[JepZ]

Well, while I dream the same dream, it feels awkward asking my family and friends to pay 5€ per year so that we can share the cost of running our XMPP-Server. Currently, I pay all the bills and manage the server myself (so no cost/effort for them), and they still keep using WhatsApp with most of their contacts.

I don't know what the root of that evil is, but there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved. First of all, most people have WhatsApp already.

Secondly, it is effortless to use. With federated systems, you always have to choose a provider. Once you have overcome that hurdle, the privacy-sensitive people like us do not want to share their address book with the server so finding your people is a manual setup for everyone (another hurdle).

Last but not least, the client landscape of XMPP is still far from perfect. If you want to use end-to-end encryption (e.g., OMEMO) there are finally some clients which work with each other (Android: Conversations, iOS: ChatSecure, Desktop: Gajim), but configuring all that stuff (Server + Clients), is not as easy as pushing a button. Other features like video calls are still very fragmented and rarely work if different clients are involved.

I think it would take ten dedicated developers about a year to fix all those problems (if they would agree on common goals and focus on those) and even after that, we would still have to sell the product.

[athenot]

This is all summed up in one word: friction.

What the big platforms have done is eliminate friction at all the critical parts, to make it easy for users to onboard, easy to share, easy to grow within the platform, and of course hard to leave.

I've been thinking about a low cost but not free platform too. If it ever happens, it will have to be AT LEAST as frictionless and enticing as the existing platforms. The table stakes are very high. Since cost in of itself is a source of friction, that means the rest of the platform needs to be even MORE frictionless.

[decasia]

I think this is exactly right. Users expect a really nice, contemporary-feeling UX. And for something that cost money it would have to be above and beyond.

That said, the fact is that the mainstream alternatives are handicapped by their own success and are afraid to change anything of their core features. Starting a new platform would be an opportunity to revisit many of the original design choices, and perhaps one could do surprising new things at that point.

I think the co-operative model is interesting economically as well because as far as I can tell, there are at least some cases where it does work out to be economically stable on a reasonably long term basis (decades anyway), and I presume it changes things a lot, organizationally, if the main goal isn't just "lowest common denominator software for the sake of maximal mass adoption and growth."

[sizzle]

I'm curious, can anyone estimate the developer hours it would take to clone WhatsApp's UX, features and functionality? Would it be doable since it's already developed and they solved the hard problems for syncing messages across timezones and it may be feasible to follow their tech stack as a blueprint/starting point?

Facebook and Instagram had no trouble stealing the concept of 'stories' from Snapchat and Facebook also copied their augmented face masks.

Did WhatsApp use a lot of open source stuff under the covers that we could leverage in building our own secure person to person/ group chat platform?

[efields]

Craigslist is an interesting comparison for friction/UX. Still looks like it's from the early 00's, but has stayed just usable enough on all contemporary devices that it never went out of style.

The only friction to the end-user is the same email/password request every other service makes, but you want to use CL because it's the de facto place for listing your apartment or whatever.

[loceng]

Or enough differentiation and/or other enticing reasons to join the network.

The table stakes are another reason why this endeavour won't happen as a small effort.

[Chris_Jay]

The only thing I could possibly see working for what you're envisioning is building it on top of the Neuralink if a version 1.0 ever comes out.

[wolco]

What about a facebook clone with regular ads?

[decasia]

I don't know if I would build something from scratch that was based on XMPP or even on the idea of messaging. I keep thinking that the Twitter/FB/chat models of socializing is a very limited form of online sociability and that we could do better.

I think it would be better to build something that was sufficiently compelling and had enough new features/UX that people would want to use it all on its own, as something better than the existing ad-supported options, and then we would enable federated options as an alternative form of access. But I think the primary UX has to be "log in to web app" or "install mobile clients," not "fiddle with XMPP settings" (because that is too fiddly, like you're saying, and you have to meet people where they are).

This being said — it's excellent that you run your own server and managed to get some of your social network to actually use it!

[Leace]

I think the parent referred to fiddling with OMEMO fingerprints, that a) is automated in "good clients" (Conversations) b) can't be easy and paranoid-secure at the same time.

I also run XMPP server for friends and family and actually all of them are very happy with it. With Conversations this entire experience looks like any other modern messenger.

Network effects are of course a problem in any decentralized environments but looking at how quickly companies drop their solutions (Google?) or abuse the data you give them (Facebook?) I don't see any other reasonable option. Today Signal is nice and kind, tomorrow they are bought by Facebook and start "fiddling" with the app...

[Joe-Z]

>I think it would take ten dedicated developers ... if they would agree on common goals and focus on those

Well, then it will never happen :D

[benjaminjackman]

Do you have a recommended guide for setting an XMPP server that supports end-to-end encryption?

[JepZ]

Sadly I don't. I have mine running since a while, and some things might not be state-of-the-art anymore.

The server doesn't really have to support end-to-end encryption as that is part of the clients (in fact, there are some server-side extensions which have to be present, but those are mostly enabled by default).

Afaik, the default ejabberd configuration is very close to what you need, and there is just one part that you have to remove to enable OMEMO [1]. I don't understand why but recently the ejabberd devs introduced that part to their default configuration which makes it harder to use end-to-end encryption.

Nevertheless, if you are very interested in a detailed guide, I could write one as I am thinking about setting up a secondary server as a testing environment.

[1]: https://github.com/processone/ejabberd/blob/master/ejabberd....

[upofadown]

Here is some discussion of how to easily use Let's Encrypt certificates with the prosody XMPP server. That gets you C2S and S2S encryption which is more or less mandatory these days. End to end (OMEMO) doesn't need the server to do anything special so there isn't any setup to do past just getting the server running.

* https://prosody.im/doc/letsencrypt

[krabzzz]

Why would you want E2E if you run the server, and so can be trusted?