind. They count on that sticky network effect to hold you in place.
The world was not always like this, as we see with e-mail where any app can e-mail any other app. Neither was messaging as it was also once open.
So what we need is a protocol to be broadly supported that will connect anyone to any other app supporting that open protocol, but which allows end-to-end encryption. We need apps to support it, just like Hubzilla which built in a number of plugins to allow it to communicate with Diaspora, XMPP, Fediverse, etc all from one place.
What do we do about Big Tech like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft? Well either they must be mandated by law to build in this protocol support, or we as consumers must start voting with our choices and not make use of services that are walled gardens. Our future lies in an open interoperable Internet offering privacy. The future cannot be walled gardens separating us all.
From the link below the key columns are the License (how open is it for anyone to use without cost?) and End-To-End Encryption (can I use it privately?). From these requirements we can see that the following protocols could be suitable to consider:
- Bitmessage (Desktop P2)
- Briar (P2) but Android only
- Echo
- Jami (Desktop and Mobile P2P)
- Matrix (Desktop and Mobile Federated Client-Server)
- Ricochet (Desktop P2P)
- Signal (Centralised Desktop and Mobile)
- SIMPLE (more phones with SIP?)
- Tox (Desktop and Mobile P2P)
- XMPP (Desktop and Mobile Decentralized Client-Server)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols
#technology #instantmessengers #interoprability #bigtech #privacy
The classic counter-argument is The ecosystem is moving by Moxie: Standardization slows down innovation.
Maybe it is simply too early to standardize on a messenger protocol. XMPP is a proper standard but Big Tech out-innovates it by providing additional features. For example, WhatsApp rolled out voice calls before an XMPP extension was available, if I remember correctly.
In general, I believe federation to be the ultimate sweet spot. P2P is too hard for most people but currently necessary in some cases like whistleblowing. Centralized services provide the best innovation speed. If run as a non-profit it is also ok (e.g. Signal) but ultimately the weak spot is that they are subject to a single nation and especially the US is not the best here with its shadow courts. Another option is to turn them into a government service. That would kill the innovation but something like Twitter does not need no innovate much anymore in my opinion.
No, the Jingle extension to xmpp was about five years ahead of whatsapp voice calls. How many clients (and servers) that implemented it may be a different matter though.
Yes not sure which came first but the good thing to have done for WhtsApp would have been to have helped accelerate the chnage at XMPP in that case so that everyone could benefit. They did start out using XMPP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13219925.
Just not sure why Signal is holding back on eliminating phone numbers for registration and insisting on advertising your number to all contacts.
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True and also another way of ensuring people connect to one another but it exposes privacy a lot.
I think that’s an important point. You don’t need to remember to all your contacts you’re using this messenger. They can just use it with you.
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