this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2021
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Privacy
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I am afraid that would be hard from a realistic POV, because Telegram operates very discreetly, does not give in to subpoenas or data requests (outside of Russian intelligence for counter terrorism) and has housed all kinds of people of all controversies, from Hong Kong rioters, to neo nazis, to race supremacists, to pornography, to content piracy, to bestiality movie distribution and so on.
Telegram is one of the most "free speech" kind of platforms that continues to NOT become a Gab or Parler, due to its moderation controls and privacy/anonymity scope for groups and individuals.
This is not to promote the messenger, but it is truly a unique platform in this day and age, that continues to be as acceptable as Twitter or YouTube in mainstream, and widely adopted in underground circles.
There is a common problem with federation, which even Matrix has observed, that is a central server being more reliable even if it presents the problem of single point of failure. I am no Moxie, or against federation at all, but it is what it is.
What thoughts would you have about this and the app in general?
I think that the issue with Matrix is mostly due to the main server implementation, Synapse, which takes a lot of resources to run. Even Disroot closed its instance in favor of XMPP due to this.
The XMPP network is quite different on this. However, given the truly decentralized idea on it, people has the idea that the XMPP network is not being used...
My thoughts about Telegram are that the list I gave to you are part of my requirements and/or preferences and objectives.
I think that the ethic comes first, then the needs. If the ethics are closed and block the needs then open a bit and fix as objective to improve the needs satisfaction to try to fit the established ethic.
This is translated to -->
I put the requirements first over what happens inside the service itself and if these prevent you to manage correctly a community or similar, then open a bit the requirements and focus on ways to fit the requirements solving the internal issue too. This is mostly done by translating a requirement to a preference.
In my case, this would be the software being hosted on GitHub and just 1 person managing in some cases (two preferences). I put focus on getting it away of it but open myself while this it not possible yet.
There seem to be some elements that just seem uncontrollable as far as adoption goes. WhatsApp is a non standardised XMPP, and initially before the Facebook buyout, it was independent and had a colossal userbase.
Matrix and XMPP fans are often at crossroads with each other. Then there is Telegram and Discord, both similar and very different than other types of platforms. Then you have stuff like Twitter and Instagram.
While ethic and merit should come first, there are some exceptions in terms of adoption that truly make you think what goes into success. Polished clients? E2EE? Country of origin? Server reliability? Features? Marketing? The answer is definitely NOT all of the above.
XMPP is extremely light, solid, stable, federated, easily can be tunneled, but lacks polished clients and marketing. Conversations, Psi, Gajim and Dino are the only decent clients, and out of them Conversations (and its forks) are the only ones that will convince an ordinary user to use it reliably. Then you have to pick a server for account creation, for which there is no central list and none of which is standardised as regards with MAM.
Well, I don't take WhatsApp into account because people don't realize that is XMPP which is the main point I use to support my theory, what people know when they join every platform.
The additional features are something I put a secondary unless are strictly needed directly. Then I change main requirement as preference to set myself in platforms on that, and support the ones which doesn't fit the needs to get that, for example. This last thing would be what I call "put focus on fit the preference or the requirement".
We can use XMPP already though and, from it, support implementation of the faulty things. Maybe you could be in another platform meanwhile if some of the needed things are not in the XMPP platform yet.
And that in itself is a problem. People do want features, even if it is non essential to you or me. Our perceptions are irrelevant.
I use XMPP daily heavily, and find it great, but I happen to also be technologically advanced, so can navigate my way through any issues.
What you are thinking of as a minimalist approach sounds good on paper, but does not look appealing to the generic end users. Unfortunate.
If people are the problem, our focus should take that into account.
Maybe education could be our duty. I already do that at low scale to fix the wrong concepts some people have about things due to the faulty knowledge.
Education and awareness certainly is a foundation for educated masses. Good that the real goal is still known and pinpoint-able.
I didnt understand the second sentence. Which is the real goal?
Spreading awareness. This is what we must do, and keep discovering problems.