Hello, I’m doing some research for my family and friends to help them navigate the tech space and recommend them some better privacy focused alternatives. I’ve been stuck with the most important piece: instant messaging.
Ideally I would like something:
- decentralised
- Foss
- Possibly not tied to phone number
- Encrypted
- Not funded by an US or Israeli company
- Fairly easy to use by not tech people
If I manage to convince them, I can’t make them change in a year or so, the alternative needs to be future-proof.
- Signal: is Foss (not completely) but not decentralised (one “wrong” update and we are back to square one) + very much american funded
- Matrix: foss and decentralised but funded by an Israeli company (sorry I really can’t)
- Telegram: phone number registration, not fully encrypted, server proprietary
- Theema: server side not open source
- IRC: no video/audio calls, not encrypted
That leaves me with SimpleX and XMPP, I think (I don’t know much about them). What do you guys use/recommend?
I’m reading [this wiki page].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols?wprov=sfti1#Table_of_instant_messaging_protocols)
Let’s put it this way, I do believe that matrix accepting money from israel is morally disgusting and I won’t use them. It could be the best system in the world, I am not using it. I’m not asking anyone to convince me, I am already convinced, can we move on now?
Oh, this discussion wasn’t for you, it was for others who might falsely assume your claims to be facts and would lock themselves out of a reasonably secure federated system.