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foss alternatives for social media apps
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Alternative to discord: your best bet will be to find a matrix server at https://servers.joinmatrix.org. Element is the most mature client for all platforms.
For Facebook, any of the ActivityPub alternatives like Mastodon, Pleroma, GoToSocial... Too many choices for clients and instances, but if you are looking for a professional provider and care more about a "generic" instance that is well-maintained (or want to run your own), you can try communick. Disclosure, it's my own project and I've been running it for some years now.
I’m a fairly technical guy, but I genuinely cannot figure out why I’d want to use Matrix at this point.
My understanding, which may be wrong, is that it can communicate on its own encrypted standard, and that there are bridges that allow it to communicate with other services like Signal and WhatsApp. You have to register for a home server, which essentially means trusting the individual(s) running that home server not to abuse that privilege, especially considering that not all features are supported by the bridges to other protocols at this point (including end-to-end encryption in some cases), so they may have access to your unencrypted content. Not only that, but your data is then replicated on other servers where the other participants in your conversations are registered, which means you essentially need to trust all those other admins as well.
Then there are the clients, which (at least on iOS) seem to be few and far between. The (seemingly) most popular, Element, appears to collect a crap-ton of personal information - including user content!
I was a big fan of Trillian back in the day, which sought to unify AIM/MSN/ICQ/etc. into one place; am I correct in thinking Matrix seeks to do something similar today?
Given the seemingly large amount of trust you need to put in potentially numerous individuals and organizations, is the convenience of a unifying protocol that may or may not bring your various chat and calling services under one roof with varying levels of compatibility and security (not to mention the apps, some of which appear to collect everything under the sun about you) worth it?
Thats a pretty awesome question imo.
I think Matrix only makes sense if you‘re already using instant messaging of some sort. Either discord, whatsapp, signal, what have you…
If you are using one of these services, there is a high chance that your data is sold, traded and used for all kinds of purposes, from training AI to manipulating your life choices (or as simple as selling something to you).
If a person is not using social media at all (and has an offline friend circle), then they should happily stay away from any of these products, federated/foss same as the others. Simply because social media is addictive.
But for those (like me) who don’t make friends easily offline, social media makes sense. And for those, it is far better to trust db0 or whatever the admins name is of an instance, than google,
has only one answer. Hell yes!
Element is a for profit company and therefore not the best idea if you want to go fully without data collection I assume. But then you also need to keep all smart devices in your home from calling home, you need a rooted android phone or similar, etc.
So I propose that we do our best, keeping the megacorps from collecting and selling our data without a penny of the profits going to us. In the meantime, we make compromises where necessary. If element is the only „usable“ client for you, let them have at it for the time being. Especially on ios, you‘re transparent to apple anyway and besides you don’t see the apps in development until they leave testflight (iirc).
Let me know if you have any further questions. Have a good one. :)
Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply!
I’m still not sure that moving our trust from a megacorp (as you put it) to some random person or organization running a Matrix server is an improvement. Even assuming the Matrix server admins aren’t selling your data out the back door, there’s no guarantee their admin accounts, or the server itself, isn’t compromised by those same corporations or others, allowing them to harvest all your data (and potentially more of your data than would be possible if you were using at least some of these services natively).
I respect that you have your opinion, but I’m not sure it makes sense to move trust from one organization/corporation to another is guaranteed to be an improvement.
From a security perspective, Signal seems to be brought up the most in these conversations, so I am surprised that you called it out between WhatsApp and Discord. Do you have any evidence that the Signal foundation is spying on its users, selling their data, or that the E2EE they natively employ is compromised?
Hi! I‘m pretty sure we are misunderstanding each other. At least partly.
What I‘m saying is that meta for example has evidently sold and leaked userdata far and wide (and paid a joke of a fine for it compared to the estimated earnings). So honestly, I‘d rather join a crack dealer‘s social media than this one.
Because you‘re assuming someone compromises a fediverse server (which is open source and issues are fixed together with hundreds of bright minds), while meta is a closed system and source which evidently does not need to be compromised (also evidently has happened) to do you harm. I think you’re reaching while I have evidence. Can you see that?
I didn’t bring up signal since I don’t have a lot of experience with it (used it a couple times but no ongoing relationships), thats all. I heard that some people say they‘d be spying, which I don’t know about and I‘m not gonna assume but they are closed source and for profit, which the fediverse is not (technically, matrix is not federated afaik but I use it the same as the others so it feels like the fediverse to me).
Whatsapp i brought up since it also is actively spying on you (i may have formulated it wrong or easy to misunderstand) and the same goes for instagram (and threads).
So, as I said: if someone uses whatsapp or discord, matrix makes sense imo while its not an insane improvement (imo) from signal. Same goes for telegram btw. I have no knowledge what they are or arent doing so I wont warn anyone about them. For meta I have enough evidence to suggest burning all bridges that lead there.
Thanks for being so polite btw. I appreciate it.
Same to you regarding the politeness, I’m appreciating the conversation!
I’m with you regarding Facebook Messenger and even (to a more limited extent) WhatsApp Messenger. Their motivation is to provide the cheapest ways possible to keep you engaged with their platform so they can collect as much data about you as possible to sell. That is their reason for existence, essentially. Whether that trade off is worth it to the individual user is up to them, and I have decided it is not worth it for me.
Where I’m getting confused is with your characterization of Signal. It is neither closed source, nor is it a for-profit company. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is "to develop open-source privacy technology that protects free expression and enables secure global communication.". The app they built leverages end-to-end encryption, and you can find their source code here.
I will be honest, I feel Signal is the closest I’ve found to a FOSS, E2EE messaging solution that has a chance at some adoption by people who aren’t technology enthusiasts. It makes some compromises to achieve that - the fact that your account must be associated with a valid phone number is a point of frustration for privacy advocates, and it isn’t perfect when it comes to anonymity in some ways - but it is encrypted. It seems to favor security over anonymity, which is something with which I have seen the average user be able to get onboard.
Given the ease of use and security of Signal, it leaves me even more confused as to where some of the competitors differentiate themselves in ways that would make most people are likely to adopt them.
Whoops! Now that really was news to me. I default to closed source for profit and this was the first time I got it completely wrong. Sorry and thanks for correcting me.
But I already told you I have no knowledge of signal. So I guess my fault was to jump to this conclusion when prompted.
But now I have to ask. How does the backend of signal work? I just saw the frontend/client to download but I cant remember there being servers. How do you find your grandma on signal? That must be going to some kind of server, right? Also, signal got hacked at some point and lost 10k+ phone numbers of users which is unfortunate. And there is the benefit of matrix again. You can host your own server with your 10 friends and as long as you update regularly, you‘re a very bad target (small and up to date).
I think matrix is absolutely not at the stage where you can compare it to something as polished as signal. I just checked wikipedia and they made 8 digits a year. So, I get that they‘re not making billions and not selling data but people „work“ there in stark opposition to matrix (bar element). I‘ll say that signal is probably a very good product and overall trustworthy. Although I have to say that it’s not a competitor to discord, unlike matrix. Which was my actual claim.