Communicating securely over the internet is a must. This article compares available and actively-developed projects that are used for secure communications. Favor is given to platforms that support group-chats, but pure 1:1 communications are discussed as well.

  • soloActivist@links.hackliberty.org
    1·
    8 months ago

    Matrix

    I have not bothered to study Matrix closely because the only times activists have invited me to a conversation it was on the #Cloudflare instance (matrix.org). That really drives up the investigative effort I have to do in order to trust it because Cloudflare Inc sees everything under that TLS layer. I assume payloads are e2ee but the payload isn’t everything. It’s also sketchy because if everything is e2ee then there’s nothing for CF to optimize by caching, so it seems like a senseless move. When Matrix first emerged I instantly lost respect for everyone working on that project because it sends a loud message that there’s a competency and awareness problem. They don’t know their audience. If they don’t understand the issues with Cloudflare then they are probably not well informed in other ways. It’s a serious optics problem to say the least.

    Matrix is UK based [14] and so does not need to follow GDPR and could be compelled under warrant to share metadata on users.

    The UK mirrored the GDPR with just a few minor changes.

    XMPP

    …modern features like VoIP and user avatars are only supported by one! client, Dino.

    #Snikket has those features.

    Missing platforms

    • Wire
    • Jami
    • Briar (it’s mentioned incidentally in a “hostile regimes” section but it’s an app and network of its own and should have a section)