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Matrix vs. XMPP, Security, Privacy, Apps, Efficiency ?

I recently saw Alex's video about XMPP and I got curious.

I am using Element and Schildichat a bit, trying Element X and curious about the new Development here. It seems vibrant, they rewrite stuff in rust, the Apps are fancy and all.

But I tried Conversations and it seems based too, has transparent encryption, it is damn fast, usable, supports groups and files and all. Probably doesnt use the latest fancy Android SDKs but it seems solid.

I was surprised about how fast it was, as Matrix drastically varies per server. But also I found many dead communities, and in general I dont see XMPP at all, while many Projects (if not using Discord, bruh...) have a Matrix room.

How secure is OMEMO in todays standards? Or OpenPGP, compared to Matrix or Signal Encryption? I heard it also has rotating keys and all.

There are other things, like permission systems, chosen federation, privacy, bridge support and more, that are interesting. Are there advanced modern WebUIs for XMPP you like?

I saw that it uses up waaay less resources, why is that? Really, is "simply encrypted mail" somehow worse in an important way?

Similar to IRC, where I never found nice usable apps for my taste, I thought XMPP was deprecated, but that doesnt seem so?

What can you tell me about XMPP, is it modern, secure, privacy friendly?

TCB13 ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

XMPP is like email, a very open standard that was designed for interoperability even with more closed servers that included proprietary features and extensions. It can be configured to be secure and private. Matrix is another attempt at a more closed protocol / ecosystem with the difference that you can self host it. There have been also multiple complaints about the amounts of metadata that Matrix scatters across servers.

The only thing I dislike about XMPP is that stuff like push notifications and proper mobile clients aren't as easy to get as they are with Matrix. Privacy and protocol-wise I would pick it any day - even if the only advantage is that is is considerably simpler than Matrix.

https://hackea.org/notas/matrix.html

TheAgeOfSuperboredom ,

Can you elaborate on what you mean that Matrix is a closed protocol?
The spec is open and there are several server and clients to choose from.

TCB13 ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Matrix is developed by a for profit entity, a group of venture capitalists and having a spec doesn't mean everything. XMPP is an open standard, truly open and if you notice you've had a lot of implementations of it all able to properly integrate with each other without effort.

The way Matrix is designed is to force into jumping through hoops and kind of draw all attention to Matrix itself instead of the end result. The kind of open collaboration where the protocol becomes mostly invisible for the end user isn't just the objective of Matrix.

TCB13 ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Matrix is developed by a for profit entity, a group of venture capitalists and having a spec doesn’t mean everything (...) The way Matrix is designed is to force into jumping through hoops and kind of draw all attention to Matrix itself instead of the end result

For all the people downvoting my original comment this was just out. Oh well what do I know...

Decentralized communication protocol Matrix shifts to less-permissive AGPL open source license

Element, the company and core developer behind the decentralized communication protocol known as Matrix, has announced a notable license change that will make the open source project just that little bit less appealing for companies looking to build on top of it.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/06/decentralized-communication-protocol-matrix-shifts-to-less-permissive-agpl-open-source-license/

poVoq ,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

XMPP is much more popular for private messaging, so you don't have many large public group chats like on Discord (and lesser extend Matrix). It can do it, but clients are not really optimized for that to be honest.

You can btw learn more on https://joinjabber.org

As for the specific questions on e2ee: OMEMO as it is currently implemented in most clients is very similar to Signal in security, but like Signal it does not encrypt metadata. There is an updated OMEMO standard that does encrypt metadata as well, but it hasn't been adopted by any popular XMPP clients yet. However both versions are significantly more secure than Matrix's MegOLM, which has chosen to sacrifice a lot of security for user convenience IMHO.

XMPP is actively developed, but it doesn't have much funding for the open-source efforts, so it lacks PR and some things don't develop as quickly as what you might be used from VC funded for-profit companies like Element/matrix.

I like the Movim webclient, but most current users seem to prefer the native clients for XMPP.

XMPP uses way less resources because it was designed to scale to billions of users for chat, instead of being some over-engineered failed experiment to use a DACS for chat, which really isn't a good idea and never was.

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