this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Lord of the memes
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The Lord of the rings memes communitiy on Lemmy. Share memes about Lord of the rings and be respectful.
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IRC was and still is just fine. Not as flashy as some of the newer stuff it had everything you could ask for in text-based chat.
With all the garbage happening privacy-wise - breaches, data farming, ads, e2ee removal - with all well-known messengers, I've decided to take messaging into my own hands. The solution turned out to be a 25 year old system called XMPP. Like you say, XMPP isn't as flashy (some desktop clients still look like AOL) but is solid.
what about matrix? its new, opensouce, decentralized and still actively developed, everything you could ask for
I migrated back. :)
I chose Matrix (continuwuity) because it's less involved for others to chat and set up settings, and that's key to bring more folk into a new ecosystem - as little friction as possible. It's far from perfect, as I have no call functionality*, but it's simpler to handle chat encryption, plus Element, Matrix and the maintainers of each server project are working hard to catch up to the mainstream.
Element are hoping to implement Element Call, as well as a QR scan that handles all of the security key validating for a new device, and MAS authentication) so people will be able to register accounts and set up 2FA.. And I concluded that, in the end, backwards decryption was more valuable and sacrificing previous messages was just too extreme a move. I have security, moderating traffic, and I'm self hosting. That's enough for my family.
*I swear I had calling available with Conduwuit, coturn and Element, but hey ho.
I second the controversy, owners of the program kinda suck (like Lemmy really) but mainly I was using a fork of Conduit for my server called Conduwuit but the single maintainer got bullied off the internet and they couldn't hack the abuse, so they had to retreat and stop maintaining everything to recover their health. Here is their statement. They were open about having a furry/puppy kink and so constantly got people attacking them, spreading rumours and accusing them of bestiality and paedophilia.
Anyway, as my favourite fork was no longer maintained, and as Matrix the devs were working on proprietary modifications (Element X) that were basically already invented, plus some security issues alongside trusting them, the first of which being that some of my traffic between my server and my client was routed through them, I chose XMPP.
Speaking of Matrix, there is a recent vulnerability for federated servers that needs to be addressed by hosters.
XMPP does have its downsides, though. No pretty desktop clients, and the OMEMO verification with no backward decryption meaning when you use a new client, your previous encrypted messages are never readable.. In this Matrix trumps.
It's just really hard to stay mindful of ethics, privacy and stuff.
I just learned that Conduwuit has been officially taken on by both a stable team of developers under a fork called Tuwunel, and an unknown amount of volunteers under the name Continuwuity. The whole situation is messy as fuck. I might migrate back.
It lately had a bunch of controversy around it, development is pretty halted and the inability to stop randos from spam inviting you into chats with csam kinda is a nono for me.
XMPP is a protocol, not a program, so you can use whatever program that supports XMPP, it pretty much has the same functionalities as matrix, bar the screen share but there's several clients like Dino that let you video call, which with something like OSB virtual camera, I can bridge in the screen.
I do like the shiny new fads but having a mature protocol that is the used by shiny programs and lets you talk to older program users too sounds better.
Matrix is also a protocol, which is implemented or federated as the instance admin(s) dictate. You make it sound like telegram.
France and Germany both have government departments running their own customized matrix clients and servers to facilitate secure messaging without relying on sketchy companies like meta.
I'd love to know where you heard development is halted or that it has a problem with kiddie diddlers.
i missed the controversy, that clears it up
Something like Movim.eu?
Yeah, exactly. Any client works with varied features, and the OMEMO key encryption is solid and - while it is a pain with no backwards decryption - worth it. Movim is really popular iirc. I use Monocles on Android
Well no, it doesn't keep a history of chats for once. You don't have a record of conversations if your client wasn't running at that time. There's a few other limitations that I'm not familiar with, that prompted many people and orgs to switch to things like rocket chat or matrix
So instead of keeping a record yourself, you pay someone else/use someone else’s computer to do it for you.
That's what bash.org was for.
Bash. org was a dumb quote archival site.
That's why IRC bouncers exist, and then you have some IRC servers getting pissy about running one unless they like you or you're special (staff)
It's not just text anymore.
I use TheLounge as a client. It's web based and can show previews of images and videos. So my friends and I can upload images and videos to the server and watch them in the channel.
Convos also does this.
where are some good servers?
I'd really like to suggest servers or networks but I host my own private server with TheLounge for my friends. We ran away from Undernet around 2010 and just stayed on our own server since.
Quakenet is where I sit
How did you get image preview to work?
In TheLounge? AFAIK it's on by default. However prefetching is also disabled by default and that may cause some previews not to work.
Look for the prefetch setting in /etc/thelounge/config.js and set it to true.
So to me and the people using TheLounge on my server it looks like this
If working correctly, you can pretty much just paste URLs or images into a channel and it will display them. My only problem so far has been with YouTube, and I think it's because YouTube is blocking my host. But to go around this, I have an eggdrop to fetch the title and the thumbnails of YouTube videos to display them when an address is pasted.
Twitch, at least did, have a IRC version of their chat. So you could stream the video with like mpv and have irssi to avoid the browser, and basically have the full experience
Aye, in the early days you could connect straight to twitch chat with any old IRC client. It's probably still possible, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has deviated too much to be a pleasurable experience. There are still dedicated chat clients. I used to use a Java based one called Chatty back in the day.
where are some good servers?
Networks. Being on one server in an IRC network is more-or-less the same as being on any other server in that network.
A list of networks:
https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php
Yep I run my own 'The Lounge' instance now instead of using xchat or mirc or something, it gives me persistance and availability on my mobile devices.
It still has its perks.
I mean, other ways of transferring are faster, but I do like it still existing, even though it's not secure at all.