Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dewey 632 days ago
I’m a huge IRC fan and I dislike Discord, but all these other services are way too clunky and IRC is really only usable through IRCCloud that has a relatively okay mobile app these days.

Recently a very technical group I’m part of migrated from Telegram to Matrix and the user experience is just not very good. The apps are buggy, don’t look good, then in the new “Element” app SSO isn’t supported so I can’t use my account with it. There’s lots of paper cuts that are okay for someone like me who likes to figure it out but I’d never try to convince my friends to use it.
1 comments
nunobrito 632 days ago
For telegram refugees then maybe SimpleX is an option, except it has no bots nor other options for clients at the moment.

What I personally use is the nostr protocol through a client like Amethyst or OxChat. Messages and groups can be E2EE private, or you can just use the public groups.

The biggest advantage is that you are joining a bigger community of apps and services built on top of the same protocol, rather than joining some isolated island (again).

link
dewey 632 days ago
I recently listed to a nostr podcast and even people working in it said it would not be reasonable to recommend it for a secure messaging app at this point. Just because very early things like metadata leaking are not addressed yet. So not really an alternative.
link
nunobrito 632 days ago
I don't know what podcast you are mentioning or the context. Anyone can say anything on youtube.

We are talking about a transition from telegram, when comparing to that platform then NOSTR is undoubtely more secure when noticing that telegram doesn't even encrypt conversations by default and this isn't informed to users. Whereas in NOSTR you are made aware when a conversation is private between both parties.

Metadata is fetchable for 99% of messaging apps out there. If you'd ask me about making a more secure app then this involves continuous streaming of data, padding of messages to avoid content guessing and avoid the usage of internet as data channel.

So it really depends on what you consider secure and what it is compared against. Compared to Telegram it is more secure. Compared to a piece of paper encrypted with a custom algorithm and delivered by a trusted human transporter? Not really.

link