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Comment by sergiosgc | Hacker News Reader

> So to the question of replacing email: unless all your email is currently PGP encrypted, you don’t need to drop your email just yet.

You don't need to drop email at all. If you trade protocol openness for encryption, you are acquiring technical debt. How long are going to do this dance of switching between instant messenger protocols? ICQ -> AIM -> MS Messenger -> Hangouts -> WhatsApp -> Signal -> ???.

Open protocols (open in specs and federated in access) are the only way to stop this madness.

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In the past Google and Facebook supported xmpp(jabber) protocol. That was real step in right direction. You could use your client and OTR plugin to encrypt all communications. It all ended in 2015.

Do you have an opinion on why that happened?

(I think a lot of useful Signal properties are much harder to do with federation, but that’s a subtle enough problem that it warrants a long form post, not a HN comment. I agree that ceteris paribus federation is better than not—but c.p. is doing a lot of work there :))

Is there some reason to believe it didn't happen (mostly) for the reasons stated by the respective parties at the time? 'federated' is often brought up as an unalloyed good so casually but as you point out yourself, there's a huge overhead, conceptually, operationally, etc.

IMHO, Matrix currently has the best shot at becoming the standard for the open internet.

Those who value the freedom of choice should push for Matrix before Signal becomes the de-facto standard and is acquired by one of the tech giants looking to lock down control of communication.

Matrix is too dependent on it's only vendor in existence, their only server in existence has performance issues. Also, a monolith standard is hardly viable for federated networks, where all nodes can't upgrade all at once.

> [...], their only server in existence has performance issues.

This is either misinformed or disingenuous: https://www.hello-matrix.net/public_servers.php

All these server instances use the same server software, provided by the same vendor.

Ah, I did not realize you were referring to the software. In that case, there is also Construct[^1]. There are other implementations in the works, though progress is somewhat slow.

Synapse is much better with regards to resource usage these days, though. The RSS of my instance is 355M right now and the CPU usage is hovering around 0-10% (15-min server load ~0.5).

[^1]: https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct

Fortunately Signal is a well funded non-profit which reduces the likelihood of its acquisition significantly.

Anybody using keybase? I think they have excellent security, Superior to telegram and signal in some ways.

I wouldn't use keybase where I need reliability due to their vague TOS (that came into effect around the beginning of this year): They can ban you from their service if they deem your actions outside their platform unacceptable.

Interesting, I had to check their ToS and found this which seems a bit vague:

"[...]use the Services to store or transmit any inappropriate content, such as content that: (i) contains unlawful, defamatory, threatening, abusive, libelous or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature" [1]

(My emphasis)

[1] https://keybase.io/docs/acceptable-use-policy

Lots of pros

1) we use it as a slack replacement 2) git integration 3) stellar Blockchain payments 4) encrypted file sharing 5) great system for key management

I'm still using ICQ...

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