Comparison of instant messaging protocols - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org

The reason why we as consumers get held to ransom by Big Tech is because they are the one’s who create walled gardens of their apps to ensure it is very difficult to leave their service and to maintain any communication with your friends or family who stay behind. They count on that sticky network effect to hold you in place.

The world was not always like this, as we see with e-mail where any app can e-mail any other app. Neither was messaging as it was also once open.

So what we need is a protocol to be broadly supported that will connect anyone to any other app supporting that open protocol, but which allows end-to-end encryption. We need apps to support it, just like Hubzilla which built in a number of plugins to allow it to communicate with Diaspora, XMPP, Fediverse, etc all from one place.

What do we do about Big Tech like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft? Well either they must be mandated by law to build in this protocol support, or we as consumers must start voting with our choices and not make use of services that are walled gardens. Our future lies in an open interoperable Internet offering privacy. The future cannot be walled gardens separating us all.

From the link below the key columns are the License (how open is it for anyone to use without cost?) and End-To-End Encryption (can I use it privately?). From these requirements we can see that the following protocols could be suitable to consider:

  • Bitmessage (Desktop P2)
  • Briar (P2) but Android only
  • Echo
  • Jami (Desktop and Mobile P2P)
  • Matrix (Desktop and Mobile Federated Client-Server)
  • Ricochet (Desktop P2P)
  • Signal (Centralised Desktop and Mobile)
  • SIMPLE (more phones with SIP?)
  • Tox (Desktop and Mobile P2P)
  • XMPP (Desktop and Mobile Decentralized Client-Server)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols

#technology #instantmessengers #interoprability #bigtech #privacy

  • GadgeteerZAOP
    0•3 years ago

    Downside right now with Briar is it would have to certainly run on iOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows etc to become viable. Som eof those protocols listed already present across all devices. I’m not sure why after all this time Briar has still not released an iOS app?

    • ufra
      0•3 years ago

      There was a request for an ios app and the dev team estimated it would cost $250k worth of dev time or some such and tabled it.

      • GadgeteerZAOP
        0•3 years ago

        Qow $250k is a fortune considering there ialready an open source app available as a basis to work from…

        • ufra
          0•3 years ago

          I’ve never hired an iOS developer, but these two sites can give you a ballpark figure:

          http:// www. payscale .com/research/US/Job=iOS_Developer/Salary says $80,582 per year for an iOS developer in the US.

          https:// calc.gsa . gov/?q=mobile%20developer says $192,000 per year (assuming 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year) for a mobile developer. The site doesn’t have data for iOS specifically.

          So that would be $100,727 or $240,000 respectively for 15 person-months, plus a project manager. According to the first site it would be cheaper to hire developers in Germany. And of course people might be willing to work on a project like this for less than their usual commercial rates.

          https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/issues/445

          • GadgeteerZAOP
            0•3 years ago

            Yep and an app does not take a year to develop. The better the dev, the quicker they can put the app together especially if the protocol is well documented and supported already.

            • ufra
              0•3 years ago

              my experience as an ios user is that there isn’t much enthusiasm amongst indie developers for supporting it. understandable in many ways, but in terms of providing a universal service its sorta required.

              • GadgeteerZAOP
                0•3 years ago

                Possible also that iOS has iMessages and maybe not many are open to the bigger ecosystem.