• Matombo@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        afaik ap is not a hard requirement for being in the fediverse, matrix is often included because it has the same federation idea

        • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Then email is a part of the fediverse? UUCP nets? IRC nets?

          All federated, none speak AP.

          I think a good working definition is “speaks the w3c standard AP”. Otherwise, its totally lost its meaning.

      • namingthingsiseasy@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Are we claiming now that Activity Pub is the only protocol that we can use for the fediverse? I think XMPP is roughly 30 years old at this point, and I’m pretty sure Activity Pub is much younger than that. I could be wrong though.

        But regardless, I don’t see why Activity Pub has to be the only protocol we accept to be considered a part of the fediverse. It’s not even like different AP implementations talk to each other all that well. My understanding is that Mastodon doesn’t federate that well with Lemmy, and I haven’t seen Loops or Pixelfed on Lemmy yet either.

        I’d be happy to be corrected on any of this though, I haven’t looked too closely into exactly how AP works or how it’s supposed to interoperate with different applications.

        • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          I mean, yeah… the fediverse, specifically, are AP servers, which is why we don’t include diaspora for it.

          It’s decentralized and federated, to be sure, just not the “fediverse”.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyzEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Fediverse is about federation. It’s not Activityverse. So yeah, email, Usenet, IRC, XMPP, Matrix… all Fediverse, all an antidote to corporate walled gardens.

            Edit: not demeaning AP, it’s a great achievement and the services built upon it are a testament to its quality and forward-thinking.

            • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              I’m just saying that there’s deficiencies in those other networks. Just that they are different networks.

              Now if an xmpp user can directly message or communicate with a Mastodon user… then they’d be both part of the “fediverse”.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I’d like to argue that using AP is an inconsistent rule for membership. For example, Diaspora has been considered to be part of the fediverse from early on, but it doesn’t use AP.

        I don’t really know where to draw the line. AP simply isn’t suitable for some applications, but it makes sense to include it for branding

        • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          I don’t know of anyone who include d*, accepting the tiny number of d* pods that also speak AP.

          I mean, nostr is also NOT part of the fediverse, but another federated and decentralized network.

          • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.caEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Both Wikipedia and fediverse.party consider Diaspora, and a handful of other (mostly defunct) protocols as being part of the fediverse.

            I don’t really like the use of AP to be a qualification of being in the fediverse. There must be a better way to qualify a platform, even if it means that use of AP is a natural consequence.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        the author literally picked random projects from github tagged as matrix, without considering their prevalence or whether they are actually maintained etc.

        if you actually look at % of impacted clients, it’s tiny.

        meanwhile, it is very unclear that any sidechannel attack on a libolm based client is practical over the network (which is why we didn’t fix this years ago). After all, the limited primitives are commented on in the readme and https://github.com/matrix-org/olm/issues/3 since day 1.

        From your link.

        • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          I do, use Signal if you care about privacy. They are the only game in town when it comes to reasonably secure chat software. Sure, I would prefer a federated alternative but I haven’t found one yet that is always end-to-end encrypted, open source, implements forward secrecy, and is user friendly enough to be used by my grandmother.

            • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              SimpleX is cool, but fails the “my grandmother can use it” requirement. Signal has the huge benefit that is just as easy as WhatsApp. With Simplex you have to invite each of your friends individually.

                • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                  0·
                  3 months ago

                  With Signal you just have to install the App and make an account to start chatting with your friends and family. SimpleX requires me to send a link or QR code to everybody I want to interact with. You will have a hard time convincing anyone to do that. Compare that to the first Twitter exodus, people chose Bluesky over Mastodon because picking a server was ‘difficult’. The average person doesn’t care about technology at all and will always pick the path of least resistance.

    • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Absolutely, signal isn’t federated, but I don’t want my messaging app to be federated. I want my social media to be federated. Lemmy is good because it’s open. Signal is good because it’s shut.

    • amzd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      it’s decentralized

      No it’s not. From literally your own comment:

      Signal relies on centralized servers

      For a decentralized messenger use https://delta.chat

      • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        it’s decentralized

        No it’s not. From literally your own comment:

        Signal relies on centralized servers

        I was using “decentralized” to mean that there isn’t centralized control over ownership of the service in general — eg anyone can spin up their own server (impractical, imo, pushing it more towards being centralized) and people can use it (making it decentralized, imo (Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do think my usage of the term is appropriate in this way.)), but people who use that server can only communicate with that server (making it not federated). But yes it could still be said to be centralized in that it operates on a client-server model [1].

        This is more an argument of definitions, though. I’m not trying to claim anything in bad faith.

        References
        1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server.
          • This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
        • amzd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          That’s just open source, not decentralized. I can’t find a definition of decentralization that would even make it vague. From Wikipedia:

          Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within it.

          Signal has a central authoritative server and to use it with any other server you have to modify the source code.

          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            That’s just open source, not decentralized.

            Depending on exactly how said open source development is occuring, I could argue that open source development is an example of decentralization. It may even be an example of federation (all depending on licensing and development medium imo).

          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within

            Imo this fits my usage of the term — Signal can be broken up into many isolated servers all offering the same service.

      • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        My comment wasn’t protesting the use of Signal; it was rather clarifying the misinformation in OP’s post — ie misinformation that Signal is a federated service.

    • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yeah. I love Signal but it doesn’t belong in that list. Dansup (creator of loops and pixelfed) is apparently working on “Sup” that will be a decentralized alternative to whatsapp.

        • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Yeah… I’m bit afraid of “kbin Ernest Effect” (not sure what a proper term is) where personal issues pile up and the sole head developer just disappears.

          Haven’t followed dansup much but from what I understand he is much more open to pull requests and listening to the community, but time will tell. Right now I appreciate and love his effort, giving, and the impact on fediverse he is brining.

          The kickstarter was a good idea.

          • ApollosArrow@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Given that I’ve waited 3 weeks to join his smaller instance of pixelfed.art, I can tell things are already piling up. I am hoping the kickstarter does help.

        • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          There isn’t much information about “Sup”, but if I had to guess it could be that dansup is making sup app with XMPP(rotocol) as the messaging protocol.

          • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Originally it was supposed to be ActivityPub based, but recently they posted something about it being for XMPP, Matrix and IRC as well 🤷‍♂️ Maybe they decided to fork Pidgin 😂

            IMHO Sup. isn’t going to happen. They will have their hands more than full with Pixelfed’s new popularity and maybe Loops.

            • Lazycog@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Oh! didn’t know that, I thought activitypub can’t be used for secure messaging. Lol really hope its XMPP!

              Yeah I didn’t take it that seriously when it was announced right now. Just hope pixelfed stays afloat amidst the user flood and hope he can publish loops as open source soon!

        • apex32@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.

          On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters. It looks/works great in a browser though.

          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            I wish Boost understood the collapsible spoilers.

            On my client, it’s all expanded and I see all the formatting characters.

            Ah dang, that’s good to know (though I’m not sure what to do as an alternative) — I was unaware that the collapsible spoilers weren’t supported on Boost. I guess that means that Lemmy’s markdown formatting hasn’t entirely been standardized across the service. I personally have encountered some inconsistency on the Tesseract UI with CommonMark Autolink [2] formatting where the autolinks don’t even render [1].

            I recommend reporting this to the Boost devs to improve Markdown feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.

            References
            1. “Kalcifer” @Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works. To: [“Happy #GlobalSwitchDay”. @squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de. “Fediverse” !fediverse@lemmy.world. Tesseract. sh.itjust.works. Published: 2025-02-01T07:08:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:40Z. https://tesh.itjust.works/post/sh.itjust.works/32046509.]. Published: 2025-02-01T09:20:14Z. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:42Z. https://sh.itjust.works/post/32046509/16425699.
              • Raw Text:
                Signal isn't federated ^[1][2][3.1]^; it's decentralized ^[1][2][3.2]^. Though, for all practical purposes, I would generally argue that it's centralized. 

::: spoiler References
1. Signal-Server. signalapp. Github. Published: 2025-01-31T15:34:14.000Z. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:24Z. <https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server>.
   - This is the source code for the server that Signal uses.
2. "Signal (software)". Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-06T09:34Z. Accessed: 2025-02-1T09:30Z. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)>.
   - ¶"Architecture". ¶"Servers".
     > Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Signal Messenger. In addition to routing Signal's messages, the servers also facilitate the discovery of contacts who are also registered Signal users and the automatic exchange of users' public keys. […]
3. "Reflections: The ecosystem is moving". moxie0. Signal Blog. Published: 2016-05-10. Accessed: 2025-02-01T09:40Z.  <https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/>.
   1. ¶5. to ¶"Stuck in time". ¶3-6
      > One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all. […] [interoperable protocols] [have] taken us pretty far, but it’s undeniable that once you federate your protocol, it becomes very difficult to make changes. And right now, at the application level, things that stand still don’t fare very well in a world where the ecosystem is moving. […] Early on, I thought we’d federate Signal once its velocity had subsided. Now I realize that things will probably never slow down, and if anything the velocity of the entire landscape seems to be steadily increasing.
   2. ¶"Stuck in time". "Federation and control". ¶6.
      > An open source infrastructure for a centralized network now provides almost the same level of control as federated protocols, without giving up the ability to adapt. If a centralized provider with an open source infrastructure ever makes horrible changes, those that disagree have the software they need to run their own alternative instead. It may not be as beautiful as federation, but at this point it seems that it will have to do.
:::
                • Rendered:

                • In the rendered text there are no links; however, there should be links at the end, as is shown by the CommonMark autolinks in the raw text.
            2. “CommonMark Spec”. John MacFarlane. CommonMark. Version: 0.31.2. Published: 2024-01-28. Accessed: 2025-02-02T04:51Z. https://spec.commonmark.org/0.31.2/#uri-autolink.
              • §6.5 “Autolinks”. ¶2.

                A URI autolink consists of <, followed by an absolute URI followed by >. It is parsed as a link to the URI, with the URI as the link’s label.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Dang 😕. See my comment for a related response.

              I recommend reporting the bug to the Sync devs to fix their Markdown formatting to improve feature compatibility between them and the Lemmy UI.

    • namingthingsiseasy@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.

      The fact that we have a telephone system that works with separate providers contradicts this sentiment. If I want to pick up the phone and talk to my cousin’s puppy in New Zealand, I can do that without creating an account on his provider’s service.

      I don’t understand why we’ve forgotten this as a society. Yes, it was difficult to upgrade the phone systems over the past century, but it’s worth it in my opinion. I really wish we’d start seeing government regulation that says “you should be able to talk to someone on a service without having to create an account on said service.” I thought the DMA would do this, but sadly, Whatsapp still requires an account to talk to people using that service. Very disappointing.

    • jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, Moxie has openly shot down the idea of adding federation to Signal, and I’ve never heard them claim Signal was decentralized.

      Matrix is federated, distributed, and decentralized.

      XMPP is federated and decentralized.

        • jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Matrix servers keep a copy of any remote room an account on the server has joined, and it’s possible to recreate a room from the copies held on different servers. There are more details I don’t remember, but at a high level that’s how it’s distributed.

          Storing messages of remote rooms in addition to local rooms is why people complain about the storage requirements of Matrix servers. They don’t realize it’s distributed.

  • Lyre@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Anyone know if loops has a good app out, or if there’s one in the works thats coming out soon?

      • DUMBASS@leminal.spaceEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        My favourite Dansup line is " It’s coming this weekend" not sure when this weekend is supposed to come around tho.

        From what I’ve seen on the loops discord he’s about to open source the app and self hosted backend real soon, he’s been reaching out for people to set up and test out the server code.

        Same with federation, that’s not far away, I think he wants to test how the different instances connect to each other first before the wider federation.

        He’s finally starting to look for coders to help him with the backend and app tho, so that’s a good start.

        • reev@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          And I really do appreciate that. He’s doing some good stuff and really hope pixelfed and loops (and sup) continue on the momentum that they’ve got and gain a substantial enough Userbase that they’re really enjoyable to use. Just wanted to add the extra context because I think that’s relevant too!

          • DUMBASS@leminal.spaceEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            He just really needs to let people help him more, he makes good stuff but it’s kinda obvious it’s getting a bit much for him sometimes, which is how we ended up with the stuff in your link lol.

            A few times I’ve jumped in to the pixelfed discord before he split loops into its own one and he’d be in some crazy long rant, then you’d see him delete all his messages, dude needs a break or to delegate some of his work to the people who keep asking to help.

            Good dude tho, just needs a rest I think, the tik tok thing kinda put some pressure on him to get it going quicker I think.

    • derbolle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      technically nothing but it serves as a privacy respecting alternative to meta/google controlled messengers.

      things like mastodon and pixelfed are rather easy to wrap your head around and replace their big tech counterparts with if you are the average user.

      there is no real replacement for an instant messaging/sms like experience. matrix is at the moment still a bit too complicated to get into if you have come to expect a workflow like: download an app -> write your phone contacts a message.

      so although it is not federated it is the best we have got at the moment in my opinion

      • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I get that but the image is referring to it as part of the “fediverse” which it is not as it doesn’t use ActivityPub.

      • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        There’s also SimpleX, though it’s much less popular. (not like Signal is used everywhere though, it’s just a matter of what you switch your group to.)

          • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            It’s cool, thought people should still be wary of it since it’s new and backed by VC.

            I’d give it a little more until i switch fully to it, but it 100% is better than WA.

        • acockworkorange@mander.xyzEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Thanks for bringing it to my attention. It really looks like they managed to make an ID less chat as simple as possible. But the undeniable benefit of using one’s phone as ID is that when people switch, their contacts are already there. I think that friction alone will prevent normies from adopting it.

          • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            You’re welcome :) (btw, nice username)

            Yeah they’ve tried to make it as similar as whatsapp. But it’s hard convincing your entire family to switch again after signal just because you found a cool new app to switch to, lol

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      The post is really about abandoning the tech oligarchy more than specifically using federated technology.

  • KiloGex@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Looks like Loops isn’t accepting new users at the moment. Hopefully that’ll open up again soon.