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Instant Messengers Analysis and Comparison
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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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I want to like SimpleX, but (a) notifications on Android are iffy, and (b) there's no multi-device support. (A) I could live with, but (b) makes it a non-starter. I did try "make a group and add every device as a different user," but it's hard, confusing, and I simply can not ask my friends and family go through that shit just to IM. There's a ticket for multi-device sync and a comment that it's on the roadmap, but low priority. If that gets implemented, I'm on board. Until then, it isn't feasible to ask a bunch of non-tech people top switch.
As a side note, who only ever uses one device? How can multiple device sync not be a core feature of every chat design? I find this baffling.
That's why I recommend XMPP.
As of why multi-device sync isn't a core feature is due to the inherent nature of the SimpleX protocol that everything is stored locally, servers are only relays and do not store nothing more than heavily encrypted packages that only contains messages and once they are delivered, they are immediately removed. Servers do not store any information, they don't have your contacts, nor any form of unique identification for your account. You might even change the relay you're using every 5 minutes, because you aren't tied to them.
Compare that with XMPP where you're hosted in one server and all your messages and conversations go to that single server. Your server also stores your contact list for multi-device sync and because you're always using the same server for that account, it will work seamlessly. In SimpleX, your account information never leaves your device.
Syncing between clients is still possible, although it may not be implemented. There's no reason why a P2P client that's part of a conversation can't request past messages from any other client that's part of that conversation. All P2P does is move the data handling to the edge.
This is what I was implying: if a chat design doesn't account for this, it's IMHO not a good useful design - especially in the case that the design also leaks some metadata, and so isn't 100% targetted at dissidents.
P.s. I'm going to write my own chat application, with blackjack, and hookers.