Show HN: Chat with your contacts on different platforms without an app | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Chat with your contacts on different platforms without an app

fiotron.com

63 pointssoheil20 comments

Despite of the (rightfully) privacy concerns showed on comments, I cannot help but see this kind of projects with some kind of sadness/nostalgia.

Long gone are the days of Pidgin and co, where you could have whatever contacts on whatever service they used and you could chat with them from your app, fully integrated on your desktop/cli and set up with too much hassle, not needing to run any browser instance, electron stuff or things like that. imho instant messaging now is a complete mess.

You can live that life again with your own Matrix Server + bridges to other Servers.

Right now I get:

- Matrix - Whatsapp - Telegramm - Signal - Instagram

In one chat app in my phone and desktop.

+1 to this!

I did something similar and you can deploy the whole deal on a cheep VM somewhere using https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/t...

It probably took me about 2 hours total to work through the documentation and get everything configured just the way I wanted it, then you just run a couple ansible commands and boop, you have a matrix homeserver + web ui + jitsi meet + bridges to whatever you want.

It's pretty great! It's my goto chat app now.

The messaging app of Windows Phone that blended seemlessly SMS, facebook messenger and a third provider was awesome to use.

Regulators should in my opinion impose that the message app with XX millions users provide an API for interoperability with other services.

BlackBerry inbox does that on android. Seriously great

I also remember Pidgin fondly.

I have now given up on IM and just email or call people.

No one mentioned Franz that integrates a boat load of chat services into one desktop window??? Been using it for years.

Franz, while a worthy solution, appears to simply combine all the requisite web pages/apps into one app -- meaning you're still dealing with all the various standards and shortcut sets.

The beauty of the Pidgn setup was that any contact was essentially indistinguishable from any other, at least by service. All appeared in the same chat window list, and you spoke to all using the same interface.

It was glorious.

For cross platform chat based on Matrix also see https://www.beeper.com/, built by the pebble founder. (paid service, works with iMessage even on Android).

If you want to self host a Matrix server complete with all the bridges see here:

https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

Or - you could just ask your friends to download Element! https://element.io/

How can I get a Beeper account?

I believe you click "Get started" on the homepage and join a waitlist.

This looks cool! I would be concerned about the privacy of my communications, though, since your service is essentially a MITM. What have you done to address privacy concerns? Your privacy police seems like boilerplate and doesn’t address anything specific to your service.

This is an interesting idea & hack, but it requires you to route your private messages through a third-party Matrix server. So not going to be able to use it unfortunately. Maybe if you offered a self hosted version.

Plus one to this. It would be huge to have this on my Pinephone someday, but there's not a chance I'd trust someone with all of my digital information ad-perpetuum. If a self hosting option pops up, I'll definitely get on board though.

I tried to register. It threw an error. On retry it showed me a couple of user names and addresses of people I've never heard of before. Big red flag for me.

How's this allowed by Facebook concerning WhatsApp? It's usually a very closed system. How does the bridge work in this case?

It likely uses this Matrix bridge: https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp

Message unification needs to happen, yesterday, and this is a clever hack! Great excution and smooth on boarding / use.

Sadly, as others have said, the unknown matrix server is tough, and further, the SMS hack is both a blessing and a curse - easy to use but unencrypted and mega-tracked by phone providers et. al

This was posted here dozens of times. That's what I'd call «spam». Wish I could report it.

I tried to sign up and got an error

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