It gets on my nerves that people use WhatsApp or Signal or Threema or Telegram or whatever hip new thing they came up with for instant messaging because "it is too hard/weird to create an XMPP account".
XMPP is a protocol for federated instant messaging in case you never heard of it.
If we are already getting people to use Mastodon instead of birdsite, how about we made it really easy for instance owners to also run an XMPP server using the same credentials as Mastodon for user authentication?
@megfault no offense but XMPP is horrible.
Because XMPP is stuck in the 90s, it's like if people would seriously suggest IRC as an instant messenger replacement for WhatsApp/Signal and people would be trying to hack image support into it by using DCC and base64 magic datadumps.
By stuck, I mean that it's impossible to even improve as the client landspace is entirely fragmented. It's like android fragmentation hell sans the massive userbase.
@szbalint @crecca The problem with XMPP is that they basically left almost everything to extensions with no attempt to standardize anything but the core protocol. And the core protocol is text based. And even new open source messaging projects don't bother with it because there's no real benefit to using XMPP because you can't rely on much from existing clients.
@megfault I didn't get the "it's too hard" I got the "it's ugly or who's gonna use it except nerds?" answers.
@megfault now that I'm home, going to precise. I tried a migration from Telegram to XMPP and then Matrix with a group of friends. They all dropped out because they have family or other friends on Telegram or FBMessenger, said friends havong other acquaintances on said platform, etc... Moving them was only temporary when it added another app when they could just use TG or FBM, As it just works™
@megfault iwould like to try XMPP or TG again, but I would have no one to talk to with and i feel like i'm pretty bad at 1 on 1 discussions and feel generally being awkward in group discussions
@Ronflaix @megfault I get the point of the pressure to stay where the social graph is already well established. But we also had that on Twitter and still some of us made the move.
It probably helped that we have clients that support multiple accounts. Are there any clients that can support both XMPP and any of the other systems?
@megfault @megfault I made the move but I made a whole new network of people here. That's most of my experience over Mastodon. There almost no one I used to know on Twitter that stayed here.
Also i dont think changing the client will help. O don't think people want complex solutions. Newer software's like Discord beat Mumble or Teamspeak because it worked as well and was easier to use (and sponsors too).
@megfault I sometimes think the best hope Masto has is a sudden death of Facebook and/or Twitter. We could say "a graph of server will outlive AAA companies", but said companies almost never died.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm seeing more and more decentralised networks and I like that, but right now the communication on the internet is quite monopolized by the big sharks. :/
@megfault Yeah, indeed. I keep thinking they exist even though they are more relative to a zombie than they use to were.
I hope for the best to come to the fediverse, yeh.
@megfault I follow too much artists and people on bidsite to drop it that fast. It's sad to see people I know and not being able to make them move here. :T
Oh and don't forget group chats, and I mean when you just want to have a conversation between three people without making an IRC-like "room" on some server, and MUCs are bad enough as they are.
@hj I understand the problem of not having good clients. I used adium on mac and pidgin on linux for years but I always found both a bit ugly and clunky.
Lately I have only been using a phone client. I am using Conversations on android and it's pretty good. Plus, it's available on F-droid. No idea what the iOS world looks like in terms of xmpp clients.
As for iOS, there's like 2 or 3 clients and all of them are literal shit - you know it's shit when it's worse than XMPP client. And also 0 of them support modern extensions.
tl;dr: state of XMPP is downright terrible, and with rise of Matrix, it's probably improve that, because it's already has modern use-cases in mind.
XMPP was made when people weren't using smartphones as much, so modern extensions are slow to develop and slow to adopt.
Oh and these modern XEPs… I'm not sure about now, but last time I checked they were in draft stage, so no one really wants to implement them just yet.
If you want to raise XMPP awareness - you have to pitch it, and pitching shit is hard, and people would probably get wrong impression which would backfire a lot.
So, either help it to get better or wait when it eventually gets better by itself.
@hj So: basically the solution is to implement a decent client (for at least each major OS) that supports the same set of extensions? Or do you think the protocol should be tweaked as well?
There would still be a problem when people with brand new decent client would talk to retrogrades using outdated clients and that think new XEPs are retarded. Or just people who just cannot use new client for some reason.
@hj Still, that sounds pretty feasible. ☺
Also it's a nasty broken mess of parsing vulnerabilities from XML in XML #yodawg
I love IRC and XMPP isn't *that* awful, but I feel like Matrix has the best chances of being a free alternative to discord/slack/etc.
@megfault what about not using it because XMPP doesn't support encrypted group chats (except for maybe OMEMO, but that's new and barely supported and *ahem* is derived from Signal's protocol)
@megfault nor does it support allowing messages to be deleted after a time limit
@a_breakin_glass @megfault Yeah, OMEMO is one of the few things I like about Signal :P
But it works like a charm on my XMPP client. Never tried it in a group chat, will do so soon :)
@megfault I had problems getting one client (Conversations) to work with all other clients I tried, but given the fact that those bugs went beyond just using OMEMO...like being able to send messages at first, before stopping after I quit both clients...
@a_breakin_glass @megfault Wow, that's weird. I am sorry to hear that. I only had trouble with OTR on Conversations, but that was really the only issue. :/
@megfault and that was on adium with Lurch4Adium. Profanity didn't work at all.
@a_breakin_glass @megfault I don't think I have anyone on my contact list using Adium. Most use Conversations, Gajim and Bitlbee.
@megfault I feel you'd also need some way to toss in some way to autoconfiguring OTR or OMEMO too.
With clients like Gajim I keep having the headache of remembering that that isn't available out of the box (OMEMO being a bit of a ballache if you forget to install a specific dependency). >.<
@TrollDecker @megfault I had trouble getting OMEMO to work with Gajim. The plugin was installed but I never managed to enable it. I eventually gave up, because I already had a working client with OMEMO on my phone.
@megfault
The xmpp experience doesnt JustWork™ and thats a big part of the problem. I've had success moving a few friends over to matrix though and while I hate how bloated the riot app is on desktop it's pretty great on mobile. I think this could be an interesting development.
Tsatnosk
@megfault In defence of Signal, I use it because it's a frictionless upgrade on SMS. XMPP isn't.
@megfault
I'd love to see it well enough integrated both in user DB and UI to make private mastodon group chats XMPP MUCs, and you wouldn't have to know it (just another column).
@megfault It also has all the features those apps have, including OTR and heavy encryption, if you need it! And it's easy to set it up to run on your own domain! And it's awesome!
@megfault @fluffy There was work some time ago for Mastodon to support LDAP or Shibboleth auth, but I don't think Mastodon can create those accounts. Way to go, though.