cross platform chat alternative to facebook messenger?

Open Source@lemmy.ml – 34 points – 12 months ago

I am really struggling to replace facebook messenger / whatsapp for a few casual conversations. My friends and I are all wanting to move away. We are not heavy users of this but need it to work. I think the requirements are:

floss client for android, linux, windows
persistent history across devices
reasonable security
don't need to self host server
can send a message to offline user, they get it when they come online
not tied to or reliant on phone number / cell service
ETA: end user documentation explaining how to set up and common troubleshooting

tried:

matrix: the thing with having to keep track of room keys and stuff is too complicated. every time someone uses a new device it is a ton of issues and we could never quite get it ironed out
signal: tied to phone number, no history across devices
xmpp: similar to matrix the key situation is confusing, also no cross device history
ETA: simpleX: a lot of people here are mentioning simpleX. It didn't come up in previous investigations so will give it a shot.
- ETA 2: It doesn't seem to have persistent history across devices. Clarification?

I actually didn't think this would be such a problem but it is breaking us. we don't need a lot of sophisticated features like voice, video, moderation, 1000s of participants, spam protection etc that seem to be of concern to the projects. just simple text chat.

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Session satisfies all your points. It started life as a fork of Signal, but is not tied to any PII. Synced across devices, everything. iOS, too, even. The only thing it doesn't have is a terminal client, but it's easly days.

I've tried them all; so far Session is the only one that passes the non-tech-spouse test. We were happy sith Wire for a couple of years, but it's been going through some severe enshittification in the post several months.

Edit fixed the fdroid repo URL

so if you click documentation on the session website it brings you to this page https://docs.oxen.io/oxen-docs/products-built-on-oxen/session

I am seeing the words "blockchain", "economics", "token", "instant transactions".... And one click to NFT crypto stuff.

I remember hearing that blockchain tech could be used for stuff other than scams but it is used for scams a lot and this app seems to be related to scam-type activity.

Can someone provide any insight?

a. not all blockchain is bad b. I have neither seen, nor heard, of blockchain or cryptocoins on the platform. If blockchain is being used under the covers, it's not visible to users. I see no ability to do anything with NFTs or cryptocoins in any of the clients.

Session delivers messages more reliably than many platforms; E2E encrypts all messages (unencrypted is not even an option); requires no PII; has a good battery profile on mobile; reliably allows sharing, and has nice QOL features (that my non-tech family members have come to expect) like animated GIF search-and-embed; it supports message deletion and dissapearing messages; it has encrypted voice and video chat.

If there's any blockchain in the stack, then Session is an excellent example of its usefulness.

It's all open-source, too, so audit away.

It's not perfect, of course. There's no CLI client. Because there's no PII, there's no registry, so connecting to people is harder than many platforms, and looking people up, impossible. The desktop client is an Electron app, so it's typically resource hungry. It doesn't yet have sent message editing.

Well I will say that I totally didn't predict crypto would pop up in this thread. Curious.

getsession.org > Technicals > Documentation > Overview

In exchange for maintaining reliable and trustworthy blockchain nodes, node operators periodically receive rewards in the form of $OXEN tokens.

It sounds like what it is saying is that people who host the remote servers are paid in this crypto currency for the service. Cryptocurrency is mainly useful for laundering money and scamming people. I am having a hard time understanding (a) how there is enough demand for this niche chat service that it should play a major role in their little economy, and (b) where the usefulness of this crypto (e.g. value in fiat so you can do anything with it) could possible some in. Other than scams, laundering etc.

After that comes

::: spoiler long blah blah blah about crypto

Oxen was originally forked from Monero, and it’s still based on the CryptoNote protocol. From these beginnings, Oxen has inherited world class privacy and security features — including ring signatures, stealth addresses, and ring confidential transactions. Just like $XMR, $OXEN is fungible, private, and untraceable.

The Oxen blockchain got started in 2018, with its first ever block being confirmed on March 5 of that year. Ever since then, the blockchain has been successfully and securely operating. On October 15 2019, we made the transition to Pulse — making Oxen one of the first ever Proof of Stake CryptoNote projects. The entire history of the Oxen blockchain can be easily viewed via this block explorer. As for the future, you can stay up to date on the project by checking out our Oxen Labs Updates.

The Oxen blockchain also boasts Blink — truly private, instant transactions. Blink allows you to make transactions with all the confidence Monero enthusiasts love, but with a 1 second transaction time. Blink gives $OXEN the potential to be used as a true means of value exchange — not just storage — in a way no other coin can match. :::

It's so... weird... to have all this as the introductory docs. Not a troubleshooting guide or dependency info but all this crazy scam BS.

I see that you are saying this crypto stuff doesn't intrude on the app. Like you are not getting popups trying to scam you; OK. And you think the app is really good. Can the server/app could be de coupled from all this other stuff? Could it be run independently of this fake economy? That's what I don't understand about this "not crypto" blockchain stuff. If it's not crypto, why is the documentation all about crypto instead of normal user or dev manual?

I appreciate the time to answer the question. But I have to be honest this feels icky. Don't you get the feeling something sleazy is going on? At any rate when these people get caught or cash out won't everything vanish?

It's taken me forever to reply because (a) I feel guilty about short replies to long messages, (b) I had to think about this a bit, and (c) I almost exclusively access Lemmy on my phone and I hate typing long messages on my phone. Not an excuse, just an explanation. There are no good Lemmy desktop clients, but I've finally logged in to my instance's web interface to respond to this. 3 months later.

So, yeah. I honestly didn't pay much attention to whatever backstory the software authors were selling; I was looking for a feature set, and Session had it. I got some of my circle using it, and we eventually stopped because message delivery reliability was iffy, and there were enough of some UI issues with (e.g.) attaching photos that everyone drifted back to what we were using before. I'm sure Session will improve, but just for the record, I haven't been using it because of technical reasons.

I don't have an issue with cryptocurrency per se. There are issues with current implementations, but the fact that it's used for laundering money or scamming people is also an argument that can be made for fiat money, but you don't see people saying we shouldn't use dollars because a vast amount of them are used to enable the military industrial complex that is killing people around the world. I haven't read that Bitcoin is being used to fund any of the attempted genocides currently underway -- but fiat money has. People have been scamming people using regular money for far longer than cryptocurrency has existed. A lot of people have lost a lot of money trying to get rich in various cryptocurrencies; do you think more people have lost more money in cryptocurrency than people have lost trying to dabble in the stock market? Have more fortunes been ruined by cryptocurrencies than were ruined by the collapse of the "legitimate" currency of Germany during the Weimar Republic? And what, exactly, is a "fake economy?" If people are willing to exchange goods and services for A Thing -- whatever that Thing is -- it's a real economy by definition. The argument that because the currency isn't endorsed or backed by a government means it's not real seems debatable, at best.

While I think a debate about the relative merits and evils of cryptocurrency is a good thing to have, since the OP topic was messengers, to answer your questions: in the entire time I used Session -- and though today it's still on my phone and receiving messages, although nobody's sending any -- I would not know that the developers behind Session had some grander vision involving cryptocurrency unless it had been brought to my attention here. That they want to improve privacy by using an anonymous method of payment for services -- one not based on the collection and sale of metadata, or on a traceable currency (which all electronic fiat transactions are) seems reasonable. I imagine that, eventually, they'll build something like Lightning into the app, so users can transfer cryptocurrency to other users, or to the operators of their servers. If it ever gets to the point where you must pay to use the service using crypto, then maybe I'd be concerned. It'd be no worse than buying tokens at a video game arcade -- a practice that was around for more than a decade without an indignant uprising.

I think it feels sleezy to you because the devs are also interested in integrating cryptocurrency into the Session ecosystem, and you believe cryptocurrency=bad. I think it doesn't feel icky to me because I've been working as a software developer since long before Bitcoin was introduced; and I understand how blockchains work, and know what "proof-of-work" means and what it implies; and I've watched the evolution of the internet and the growth of the web, and lived through the eternal September; and I saw how email turned from a communication tool for people in higher ed into a way for scammers (and legitimate businesses) to deliver spam. And I believe that a very many people will try to take advantage of other people and take their money, and they'll use any possible tool to do so. But I believe that scamming is not fundamental to the nature of cryptocurrencies in the same way that killing people is in the fundamental nature of a gun, any more than buying heroin is fundamental to the nature of a dollar bill.

It’s taken me forever to reply because (a) I feel guilty about short replies to long messages, (b) I had to think about this a bit, and © I almost exclusively access Lemmy on my phone and I hate typing long messages on my phone. Not an excuse, just an explanation. There are no good Lemmy desktop clients, but I’ve finally logged in to my instance’s web interface to respond to this. 3 months later.

well I appreciate the time and tbh and in no hurry for any of this. I'm glad it was on an account I actively monitor. I also don't have a perfect system set up to keep track of lemmy stuff so probably I miss things sometimes.

The argument that because the currency isn’t endorsed or backed by a government means it’s not real seems debatable, at best.

So as to the nature of crypto vs fiat. Fiat is not only backed by The State, it is created and controlled by The State. I have never done a deep dive but superficially I find the ideas of MMT as explained by Cory Doctow compelling in the context of capitalism

MMT's core precept is that governments first spend money into existence and then tax it out of existence (contrast this with the standard account that says that governments must tax citizens to pay for programs, which raises the question, "How did the citizens get the money to pay for their taxes unless the government first spent that money into existence, given that governments are the sole source of currency?").

I first encountered it on some podcast he was on, it might have been this one but not totally sure tbh.

So in terms of whether it's "real" that is one difference.

People have been scamming people using regular money for far longer than cryptocurrency has existed.

It is an interesting point, and I'm compelled to agree that lots of scams have been conducted with fiat currency. If it were possible to count it all up, way, way more value has been scammed out of people via fiat.

Just to disclose my priors: To be honest, I am not too interested in "fortunes" being scammed because I don't think anyone comes by massive quantities of money by means which are defensible. An old saying: "if one man has a dollar he didn't work for, it means another man worked for a dollar he didn't get." It is clumsy and imprecise but summarizes how I feel about wealthy individuals.

But crypto has been extensively marketed to people without fortunes. Small people like you (I assume) and me and our families and communities. These people will never get redress for their lost money and it can be devastating. It has specifically targets for example racialized communities who have been systematically excluded from systems that would allow them to accumulate fiat and property.

Unlike fiat, which is created and required by the state, crypto is more like an MLM (pyramid scheme). It is only valuable while new people are buying into it with fiat. If the money pump stops or even slow down, there is a crash. Fiat doesn't need people to buy into it with crypto and it never will.

Back to the topic of chat apps.

I think it feels sleezy to you because the devs are also interested in integrating cryptocurrency into the Session ecosystem, and you believe cryptocurrency=bad.

Disagree. I wouldn't use a chat app that was run by Wells Fargo or PayPal or Visa or a local credit union or any other such organization. That would be weird. My use case for a chat app is 100% in social communication and I see no reason for that to be entangled in financials unless I was directly choosing to contribute money to the development costs of the app.

However I can see different use cases where integration of financial exchange into the platform would be of benefit. Those would be for conducting relationships with a significant transactional nature. Platforms like ebay and aliexpress have chat/mail features and that makes sense. And think of facebook marketplace; also combines chat and transactions. People do business on instagram and whatsapp. It appears that the primary application of something like session would be as an adjunct or replacement for those kinds of conversations.

The question is: Is this a chat app that also has a way to send money, or a financial transaction app with a chat feature? I think it is the latter.

I will admit I don't deeply understand the inners of blockchains. But we know they are unstable so I still find it strange to mix up other unrelated features so intimately. For example aliexpress has a chat feature, and ultimately the stability of the chat is reliant on the business continuity of the organization. But on a day to day level, the reliability of the infrastructure isn't changing according to how much business is being conducted, how popular aliexpress is. I also wouldn't use aliexpress chat to conduct my personal relationships. If I made a friend on aliexpress somehow, I would move that to a more appropriate platform.

You've correctly compared crypto to the stock market. It is very apt as they share a lot of structural elements; only the stock market is older, more entrenched. My opinion: stock market is completely indefensible; get rid of it. Same premise different conclusion. :D I wouldn't use a chat app that was relying on some penny stock for it's technical viability.