@
[email protected] It gets a bit worse, Telegram has a long-standing relationship with a Saudi organization that's essentially a govt arm in Riyadh, working in direct partnership to analyze and monitor an obscene amount of user data: https://www.saudigazette.com.sa/article/641746/SAUDI-ARABIA/Etidal-Telegram-remove-over-16-million-extremist-contents-in-early-2024
They claim this only targets terrorist groups. I can verify that it absolutely impacts groups run by queer communities in the Gulf, because I was in one such group that was monitored and shut down by Etidal.
Telegram can fuck off into the sunset.
You know what, in my head I think I want a whole new messenger.
There’s an indexer that acts as a phone book, but at the same time, people can bypass that by directly adding contacts.
All chat history and groups are peer 2 peer and are stored like torrents with the extended backup being self-hostable.
Recent chat history (up to 30 days) can be stored on the indexer, though they’re encrypted and so the server is blind to what’s in them. They should explicitly be opt-in.
Whenever a user adds a new client (device), all conversations recipients should have to approve in order for them to see the chat history.
It should also have all the bells and whistles, like emoji, stickers, groups, channels, etc.
I have been thinking of something like this too, the thing in common between us is that neither of us has the competency, the time and the persistence to make this happen.
Sometimes putting the ideas we have out there makes a difference. While we lack the competency, perhaps someone that sees this will and it will inspire them to bring something to life.
Well, those having the competency have likely already thought of such a thing, and possibly already busy with it.
I’m hopeful for Locutus as a platform for making such applications.
Just seen that they’ve renamed themselves as Freenet. It’s a shame that they’re using Reddit rather than Lemmy though.
Why though? In case of a public chat or a chat with at least few dozens of users it’ll already be excessive if it could work at all.
Like really P2P or E2E? Because I know at least one chat app that is serverless but doesn’t involve E2E apparently - tox. E2E is an overkill for big group chats because it means you have to re-encrypt every message for every new user for them to see it. Else if you rely on just a fixed shared key it’s not E2E anymore (which will make some people sad and hate your app).
For public chats, you wouldn’t need to approve, only for private chat groups.
Yep real P2P. The design is inspired by BitTorrent.
I get that but it kind of defeats the purpose. If your group is so small that it’s worth it for every member to approve new ones then it probably doesn’t produce enough content for each new member to care about.
See, we’re already the Messenger Working Group 😂
You’re describing Signal to some extent.
Meh, Signal wishes I describing it in any extent. Signal is, I don’t want to say poorly designed, but at the conceptual level, its design just isn’t conducive to being a great social hub. Hence the lack of real multi-device support after all these years. Add to that my cognitive dissonance because the Signal app UX sucks so much and I reject the idea out right. I truly wish Signal was better, but I remember when they were launching Stories and despite every app that has had success with them launching them within the main UI, a bunch of old men who want phones without front cameras managed to get them implemented at a tab, hence Signal stories being dead on arrival. But Signal is a great backup messenger.
What’s wrong with WhatsApp? Is there something I need to know?
It’s owned by Meta/Facebook a company that’s makes its money spying on users. Signal or Simplex Chat are much better choices.
Everything. Why would you trust Meta with anything?
Very true.
https://blog.paulbiggar.com/meta-and-lavender might be worth reading.