The fact that nobody really wants a true p2p platform: you don't want to lose all your stuff if you lose the device. It is clear that federated services like email are superior for most users bar some real hardnuts mindfixed on privacy.
Why not provide encrypted backups to a personal cloud storage service? Even WhatsApp does it these days.
Ah, btw, how will a true p2p platform work on iOS? What entity will send you push notifications when there are messages for your device?
True P2P on iOS: No idea, I merely claimed that a lack of backup options is not the reason we don't have it.
In practice, nobody wants any of that. The vast majority of users are perfectly happy (and for the right reasons) with federated and centralised services like email or WhatsApp/etc.
https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/
Personally, I would like to use Briar on my Tailscale network, but the lack of Briar desktop app and the need to build custom Briar app to support Tailscale interface is a blocker. Or, a self-hosted Signal app.
Telegram has the best messaging app by UX and it's not even close. It's fast, reliable and it just works.
Try getting your mother to use Matrix. Verifying sessions of chat participants is such a disgusting user experience I wonder if they employ /any/ graphic or UX designers.
Coming to Matrix, the Element Web/Desktop app is ugly and has bad UI/UX. Its unintuitive to use. Fortunately, you have tons of choices with Matrix. Cinny on desktop has a very neat and clean UX.
On Android, the Element app is good enough, but if not Fluffychat feels just like WhatsApp.
Perhaps you meant the Element client?
Clearly there's an axis with security on one side and convenience on the other. Tilting fully to either side results in a terrible experience. For me, Telegram strikes the perfect balance. Secure chats have fantastic privacy, while the UX isn't totally garbage. The trade-off is that chats are non-E2EE by default.
Signal's has the axis tilted all the way to the "security" end, so that the product is unusable if you aren't a technical expert already.
Could your mother figure out how to encrypt an email message using GnuPG? Absolutely not a chance.
Could she figure out how to send a message on ProtonMail that encrypts it client-side for her? Probably.
Signal is GnuPG. Telegram is ProtonMail.
Wow, I really disagree with this statement.
> Could your mother figure out how to encrypt an email message using GnuPG? Absolutely not a chance. [...] Signal is GnuPG.
My parents are not technical people, yet they can use Signal. My siblings as well. I think the UX is approximately on par with WhatsApp (when I was using it).
They have done a great job when it comes to UX. Ultimately I would like to push them towards Matrix, but the UX is not here yet for most clients. Fluffychat comes close to it, unfortunately I'm experiencing issues logging in with my account (timeouts), so I can't recommend it yet.
Sorry, just to confirm: are you saying Signal has worse UX than Element?
How so?
What's wrong with Element's UX? It's improved an awful lot lately.
Disclosure: I work with real open protocols.
If the former entails an adopted RFC, isn't it common practice to prove need via a product before proposing a standard?
Asking because I'm at work on a safer, decentralized protocol for email, TMTP.
Are you saying that the Matrix authors won't submit an RFC?
In terms of contributions to the Matrix spec; from a quick eyeball at https://spec.matrix.org/unstable/proposals/, there are 95 different authors, of which 31 work for Element (the company formed by the original team who created Matrix). Or to slice it another way, there are 498 spec change proposals there, of which 358 were written by folks at Element (so 70%). Meanwhile the protocol itself is defined by the independent and neutral Matrix.org Foundation non-profit (https://matrix.org/foundation).
In other words, accusations that Matrix is entirely defined or controlled by Element are untrue - by the time we created Element there was already significant contribution from the wider community, and these days there are loads of other individuals and companies like Beeper, Famedly and even Ericsson contributing to the spec.
Edit: oh, and Rocket.chat is adopting Matrix too, which refutes the GP comment even more...
You and your company has all the leverage and no sane independent developer will invest in your protocol because he'll always have to play the catch up game.
So, to resolve it, the spec core team (which is a mix of element employees and community members) went through the two proposals to compare them and concluded that joepie91's approach is better. So we're about to kill off MSC2962 and merge MSC3216 into the spec instead.
Please stop with all the disinformation - it'd be way more constructive to invest your energy into improving XMPP than trying to make Matrix out to be evil.
However, I already have the answer on how you plan to deal with such conflicts, you've said it yourself [1]. I'll quote:
> The idea on Matrix is that you say "Hi, I talk Matrix CS API 0.4" and be done with it - and you end up with much more social pressure to keep up to date with the current latest spec, because otherwise you are simply falling behind
If we say it in a less courteous manner, "Once we introduce changes, your independent implementation will be cut off from our network, and if you'll need several more months to implement changes, well, tough luck".
You see, I'm not saying Matrix is evil. It's a rather developed product, just like Mattermost or Flock. But a federated protocol it is not. Please stop advertising as such, and I'll have nothing to say about it.
Because they seem to like it and, based on my experience with the military being able to run it independently is a major consideration for them even for smaller systems.
On-premise software is nothing new. But the fact that some software can run on-premise and can interoperate between instances does not mean that it is a protocol. Mattermost can do that, is it a federated protocol too?
For example: https://cabal.chat/
There isn't a way to monetize an open P2P protocol, or even a "captive user base" to sell to VCs for a cash exit so not a lot of development has been done on that area. (And I would be highly skeptical of any "blockchain" P2P Chat proposal)
> “ Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize.
> Amongst an environment of enthusiasm for blockchain-based technologies, efforts to decentralize the internet, and tremendous investment in distributed systems, there has been relatively little product movement in this area from the mobile and consumer internet spaces.
> This is an exploration of challenges for distributed technologies, as well as some considerations for what they do and don't provide, from the perspective of someone working on user-focused mobile communication. This also includes a look at how Signal addresses some of the same problems that decentralized and distributed technologies hope to solve.”
technically nothing. even email kinda fits the bill if you squint hard enough.
realistically though, the vast majority of population will always gravitate towards streamlined workflow provided by centralized services, and the rest of us are dragged along.
It routes messages through an Onion/TOR-like network of nodes that others volunteer to run. In return for running those nodes, they generate the Oxen cryptocurrency, similar to how mining Bitcoin works.
This way, it's not fully centralized like WhatsApp/Telegram/etc, but also solves the issues of devices directly communicating, like what happens when the app isn't running on the phone.
But a question to HN: why have we not seen a mass-market adoption of a P2P, non-centralised messaging system that requires no external services to work?
Mesh and other sorts of networks are cumbersome and have not reached mass-market adoption, so what (technically) is stopping a true E2E P2P platform?