I’ve been exploring alternative private and privacy preserving chat systems for a few years. In the 2000’s I remember using Yahoo! Messenger, MSN, Skype, and IRC.
I’ve also used Linq, Telegram, Teams, Slack, Discord, Whatsapp and Matrix:)/
Out of the majority from the 2000’s apart from some XMPP servers her and there, only IRC still remains, the others have closed down. The same can happen anytime with discord, whatsapp and telegram.
Now, 90% of the existing instant messaging IM platforms are closed source. For the normal user this doesn’t mean much. But for those who want to protect their data from AI scans and privacy, this means a lot.
I’ve avoiced using Slack, Discord, facebook and whatsapp for years however was forced to use them for work purposes.I thought TElegram was a better alternative. Unfortunately, no matter what some say, not even Signal is secure,. THey all have information about you.
The most secure system is one which you selfhost and allows anonymous account creation.
IRC - Internet RElay Chat
IN this case IRC excells. I’ve written extensively about IRC and how it’s a great IM chat alternative please read that article as It talks about all the benefits. If you want JUST a text chat with anonymous people or friends (you can have private invite only/secret channels!) choose IRC. It’s easy to setup and use.
I’m not sure If I will keep my IRC server or migrate it form a domain to another in the future as I may adopt DeltaChat to replace them all
On to Matrix
Matrix is a federated and amazing system. However it suffers from a few problems of fragmentation. Adoption is here and there. Most channels are dead, except for maybe technical ones like those of Debian, Linux Mint and others.
You can host your own server like I did, don’t use synapse the pyhton system since it’s resource intensive. Go with the GOlang version of dendrite (seems unmaintained) or Tuwunel which I’ve began selfhosting.
If you need something for your company, friends, etc. you can use tuwunel and decide NOT to federate, it’s a great slack/discord alternative
There are things I like about matrix and things I dislike… my biggest dislike is the setup between the element client apps
I will probably give up on Matrix since I may adopt DeltaChat.
XMPP
XMPP is interesting, has been along a long time, but it’s fragmented, suffers from the same client issues as bnoth matrix and IRC, it’s more heavyweight, has been used by both Facebook AND google, till they tried to kill it to disallow interconnecting services. I think even Whatsapp used a core component of XMPP (erlang based) to build their services upon
So it’s been battle tested and used by big corporations aswell. There are a few reasons I avoided using it including setup headaches.
Notable Mentions
DataBag
It’s also a federated system it has it’s own web client, android client and server. It’s nice and lightweight.
There are others aswell but I won’t be talking about them
DeltaChat
Currently I’ve began experimenting with DeltaChat and I find it extremely
Conclusion
I will see where DeltaChat goes, I’ll probably stop hosting other services including Matrix and maybe IRC?