I am really struggling to replace facebook messenger / whatsapp for a few casual conversations. My friends and I are all wanting to move away. We are not heavy users of this but need it to work. I think the requirements are:

  • floss client for android, linux, windows

  • persistent history across devices

  • reasonable security

  • don’t need to self host server

  • can send a message to offline user, they get it when they come online

  • not tied to or reliant on phone number / cell service

  • ETA: end user documentation explaining how to set up and common troubleshooting

tried:

  • matrix: the thing with having to keep track of room keys and stuff is too complicated. every time someone uses a new device it is a ton of issues and we could never quite get it ironed out

  • signal: tied to phone number, no history across devices

  • xmpp: similar to matrix the key situation is confusing, also no cross device history

  • ETA: simpleX: a lot of people here are mentioning simpleX. It didn’t come up in previous investigations so will give it a shot.

    • ETA 2: It doesn’t seem to have persistent history across devices. Clarification?

I actually didn’t think this would be such a problem but it is breaking us. we don’t need a lot of sophisticated features like voice, video, moderation, 1000s of participants, spam protection etc that seem to be of concern to the projects. just simple text chat.

  • linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.deOP
    102·
    11 months ago

    so if you click documentation on the session website it brings you to this page https://docs.oxen.io/oxen-docs/products-built-on-oxen/session

    I am seeing the words “blockchain”, “economics”, “token”, “instant transactions”… And one click to NFT crypto stuff.

    I remember hearing that blockchain tech could be used for stuff other than scams but it is used for scams a lot and this app seems to be related to scam-type activity.

    Can someone provide any insight?

    • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
      4·
      11 months ago

      a. not all blockchain is bad b. I have neither seen, nor heard, of blockchain or cryptocoins on the platform. If blockchain is being used under the covers, it’s not visible to users. I see no ability to do anything with NFTs or cryptocoins in any of the clients.

      Session delivers messages more reliably than many platforms; E2E encrypts all messages (unencrypted is not even an option); requires no PII; has a good battery profile on mobile; reliably allows sharing, and has nice QOL features (that my non-tech family members have come to expect) like animated GIF search-and-embed; it supports message deletion and dissapearing messages; it has encrypted voice and video chat.

      If there’s any blockchain in the stack, then Session is an excellent example of its usefulness.

      It’s all open-source, too, so audit away.

      It’s not perfect, of course. There’s no CLI client. Because there’s no PII, there’s no registry, so connecting to people is harder than many platforms, and looking people up, impossible. The desktop client is an Electron app, so it’s typically resource hungry. It doesn’t yet have sent message editing.