It will be open source, end to end encrypted using Signal’s double ratchet encryption protocol, and he plans to make it easy for fediverse platforms to integrate it. The beta will release later this month.
He’s also the creator of https://fedidb.org btw
Nice. This sounds like a federated signal messanger? Why not using matrix or xmpp? 🤨
Can you use matrix with a lemmy or mastodon account?
No, right now you need two separate accounts but you could combine them if you wanted to
I have no idea what the fediverse brings to an E2EE IM app. They seem like contradictory concepts.
no walls?
All existing messengers have “no walls” if you consider they all transfer data via TCP/IP. Except the wall is the encryption/higher level protocol. Now just replace TCP/IP with federated servers. Different messengers will be unable to communicate with each other because they’d need to implement the same encryption.
If you’re able to standardize the encryption then things can interoperate if it’s fediverse based or not.
According to this post, Signal can federate, but chooses not to. In another post, it’s said that Matrix is based off Signal.
So, one way to look at it announcement is “you will be able send Signal/Matrix messages from your fediverse instance of choice”, I believe
While no details are clear, it’ll definitely not be this. Matrix has it’s own implementation which isn’t compatible with signal (megolm or something like that), and I really don’t think dansup will be making it matrix compatible. It’ll probably be its own thing.
Kind of surreal seeing my own Mastodon post linked, damn.
If you’re curious about the details I refer to, there’s an indepth article on lwn.net regarding this from 2016 here: https://lwn.net/Articles/687294/
That article was very informative, thanks!
Huh. I wonder what they mean by “bad user UX”. I was expecting concerns about encryption or privacy, not UX. I already use Signal, so it would be a positive for me if they federate.
To be a bit more precise, Signal is against federation from two angles:
Innovation: Signal values absolute control over the protocol so that they can more rapidly implement UX experiences scene in other modern messaging apps. It also eliminates malicious or outdated servers changing the UX between users. Ultimately folks won’t blame the servers, they’ll blame the app, and stop using it.
No rope for users: They seem pretty confident that the Apple-style of software and UX is right— if a user can change stuff enough to break it, they will. For secure messaging, they’d rather users have fewer choices to be sure it is secure.
Yeah … I read it as well.
This announcement does not mean that the services (signal, matrix, etc) will be integrated. At one point there’ll be a bridge for matrix. But like google, all of them need to implements MLS at one point. Maybe then they’ll be able to communicate
Signal has been the basis of basically every private messenger since it’s inception. They may have since forked but they’re almost all based loosely on it’s concepts.