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Comment by KoftaBob | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a good time to plug Session: https://getsession.org/

Open source, doesn't require a phone number, and a big strength is that it's decentralized, which makes it much less vulnerable to outages like this.

"Session utilises the decentralised Oxen Service Node Network to store and route messages. This means that unlike P2P messaging applications you can message Session users when they are offline. This network consists of community operated nodes which are stationed all over the world. Service nodes are organised into collections of small co-operative groups called swarms.

Swarms offer additional redundancy and message delivery guarantees even if some service nodes become unreachable. By using this network, Session doesn’t have a central point of failure, and Session’s creators have no capacity to collect or store personal information about people using the app"

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I have investigated session previously and gotten the feeling that it's backed by some kind of crypto pyramid scheme. I can't shake that feeling and the front page talk of joining "the movement" isn't helping.

Nothing on iOS is decentralized, all push notifications must be proxied via Apple's APNS servers from the app developer. There's no support in iOS for p2p messaging apps, even Matrix/Element proxy the notifications via centralized developer-run servers (which are then routed via centralized (but non-SPOF) Apple APNS servers).

Sounded really interesting until I found that it is just another zero-sum exploitation scheme...

> Oxen blockchain and the $OXEN privacy token

I supposed it's a Matrix client, but couldn't find anything by glancing the home page.

Btw, the whole idea of "no phone numbers" makes it really hard to spread. It basically means you can't send a message to anyone in your address book that already has Session installed, unless you get his Session username by other means.

"Convenience, not privacy!"

That's a good thing. Forcing people to give their phone number to use an instant messaging app/protocol is a sign the company just wants your private data.

Also, by doing that and letting the account existence be publicly known, anyone with their phone number will know that they have an account on that service and lets you try to contact them. That can range from privacy violation to life-in-danger situations.

I adamantly refuse to register for accounts that require my phone number unless it's for commercial or official purposes. The likes of Google, Facebook and Microsoft can go take a long walk off a short plank.

We give too much information away. Companies have shown that they are incapable of keeping the information private anyway. We get big scandals, the interwebs kick up a big stink, brows are furrowed, and then we go back to doing what we did before with nobody learning anything.

I agree with you when it comes to random apps, but messengers are probably the only exception where I accept it.

If I gave my phone number to someone, I made an implicit social contract with that person or organization that they may contact me using that phone number. I don't see it as a big stretch if they use that number to send me a message or call me using WhatsApp, Signal or any other messenger where I registered using that same number. It's for the same purpose of communication, after all.

If I don't want to be contacted, I just don't share that number.

And it's not like people don't know that messengers or social networks can collect contact metadata about messages and calls. It's what traditional landline and mobile providers have been doing for ages.

I find phone numbers awesome because you actually "own" them to some degree. (i.e. you can take your number to a new provider). Moving to a different messenger app with the same phone number means I can at least still find some of my network there. Only email on your own domain would have that feature.

I don't really care if they sell my phone number, it's already out there, I don't consider it private data anymore.

Quite true. It would be better, though, to be able to use an instant messaging system using a simple identifier lie an e-mail address, as an alternative to a phone number. Simply because there are quite some people out there who mainly want to message on a computer, and want to keep only some kind of messages on their phones.

Delta Chat.

It’s basically an email client disguised as a messenger.

It is not a matrix client. I haven't dug too deep into their system, but it looks to me like a centralized server with additional steps (ie. still a single entity owning the server infrastructure)

From what I read in their documentation[1], session's network is built upon an onion routing system where nodes are registered in the OXEN blockchain; you stake 15000 $OXEN to create a node and if you are "well-behaved" you get rewards in that blockchain -- otherwise you lose your stake.

I haven't dug too deep either but it doesn't sound much more centralized than the tor network for example.

[1] https://docs.oxen.io/products-built-on-oxen/session/network-...

It's a fork of the Signal client but instead of the centralized Signal back end, uses the decentralized Oxen Service Node system to relay messages.

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