#jabber — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Movim @[email protected] · 2026-08-18 · 12:22 UTC

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#xmpp #jingle #movim #jabber #conference #nlnet

Movim @[email protected] · 2026-08-18 · 12:22 UTC

👀

#xmpp #jingle #movim #jabber #conference #nlnet

Movim @[email protected] · 2026-08-18 · 12:22 UTC

👀

#xmpp #jingle #movim #jabber #conference #nlnet

Movim @[email protected] · 2026-08-18 · 12:22 UTC

👀

#xmpp #jingle #movim #jabber #conference #nlnet

#nlnet #conference #jabber #movim #jingle #xmpp

Movim @[email protected] · 2026-08-18 · 12:22 UTC

👀

#xmpp #jingle #movim #jabber #conference #nlnet

/dev/urandom @[email protected] · 2026-08-17 · 09:31 UTC

the possibility of sending someone a simple text-based message over the internet has existed for a very long time, and has been pretty much standardized with email

but most people only engage with email for two reasons: work-related communication (if they have an office job) and automated notices, such as confirming one's registration or, in rare cases, subscriptions to certain things

it is even possible to send end-to-end encrypted and/or signed emails, way before any of the more modern communication protocols gained that ability (and yes, i will admit that the traditional PGP-based way of doing that is flawed)

but the interface of most email clients is really clunky, and the metaphors used in them relate more to traditional paper-based mail, rather than modern-day chat or messaging apps -- you "attach" a file to a message, "CC" (carbon copy) additional addresses if you want to send the same thing to multiple people at once, etc.

and so, when dedicated messaging apps appeared, first as things like AIM, ICQ and MSN, and then in form of the more modern smartphone-capable apps we all tolerate today, these provided a lot of the same experiences, but in a more streamlined and convenient way

i, for one, was particularly surprised as to how quickly they caught on, even though a "modern messenger app" would often lack features that were common on previous-generation services -- such as free-for-chat/away/DND statuses or even custom status messages

often, this convenience came at a different cost -- the modern messaging app uses your phonebook to recognize contacts, and therefore signing up on one inherently demands use of a cellphone number -- while it was still possible to add a phone number as a contact detail on a more traditional app, and some even offered search by that kind of data, it was a more tedious process -- but also, you could use one without having to surrender your phone number, which in many countries is inherently linked to the user's real-life ID

these days, we have more modern open-source decentralized apps and services that try to match the user interface and expectations of the newer generation while providing the same features -- if you use a #Jabber / #XMPP client, such as #Gajim or #Conversations_im, you can still set custom status messages and have end-to-end encryption (with something like OMEMO) without compromising multi-device communications (like in Telegram) or trusting a central server to transfer keys between devices

sadly, doing everything like that still causes issues, most famously the "your device does not have the keys" or "unable to decrypt message" errors that show up in Jabber or #Matrix -- after all, if you can't just trust the server to safely store the keys, you need some other way to transfer them from one device to another, and both OMEMO and Olm have decided on a more complicated mechanism, where you need to either confirm all of your own devices manually (to make sure someone else doesn't sneakily sign in and steal your keys and get to decrypt the messages), or to make sure you trust the other user's set of keys in some other way

unlike the big tech companies with their centralized servers, they can't just say "well, you're already using our servers to log in, so you're inherently trusting us to also manage the keys" -- they don't know what server you and your contacts are using, and even if they have no evil intentions, they can't be sure none of the server admins do as well

this is exactly the type of problem where trying to match the convenience of centralized big-tech solutions will only compromise security, and the only way out is properly educating the users about how the system works

#jabber #xmpp #gajim #conversations_im #matrix