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
You should also have Session on that list
getsession.org
Session is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that minimizes sensitive metadata, designed and built for people who want absolute privacy and freedom from any form of surveillance.
Session is an open-source, public-key-based secure messaging application which uses a set of decentralized storage servers and an onion routing protocol to send end-to-end encrypted messages with minimal exposure of user metadata. It does this while also providing common features of mainstream messaging applications
Session is an app not a protocol
Session does run on the Loki protocol tho IIRC and they let people self host and whatnot
“Loki” is a protocol that establishes a user-operated decentralised payments and private routing network using cryptography and peer-to-peer networking technologies. The “Loki” protocol is defined in a whitepaper which outlines the structure and function of the network on a broad conceptual level. An implementation of this concept is written into the ‘loki-project/loki’ software. This software was derived from the Monero project, another cryptocurrency project. The ‘loki-project/loki’ software is completely open-source, and is made available for anyone to use WITHOUT WARRANTY. It is left to users of the software to review its code, assess its strengths, weaknesses, and security, and determine the software’s suitability for their use cases. Contributors and distributors of this software cannot be held liable for any loss incurred in association with its use.
The ‘github.com/loki-project/loki’ software is currently the only known software that is compatible with the “Loki” network. However, anyone is able to create alternative implementations of the Loki protocol, whether these alternative distributions are based on the existing software or not. So long as the rules of the network are followed, users of alternative software distributions can interact with other users on the “Loki” network without restriction.
At times, the users of the “Loki” network may decide to change the network rules in order to meet some end. Such changes are often referred to as a ‘hardfork’ or similar, and if successful, they will render older software versions (or incompatible alternative versions) non-functional on the new network.
So it is open to use but worries me a bit that they can change it and break backwrd compatibility. I do see a difference between Loki and say ActivityPub and XMPP that is established through a standards bodies such as W3C, and incrementally updates.