[Theodores]

I note this story is the top read item on the BBC news right now, clearly people do care quite a bit.

The web has evolved with messaging APIs and server side push notification things, how easy is it to put together a group chat for just your family these days? The wider friend-verse can stay on these common platforms but the inner circle can be kept off servers and so long as someone in the group has the messages then a complete transcript can be had?

I don't believe it can be that hard. Facebook has become a behemoth and you don't need all that to just share messages within a small family sized group. Whilst Facebook merge their triplet of behemoth apps I am sure it can be possible to put something together that just works for the inner friend/family group everyone has, a little advert free zone that just does text and phone recorded media. Can it be done utterly serverless or is this something the blockchain crowd have solved already for me to have dismissed as snakeoil?

[eitland]

> I am sure it can be possible to put something together that just works for the inner friend/family group everyone has, a little advert free zone that just does text and phone recorded media.

I've been researching this lately and I'm about to test out private (but possibly federated) instances of hubzilla and nextcloud as soon as I can get some time.

Both looks extremely promising although I know there are issues.

[Theodores]

So we are still in roll your own code mode really. I can't get my dad to 'just download this' yet. That is why WhatsApp et al. are 'so good'.