this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023

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IMHO XMPP / Jabber is the best Instant Messenger (IM) protocol (feddit.dk)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by privsecfoss@feddit.dk to c/foss@beehaw.org

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It is battle tested, standardized, widely used, have open source servers and apps, end-to-end encryption (OMEMO), self-hostable and are low on ressources and federated / decentralized.

I use it with family and friends. Conversations and blabber.im on android and Gajim on Linux. There's also apps for windows and Apple.

Curious if anyone here use it and why, why not?

EDIT: Doh. In these Lemmy times I forgot federated. Added.

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[–] floofloof 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

My colleagues and I had set up a nice self-hosted XMPP server which everyone could use to chat in-house without any of the traffic leaving our network. We had it end-to-end encrypted and it was quick and easy. Then management (with the support of a few employees who like hype) switched us to Slack. It wasn't private, it wasn't end-to-end encrypted, all our confidential messages went out to the internet, the boss could technically read anything we wrote, and many people didn't like the UI. Once management got frustrated with Slack they switched us to Microsoft Teams. After using that for a year, I miss Slack. Teams is a bloated buggy mess with a UI designed to confuse and no privacy, and it also has all the disadvantages of Slack.

A few of us have secretly switched to Matrix and Element. It's good. Don't tell management.

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 2 years ago

the boss could technically read anything we wrote

I guarantee this was a large part of why they forced the switch.

[–] zekiz@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago

Reminds me of a company I recently got an job interview to (and got declined, but I would've declined anyway).

They were switching around their software every year and are currently in the process of migrating to Teams

[–] kalipike@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (5 children)

@floofloof I would love to move to Matrix/Element but don't know a single person who uses it, so it doesn't seem like it would much benefit me unfortunately. I do still have an account though.

@privsecfoss

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[–] moon_matter@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

the boss could technically read anything we wrote

That's honestly a very reasonable ask. Employees should have no expectation of privacy while using corporate owned machines on a corporate owned network. They need to be able to keep tabs on communications in order to ensure company data doesn't leak. It would be crazy to allow people to handle sensitive company data with no oversight.

[–] Widget@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

the boss could technically read anything we wrote

My old work actually ran into some issues because they couldn't see DMs/private channels.

Maybe this is a cloud vs. self-hosted thing? It's been a few years since I've worked there though.

[–] floofloof 3 points 2 years ago

In an average workplace that seems like a bit of a losing battle to fight since everyone can message each other on personal phones anyway. But I can see it if it's a workplace that handles sensitive information and restricts the use of personal devices.

My workplace went remote-only. So they don't really stand a chance of preventing us messaging each other on our personal devices. I do try to keep the work machine separate though.

[–] siskourso@odin.lanofthedead.xyz 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

We used to use it at work and I loved it but then eventually got replaced by slack which I am not a fan of.

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

slack is the worst team communicate software ever existed. Everything is better than it.

[–] floofloof 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I see someone hasn't used Microsoft Teams.

[–] dom 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Or hipchat

[–] itchy_lizard@feddit.it 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Hipchat is XMPP. I used to connect to it in Pidgin.

[–] Cube6392@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

Hipchat was great before Atlassian sold it to slack

[–] dom 2 points 2 years ago

I wish I knew that when we used it. I was using their client and it wasnt great. Slack was a welcome change when we switched

[–] Cube6392@beehaw.org 10 points 2 years ago

Its not great, but its nowhere near half as bad as teams

[–] pimeys@lemmy.nauk.io 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Even Microsoft Teams?

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[–] siskourso@odin.lanofthedead.xyz 3 points 2 years ago

absolutely it is, worst part I hate is I cant mute/block anyone. Just have to deal with that annoying douche yapping all day in chat.

[–] privsecfoss@feddit.dk 2 points 2 years ago

We use Teams and friends at work, so I know the struggle.

[–] BrikoX@vlemmy.net 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's great, problem is adoption with non tech people. You clearly had better luck with your friends and family than most. It's hard enough to get them to use something as standard as Signal.

[–] privsecfoss@feddit.dk 5 points 2 years ago

Agree it's easier to get techies on board. With normal people it is kind of a struggle competing and argumenting against the likes of WhatsApp, FB messenger and such. But I totally think it's worth it because privacy.

[–] Chobbes@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

I host my own XMPP server and I like it (super lightweight and easy to set up), but good god the people that work on XMPP stuff seem to not want it to take off at all. They all complain that everybody is using matrix for some mysterious reason and when you explain that you can’t in good conscience get your friends to switch to it because there aren’t really great iOS apps it’s just a hissy fit about how people should use android instead… which is just not very realistic. Really wish XMPP had a good cross platform client. The client situation is improving rapidly and OMEMO finally mostly works everywhere! But it’d be really nice if there was a consistent client between platforms.

That all sounds really critical, but I really do like XMPP and I really hope it gets better and gains more traction again! We really need good federated chat again, ideally just associated with an email address or something… because the current chat ecosystem is a mess!

[–] pkulak@beehaw.org 12 points 2 years ago

I’ve been self-hosting Matrix for years and it’s been amazing.

[–] agrammatic@feddit.de 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What I have to give to XMPP is that it's one of the easiest federated services to self-host. Running Prosody is super simple.

[–] Chobbes@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

Prosody is amazing and I’m still astounded by how easy it is to get XMPP up and running. That’s great stuff!

[–] Bjoern_Tantau@feddit.de 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I had my own server and used it for a long time until Android decided that it knows better what background services I want to have running and thus killed the "instant" part of instant messaging.

Since then I'm on Signal and could at least convince most of my friends and family to move there.

[–] jherazob@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

It's an ongoing problem on mobile, can be mitigated but yeah, it's an issue

[–] death916@lemmy.death916.xyz 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm still on irc

[–] Cube6392@beehaw.org 11 points 2 years ago

Irc is underrated. Its my example for people getting upset communities are moving to forums instead of the fediverse sometimes because its old that old does not mean outdated.

And don't get me wrong, I really like this communication model, but I would never suggest it for a major software project community. I need things to be fully baked for official adoption. Part of my interest in contributing here is getting us enough critical mass that threadiverse development gets to that fully baked point

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[–] jlarex@beehaw.org 7 points 2 years ago

We had an XMPP server at work but 90% of people wouldn't bother using it. As much as I dislike Teams it the only client that's ever been deployed in my company that everyone actually uses.

[–] leetnewb@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I use it for OMEMO encrypted family messaging and image transfer (snikket). Very fast messaging, lightweight server, and the A/V works quite well. Biggest issue, imo, is the lack of a great iOS client - not a judgement on the developers, I think that's just the reality of developing on iOS. But an iOS client that works as seamlessly as Conversations would go a long way to regaining lost traction.

[–] Chobbes@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is what I’ve been saying for years. Siskin is pretty good these days, but it’s still not perfect (push notifications with OMEMO have no content). It’s really hard to recommend XMPP to people when the iOS experience is kind of bad (with omemo, anyway).

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[–] davefischer@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When I lost my cell modem due to the 3g shutdown, I switched to xmpp for home automation for a while. I should probably set that up again...

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

It's well worth it.

[–] zorrothefox2001@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

IIRC Google Talk using XMPP and most major messengers having GTalk integration, they pretty much accidentally federated several messenger apps

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 years ago

They took out XMPP years ago. I had a lot of hope for the future when they first federated. Even ran my own server and was able to talk to Google Talk users. Alas...

[–] leetnewb@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Google's messaging play has only gotten worse since then. Oh well.

[–] Chobbes@beehaw.org 3 points 2 years ago

I still cannot believe the Google I/O where they killed Talk and said “we’re consolidating all of the Google chat applications into hangouts. There will only be hangouts” and then the very next Google I/O they announced TWO new chat applications (allo and duo), and whose purpose I never understood, and then every year since they’re like “everything is Google meet now… no, not that Google meet, the other Google meet” and I have absolutely no idea what’s going on and nothing makes me feel so old and out of touch like trying to follow Google’s chat ecosystem.

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[–] itchy_lizard@feddit.it 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I like XMPP and OTR is nice, but we need double-ratchet for secure communications and sync with multiple devices.

[–] leetnewb@beehaw.org 8 points 2 years ago

Omemo is double ratchet and my messages sync to multiple devices. New device can't read old messages sent before exchanging keys with the other clients.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 years ago

It's the best obviously ;)

Check out: https://slrpnk.net/c/xmpp (which was moved from lemmy.ml as the community there is effected by a bug).

Also see: https://joinjabber.org/

[–] fouc@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (7 children)

It's trivial to self host. I'm running a server on a small VPS for the family. Best part is they don't even know they are running XMPP, just installed Conversations and that was it.

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[–] digitallyfree@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

How would you compare it to Matrix? I use Matrix and have never tried XMPP.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Matrix is more like IRC or Slack/Discord with a focus on group-chats, while XMPP is more like Signal, WhatsApp or Telegram. XMPP can also do group-chats, but the current clients don't have as much of a focus on it. Otherwise they are pretty similar, but XMPP is overall a much more mature protocol and the software has less bugs and is more performant.

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[–] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

Loved XMPP. There were issues. It was not always great at firewall traversal. Some of the other messages were more stable out-and-about. Moving to cell too kind of killed this stuff as who is going to keep their data on.

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