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2/ #Signal brings #encryption and #privacy to meet people where they're at, not the other way around. People don't have to choose a server, it can automatically recognize contacts that use Signal, it has emojis, attachments, secure voice and video calling, and they all just work (Musk aside). It feels, and is, a polished, modern experience with the bells and whistles they are used to.

3/ I am a huge fan of #Matrix/#Element and even run my own instance. It has huge promise. But it is Not. There. Yet. Some reasons:

#Synapse, the only currently viable Matrix server, is not ready. My Matrix instance hosts ONE person, me. Synapse uses many GB of RAM and 10+GB of disk space, with little tuning for either. It's caused OOMs more than once. And this is AFTER extensive tuning. It cannot be hosted on a Raspberry Pi or even one of the cheaper VPSs.

4/ Choosing a #Matrix instance. Well you could just tell a person to use matrix.org. But then it spent a good portion of last year unable to federate with other popular nodes due to Synapse limitations. Or you could pick a random node, but will it be up when someone needs to say "my car broke down?" Some are run from a dorm computer, some by a team in a datacenter, some by one person with EC2, and you can't really know. Will it be stable and long-lived? Hard to say.

5/ Voice and video calling is not there yet. Matrix has two incompatible video calling methods (Jitsi and built-in), neither work consistently well, both are hard to manage, and both have NAT challenges.

6/ #Matrix is so hard to set up on a server that there is matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://matrix.org/docs/projects/other/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/ . This makes it much better but it is STILL terribly hard to deploy, and very simple things like "how do I delete a user" or "let me shrink down this 30GB database" are barely there yet, if at all.

7/ Encryption is not mandatory in #Matrix. E2EE has been getting DRAMATICALLY better in the last few releases, but it is still optional, especially for what people would call "group chats" (rooms). Signal is ALWAYS encrypted. Always. (Unless, I guess, you set it as your SMS provider on Android). You've got to take the responsibility off the user to verify encryption status and make it the one and only way to use the ecosystem.

8/ Again, I LOVE #Matrix. I use it every day to interact with Matrix, IRC, Slack, and Discord channels. It has a TON of promise. But would I count on it to carry a "my car's broken down and I'm stranded" message? No.

9/ What about some of the other options out there? #Briar is fantastic and its offline options are novel and promising. But in common usage, it can't deliver a message unless both devices are online simultaneously, and doesn't run on iOS (though both are being worked on). It also can't send photos or do voice or video calling.

11/ So #Signal gives people: dead-simple setup, store-and-forward delivery, encrypted everything, encrypted voice/video calls, ability to send photos/video encrypted. If you are going to tell someone "it's so EASY to get your texts away from Facebook and AT&T", THIS IS THE THING you've got to point them to. It may not be in 2 years, but for now, it is. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It advances the status quo without harming usability, which nothing else does yet.

12/ I am aware of all of the very legitimate criticisms of #Signal. They are real and they are why I am excited that there are so many alternatives with promise, some of which I use actively. Let us technical people use, debug, contribute, and evangelize the alternatives.

And while we're doing that, tell Grandma to contact us on Signal.

/END

@jgoerzen hi John, regarding #Signal here I have a fun poll https://floss.social/@ademalsasa/105587887622215525 I invite you to join. It's already 700 people participating already with hundred of comments.

@ademalsasa Hello, instance-neighbor! Thank you for the link; very interesting conversation.

I used XMPP extensively for awhile, but haven't now for a few years.

Also, I learned of #Jami there. I hadn't heard of Jami before, but sadly the website has no detail on how it achieves connections or if both endpoints must be online simultaneously for messages to be sent.