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A comment on Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames. Parent comment

Re:Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames by arp242 on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @03:30PM (#39446494)
I think this is a false dilemma; you can have the high-quality implementations and be more open.

I've criticized Matrix before for their "protocol-first" approach and "too neutral" stance towards clients (which they've changed somewhat it seems; previously [1] was a table of clients with no clue what to choose, now it at least has "featured clients"). I feel they repeated the same mistakes as XMPP, which has not improved their client list.[2] Protocol nerds will say that's a good thing, but all it really does is ensure your protocol remains marginal because most people just get confused. People choose software, not protocols.

But you can write a high-quality client and a specification and allow people to write their own apps. IMHO Signal is needlessly restrictive. Sure, focus on your own implementation and the quality of that first. 100% the right decision. But there's no reason to not at least allow some things down the line. Signal is just a few months shy of their tenth birthday – they're well past the "ensure the quality of our official client"-phase.

[1]: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

[2]: https://xmpp.org/software/

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Re:Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames by chaps on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @05:19PM (#39447763)
At the end of the day, the problem with this model is that it expects free labor to take over the next part. Which might work for a little bit -- until it doesn't. Then you have the situation we're currently in where everything related to matrix is mediocre.
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Re:Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames by tgsovlerkhgsel on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @02:21PM (#39458251)
As soon as you do that though, it becomes a nightmare to adjust anything about the protocol, and you end up with incompatible clients. So you can use the app perfectly with friend 1 that has the official app, but with friend 2 who uses one client, sending photos doesn't work, and with friend 3 voice calls don't work, and adding friend 4 to a group chat somehow breaks it entirely for everyone.

Friend 2 insists on using their client because it has dark mode, and for the average user, what they see isn't "friend 2 is extra and has a broken client", they see "that app fails to send pictures about a quarter of the time, let's use whatsapp".

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