- cross-posted to:
- observances@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- observances@midwest.social
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has anyone tried Friendica? is it devoid of people?
I find youtube to be the hardest one on this list
I support the cause in general but: Signal is not federated at all. It may seem like a decent alternative to WhatsApp but is it really? It still falls under the same US jurisdiction. Let’s say the US gov starts agressively prosecuting dissidents and certain minorities (they already do): can and should we still use signal in this case? I don’t think so. Sadly i can’t name a much better alternative. Maybe matrix. But it has other issues.
This is such a beautiful guide!
Why didn’t I hear about this until the day of?
How is signal considered part of the fediverse?
deleted by creator
instead of switching ive mostly just been ditching entirely. I need less time interacting with internet people.
literally the only thing on this list im still using is facebook messenger, for my work colleagues. and youtube. everything else ive migrated (reddit-lemmy), or abandoned and torched
I was already on Mastodon by just having a Vivaldi (the chromium browser) account, and it’s just lovely I’ve spent most of the day setting up lemmy, even though I joined feddit.dk 2 years ago, it’s only just now I’m taking it seriously.
And, while not related to the fediverse per se, I switched to linux a year ago.
The only service that’s hard to drop/switch away from is Youtube imo.Are any of these actually good?
I mean, aside from Lemmy. I tried Mastadon and no one was actually on it, seems like everyone is jumping to Bluesky.
I keep seeing this type stuff but neither peertube or friendica are genuine replacements at this point, mastodon is weaksauce compared to akkoma or a misskey fork, and loops is alpha software. also yes signal is centralized but it just works and has contact discovery so it owns matrix and xmpp when compared to whatsapp. basically none of this stuff is truly ready
Signal is centralized, loops is closed source and not accepting new users.
Loops will be open sourced later they say.
Is Loops open source? It will be! We plan on open sourcing the platform after it reaches a stable and easy to maintain state.
That really is not a satisfying answer. It is incredibly nebulous and even if it did have a nice definition I guarantee most software developers will tell you a lot of software rarely reaches that state.
I can see why they might want to avoid 1000 GitHub issues bike shedding things but they could open source the code and just not have open contribution
Sometimes you’re ashamed of the ugly hacks you cobbled together to reach MVP, and you want to fix the stuff you know you need to fix first before being thrown to the wolves. I can respect that, for a limited time.
I mean maybe but you could also just say “we did some whacky shit here help us fix it please” and let the community help you in the effort. That’s the beauty of open source. Then again they may have their reasons and frankly I’m not even interested in a TikTok like social media so w/e as long as they don’t eat up their word it’s fine.
or they can also disable submitting issues for now
That means very little to me. Actions speak louder than words, and it would probably help the development of loops if it was actually open source.
Made by the same dev as Pixelfed, which did a similar thing.
Which I think dansup should deserve our trust on this for quite a long time for doing. It isn’t empty promises if they already made Pixelfed and opensourced it.
Like… I suppose it could be a grift, anything could but I see no reason to question their goals or motives.
For a lot of FLOSS projects, it’s common to keep the initial team small, so a product can be delivered fast, and gets opened up later.
It’s to solve the “too many cooks” and prevent bikeshedding.
A lot of corpo espionage is there solely to tank potential competitors, which include FLOSS projects.
Loops is anti-libre software confirmed.
anti? is it against libre software? because it doesn’t seem so
Why does software have a political stance?
It’s missing a libre software licence text file.
So Matrix it is?
I was told that unless you self host, matrix is less secure because it leaks more metadata. Something to consider
Leaks more metadata? What does that mean?
sender, recipient, chatroom, what kind of event you sent (message, emoji, reaction, vote), if you responded to a message, room privilege changes, etc
but it’s a question how big of a problem is that. they want to tackle it in the future, but that’s far away for now I think
Damm, didn’t know that, good to know
it’s not even true information, the new tech stack is zero trust
What does this mean?
the new cryptographic protocol protects metadata, like signal. the servers know nothing about any encrypted chats
So the guy above the guy avobe me was wrong?
Zero trust means there’s no trust assumed on the protocol - I.e. it distrusts all actors and the protocol takes steps to work in that trustless environment. I don’t know how that applies specifically to matrix.
So the guy above the guy avobe me was supposedly wrong?
Unfortunately, the switch from YouTube to PeerTube has not worked for me so far. I can’t find a decent instance (not full of right-wing/conspiracy content) with interesting stuff that also allows me to make an account.
Yes finding the right instance on peertube is a nightmare — and also the general lack of quality content, or subtitling, which makes it as good as useless for deaf people like me.
Yeah, it is already hard to find reasons to use it for the average user, so people with disabilities (deafness, blindness,intellectual etc.) probably even have reasons to NOT use them (no subtitles, each instance might have different elements or structure that might be a nightmare for screen readers, it might be too complex for some people, etc.).
Have a look here for potential instances: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115 and also check these links out for channels to follow: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205 / https://peertube.wtf/home
Signal is not Fediverse! Element/Matrix is!
Element/matrix aren’t part of the fediverse, either. It doesn’t speak AP.
Matrix is federated, Signal is not.
although it is federated, it isn’t apart of the fediverse, as it doesn’t use activitypub.
I’d argue it’s part of “the fediverse” but not “The Fediverse”.
Fair point, definitely still apart of the same style of platform but not the same protocol.
afaik ap is no hard requirement to be considerted fediverse
Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I’m pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.
But regardless, I don’t see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It’s not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn’t federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven’t seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.
I’d be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven’t looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it’s supposed to interoperate with different applications.
I mean, yeah… the fediverse, specifically, are AP servers, which is why we don’t include diaspora for it.
It’s decentralized and federated, to be sure, just not the “fediverse”.
Fediverse is about federation. It’s not Activityverse. So yeah, email, Usenet, IRC, XMPP, Matrix… all Fediverse, all an antidote to corporate walled gardens.
Edit: not demeaning AP, it’s a great achievement and the services built upon it are a testament to its quality and forward-thinking.
I’m just saying that there’s deficiencies in those other networks. Just that they are different networks.
Now if an xmpp user can directly message or communicate with a Mastodon user… then they’d be both part of the “fediverse”.
I am a Lemmy user, can I message a Pixelfed user? All other AP users? Signal users?
Signal, no. And yes, Lemmy’s integration via AP is sub-perfect. Ie, I can (and do) follow communities on lemmy, with my Mastodon and pixelfed accounts.
So, work is needed, and only happens if a) same protocol is used, or b) bridge modules are used (like friendica does).
If someone made an xmpp bridge to talk AP, then it’s would be one big network, like how a lot of irc nets get bridged with xmpp nets, which makes those one, singular, federated network. But until they start speaking the protocol the rest of the fediverse does, it’s just another network.
And again, it’s not a bad thing. It’ll even probably get there eventually.
I’d like to argue that using AP is an inconsistent rule for membership. For example, Diaspora has been considered to be part of the fediverse from early on, but it doesn’t use AP.
I don’t really know where to draw the line. AP simply isn’t suitable for some applications, but it makes sense to include it for branding
I don’t know of anyone who include d*, accepting the tiny number of d* pods that also speak AP.
I mean, nostr is also NOT part of the fediverse, but another federated and decentralized network.
Both Wikipedia and fediverse.party consider Diaspora, and a handful of other (mostly defunct) protocols as being part of the fediverse.
I don’t really like the use of AP to be a qualification of being in the fediverse. There must be a better way to qualify a platform, even if it means that use of AP is a natural consequence.
afaik ap is not a hard requirement for being in the fediverse, matrix is often included because it has the same federation idea
Then email is a part of the fediverse? UUCP nets? IRC nets?
All federated, none speak AP.
I think a good working definition is “speaks the w3c standard AP”. Otherwise, its totally lost its meaning.
what about diaspora?
D* generally isn’t, excepting the few instances that also speak AP.
Absolutely, signal isn’t federated, but I don’t want my messaging app to be federated. I want my social media to be federated. Lemmy is good because it’s open. Signal is good because it’s shut.
That’s your preference and there’s nothing wrong with it. Doesn’t make Signal a Fediverse alternative. Matrix fits that use case.
I prefer my messaging to be federated for the same reason I don’t want my other services depending on the benevolence of a single actor. But that’s me.
Don’t use Matrix the devs knew about sidechannel vulnerabilities and ignored them for years. This is peak negligence and should immediately disqualify you from touching anything security related.
the author literally picked random projects from github tagged as matrix, without considering their prevalence or whether they are actually maintained etc.
if you actually look at % of impacted clients, it’s tiny.
meanwhile, it is very unclear that any sidechannel attack on a libolm based client is practical over the network (which is why we didn’t fix this years ago). After all, the limited primitives are commented on in the readme and https://github.com/matrix-org/olm/issues/3 since day 1.
From your link.
That is exactly what it says. They knew about security issues in their library and didn’t fix them for years. This isn’t being ignorant, this is negligence.
You do not have a solution.
I do, use Signal if you care about privacy. They are the only game in town when it comes to reasonably secure chat software. Sure, I would prefer a federated alternative but I haven’t found one yet that is always end-to-end encrypted, open source, implements forward secrecy, and is user friendly enough to be used by my grandmother.
SimpleX is better, you don’t even need a phone number.
SimpleX is cool, but fails the “my grandmother can use it” requirement. Signal has the huge benefit that is just as easy as WhatsApp. With Simplex you have to invite each of your friends individually.
Scan a QR isn’t difficult, there are also tantum links
With Signal you just have to install the App and make an account to start chatting with your friends and family. SimpleX requires me to send a link or QR code to everybody I want to interact with. You will have a hard time convincing anyone to do that. Compare that to the first Twitter exodus, people chose Bluesky over Mastodon because picking a server was ‘difficult’. The average person doesn’t care about technology at all and will always pick the path of least resistance.
Thanks
No, Matrix is federated differently.
And Signal isn’t?!
Signal is centralised.
You now understood both my point and the OC’s, I hope.
Signal is not federated.
Bless your heart.
Signal isn’t federated [1][2][3.1]; it’s decentralized [1][2][3.2]. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it’s centralized.
References
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
- “Signal (software)”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software).
- ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.
Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal’s messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users’ public keys. […]
- ¶“Architecture”. ¶“Servers”.
- “Reflections: The ecosystem is moving”. moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/.
- ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6
One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.
- ¶“Stuck in time”. “Federation and control”. ¶6.
An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.
- ¶5. to ¶“Stuck in time”. ¶3-6
Yeah. I love Signal but it doesn’t belong in that list. Dansup (creator of loops and pixelfed) is apparently working on “Sup” that will be a decentralized alternative to whatsapp.
To me this person sounds like they have too many big projects at once. I wish them success tho
Yeah… I’m bit afraid of “kbin Ernest Effect” (not sure what a proper term is) where personal issues pile up and the sole head developer just disappears.
Haven’t followed dansup much but from what I understand he is much more open to pull requests and listening to the community, but time will tell. Right now I appreciate and love his effort, giving, and the impact on fediverse he is brining.
The kickstarter was a good idea.
Given that I’ve waited 3 weeks to join his smaller instance of pixelfed.art, I can tell things are already piling up. I am hoping the kickstarter does help.
Damn. Yeah let’s hope he can hire some help…
XMPP is an established federated messaging app with encryption.
There isn’t much information about “Sup”, but if I had to guess it could be that dansup is making sup app with XMPP(rotocol) as the messaging protocol.
Originally it was supposed to be ActivityPub based, but recently they posted something about it being for XMPP, Matrix and IRC as well 🤷♂️ Maybe they decided to fork Pidgin 😂
IMHO Sup. isn’t going to happen. They will have their hands more than full with Pixelfed’s new popularity and maybe Loops.
Multi-protocol would be awesome, hopefully down the line it’ll come back around to adding some basic AP integration.
Oh! didn’t know that, I thought activitypub can’t be used for secure messaging. Lol really hope its XMPP!
Yeah I didn’t take it that seriously when it was announced right now. Just hope pixelfed stays afloat amidst the user flood and hope he can publish loops as open source soon!
That would be rad if true ^^
Let’s hope so! :)
Delta.chat already exists
Matrix?
SimpleX?
sup is how I update my FreeBSD /usr/src tree! Twenty years ago.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
My comment wasn’t protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP’s post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.
Bro put citations in his lemmy comment 💀
I wish more people did that ngl 💀
Based.
I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.
On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.
I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.
On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters.
Ah dang, that’s good to know (though I’m not sure what to do as an alternative) — I was unaware that the collapsible spoilers weren’t supported on Boost. I guess that means that Lemmy’s markdown formatting hasn’t entirely been standardized across the service. I personally have encountered some inconsistency on the Tesseract UI with CommonMark Autolink [2] formatting where the autolinks don’t even render [1].
I recommend reporting this to the Boost devs to improve Markdown feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.
References
- “Kalcifer” @Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works. To: [“Happy #GlobalSwitchDay”. @squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de. “Fediverse” !fediverse@lemmy.world. Tesseract. sh.itjust.works. Published: 2025-02-01T07:08:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:40Z. https://tesh.itjust.works/post/sh.itjust.works/32046509.]. Published: 2025-02-01T09:20:14Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:42Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32046509/16425699.
- Raw Text:
Signal isn't federated ^[1][2][3.1]^; it's decentralized ^[1][2][3.2]^. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it's centralized. ::: spoiler References 1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. <https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server>. - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses. 2. "Signal (software)". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)>. - ¶"Architecture". ¶"Servers". > Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal's messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users' public keys. […] 3. "Reflections: The ecosystem is moving". moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z. <https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/>. 1. ¶5. to ¶"Stuck in time". ¶3-6 > One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing. 2. ¶"Stuck in time". "Federation and control". ¶6. > An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do. :::- Rendered:
- In the rendered text there are no links; however, there should be links at the end, as is shown by the CommonMark autolinks in the raw text.
- Raw Text:
- “CommonMark Spec”. John MacFarlane. CommonMark. Version: 0.31.2. Published: 2024-01-28. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:51Z. https://spec.commonmark.org/0.31.2/#uri-autolink.
- §6.5 “Autolinks”. ¶2.
A URI autolink consists of
<, followed by an absolute URI followed by. It is parsed as a link to the URI, with the URI as the link’s label.
- §6.5 “Autolinks”. ¶2.
- “Kalcifer” @Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works. To: [“Happy #GlobalSwitchDay”. @squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de. “Fediverse” !fediverse@lemmy.world. Tesseract. sh.itjust.works. Published: 2025-02-01T07:08:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:40Z. https://tesh.itjust.works/post/sh.itjust.works/32046509.]. Published: 2025-02-01T09:20:14Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:42Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32046509/16425699.
Same with Sync, unfortunately.
Dang 😕. See my comment for a related response.
I recommend reporting the bug to the Sync devs to fix their Markdown formatting to improve feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.
That person isn’t fucking around.
I take the issue of misinformation seriously. I try to be the change that I wish to see.
I do my best to cite any claim that I make. I would encourage others to do the same.
it’s decentralized
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
Signal relies on centralized servers
For a decentralized messenger use https://delta.chat/
it’s decentralized
No it’s not. From literally your own comment:
Signal relies on centralized servers
I was using “decentralized” to mean that there isn’t centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can only communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model [1].
This is more an argument of definitions, though. I’m not trying to claim anything in bad faith.
References
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
That’s just open source, not decentralized. I can’t find a definition of decentralization that would even make it vague. From Wikipedia:
Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within it.
Signal has a central authoritative server and to use it with any other server you have to modify the source code.
Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within
Imo this fits my usage of the term — Signal can be broken up into many isolated servers [1] all offering the same service.
References
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
- This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
That’s just open source, not decentralized.
Depending on exactly how said open source development is occuring, I could argue that open source development is an example of decentralization. It may even be an example of federation (all depending on licensing and development medium imo).
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.
The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin’s puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider’s service.
I don’t understand why we’ve forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it’s worth it in my opinion. I really wish we’d start seeing government regulation that says “you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service.” I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.
- Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
