This whole saga only happened because Telegram (which was ubiquitous for the furry fandom) started doing some sketchy shit, so I suggested leaving it.
I had recommended Signal, not because I particularly love it, but because a) it has the feature furries actually care about and b) it's actually a secure messenger.
https://soatok.blog/2024/05/14/its-time-for-furries-to-stop-using-telegram/
Then the Matrix fans flooded my mentions. One tried to talk over me and recommend Matrix instead of Signal (and even went as far as to shout "DON'T USE SIGNAL" in all caps) on pawb.social.
So I wrote a gist about why I don't expect the Matrix devs to develop a secure protocol.
https://gist.github.com/soatok/8aef6f67fec9c702f510ee24d19ef92b
This was intended to be off my usual publishing path, so as to not bog down my blog's regular readers with needless debates. Instead, I just wanted something I could copy/paste into the replies of the Matrix evangelists.
And then one of the Matrix devs tried to "correct" my opinion in a Gist comment. This prompted me to actually look at the Matrix codebase and find some cryptographic bugs. Blog post going live on the 14th about that.
Several more people also replied (which I have since deleted) to evangelize XMPP + OMEMO.
They bought and paid for https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/ with their misconduct.
Somewhere in the middle, I wrote a concrete list of boxes that a messenger app needs to consistently check in order to belong at the same table as Signal.
https://soatok.blog/2024/07/31/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-signal-competitor/
One of the comments on my OMEMO blog post ends with:
> In fact, you probably just have to ask Daniel Gultsch about this and you’ll get comprehensive answers.
>
> Instead, this blog post will just go around, everyone will have their own private little discussions about it and proper feedback will never land here. That’s just a shame.
https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/#comment-5446
And I'm just like ????? do you think I wanted to be here in the first place?
I just wanted to tell furries to get off Telegram, and recommended the only app that meets my bar as an applied cryptography engineer.
You don't have to follow my advice. I'm not a goddamn authority. I'm just an unimportant Internet furry.
@soatok
people should get their priorities sorted.
even leaving aside the "comparable to Signal" argument, it's clear that of the options mentioned, moving to Signal is by far the easiest. so even assuming it was subpar to XMPP or Matrix and not the other way around, it's very clearly a good thing to get people to move to it when the alternative is FUCKING TELEGRAM.
like for real, if the choice in between 95% switching to Signal vs 50% switching to $PerfectSoftware, I go option A every time.
@Devourer_ITA @Yuvalne @soatok set up a voip number like google voice and use that number
@ao @destroy @Devourer_ITA @soatok
Signal does not. you're thinking of Telegram.
the only requirement with Signal is that you continue to control the number, otherwise the next person who does may deregister you.
but VoIP is fine for that, and so is landline. and that's for not wanting *Signal* to know your mobile number, because you can still use your mobile and have it hidden with Phone Number Privacy.
@Yuvalne @ao @destroy @Devourer_ITA @soatok it’s a bit confusing since signal used to not allow you to hide the number/user name associations, but it seems to allow it now.
Unfortunately the shift in momentum means that many of my contacts stopped using it including myself after it got more popular and started telling everyone who joined my username. That was a fun incident.
TG allows voip numbers sometimes now, else I’d have to get a burner for it.
@destroy @Devourer_ITA @Yuvalne @soatok many IM apps (iirc signal too) disallow voip numbers now, and google voice is us-only.
setting up an equivalent is not really free or lowtech.
just use signal usernames.