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Is UX/UI and marketing really the reason XMPP lags behind Signal/Matrix/Telegram? (discuss.privacyguides.net)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by underline960@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Edit: Matrix isn't going freemium, it's introducing premium accounts to fund the matrix.org homeserver. Thank you for the corrections in the comments.

~~Matrix is going freemium~~ Matrix is introducing premium accounts and WhatsApp is adding ads, which is sparking the annual "time to leave [app]" threads.

Users don't care that much about privacy, but they do care about enshittification, so XMPP not being built for it shouldn't be a problem.

Meanwhile, I've heard for years that XMPP has solved a lot of the problems that lead more popular apps to fail.

Is it really just a marketing/UX/UI problem?

If XMPP had a killer app with all the features that Signal/Whatsapp/Telegram has, would it have as many users?

If not, why does it keep getting out-adopted by new apps and protocols?

all 46 comments

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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 21 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Simply: XMPP is a protocol, and non-tech people don't know "protocols", they know "apps", at best.

Plus XMPP has challenges (and I've used it since about 2000, on my phone in 2009).

E2E is possible, but problematic (in that it's not simply just "on").

Even worse, none of the apps look polished...it's all clumsy, there's no one app on all OS's. And the names, FFS us geeks need to get a fucking clue.

And I use XMPP every day on my phone and laptop.

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

E2E is possible, but problematic (in that it's not simply just "on").

That's just not true. All XMPP clients have support OTR out of the box for probably 15 years.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 5 points 5 days ago

OTR is a janky kind of encryption that doesn't have a modern analogue any more. It requires both (or all?) participants to be connected to each other simultaneously in order for messaging to work.

With mobile devices, this is very bad.

It's also not doing great:

XEP-0364: Current Off-the-Record Messaging Usage

WARNING: This document has been automatically Deferred after 12 months of inactivity in its previous Experimental state....

It's also one of three different encryption standards...

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org -1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Simply: XMPP is a protocol, and non-tech people don't know "protocols", they know "apps", at best.

They know SMTP, SMS, MMS, etc. (or at least how to use them). That's not the problem.

E: if you reply to this comment without actually reading it, you're going to be blocked.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

No, they don't.

Go talk to people, they have no idea what you're talking about.

Non-tech people barely know apps. They use email, or a given messenger. They have no idea the underlying technology - they only think in terms of functionality or use.

SMS/MMS just means "text messaging" to people. They don't know the difference between that and Apple Messages, because they see both as apps.

Hell,most people don't even know which SMS app they use on a daily basis - that's how little they understand the difference between protocol and app (and SMS isn't even really a protocol).

I've been explaining SMS to technical people since 1996, and they often struggled with it.

I've been in Enterprise IT since the 90's, and have friends in the SMB space. In both worlds the user's are clueless about underlying protocols, and only think in terms of the app itself.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org -2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They use email

They know....how to use them

Read more closelier

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I would be surprised if most people had desktop email clients. And of those who do, I imagine most of them didn't even see "SMTP" on the setup screen, or have since forgotten.

Likewise, most people have no idea what the difference is between SMS and MMS, or even why phones will send one type vs the other. Mostly people just complained "my picture won't send" even during the height of the protocols.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I don't know how to be more clear about this: all I said was that they know how to use them.

[–] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

They know how to use them ... because they are used by apps that come pre-installed on every device anyone uses.

There is a HUGE difference between circumstantial usage and actual, intended usage.

There is a reason Microsoft got sued to hell for including IE in Windows. Apparently along with Congress and every other law maker, you also do not understand why MS had to offer alternatives to IE, etc.

You may as well be saying, "everyone knows how to use TCP!"

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They know how to use them ... because they are used by apps that come pre-installed on every device anyone uses.

No, they know how to use them because it is basically required just to exist in the modern world.

[–] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Using an app that happens to use a protocol is a FAR CRY from undersranding the protocol or what a protocol even is.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

My dude do you have amnesia or are you just a troll? I never said anything about understanding the intracacies of the protocol.

[–] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

How do you propose someone "knows how to use it" without an app that's doing 100% of the actual interaction with the protocol? You are a buffoon if you seriously think USING AN APP is equivalent to "knows how to use [the protocol]".

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 days ago

Generally they'll know them as texting and email, they don't know the names of the protocols underneath.

[–] Turret3857@infosec.pub 2 points 5 days ago

I have an elderly relative recently ask me why the email on their phone wasn't on their computer.

(it was an SMS.)

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

XMPP is hard to say and easy to forget for any who do not already care.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 4 days ago

Wasn't it also known as Jabber back in its fair day? How does that sound in the 2020s, anyway?

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Matrix isn't going freemium, the matrix.org server is to pay for all the hosting costs. But there are tons of other servers to choose from.

I'm a techy person with my own home server and lots of self hosted services, and I'm still not sure how to set up XMPP and figure out which servers and which clients all support which features, and which of the various encryption methods to pick from.

Matrix was easier to set up and I ran one for awhile, because at least it's not as crazy fragmented.

[–] socsa@piefed.social 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

There are no good, trustworthy, full feature xmpp apps for iOS, at least as of a year ago. Either the apps aren't full featured or they don't support push notifications for whatever reason.

[–] leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 5 days ago

Matrix is E2EE as long as the room is. XMPP server/clients can enable OMEMO (as long as the server supports it).

'Matrix' is not going Freemium. Matrix.org's server access is going freemium. You don't have to use matrix.orgs servers to join or use the service.

An interesting alternative to both might be Delta Chat.

[–] who@feddit.org 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Matrix is going Freemium

No, it is not. The matrix.org public homeserver is planning to add premium accounts and put some limits on free accounts. People who want free access can accept the limits, or find a different homeserver, or run their own.

The Matrix network will remain open and free for anyone to use.

[–] who@feddit.org 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Is [XMPP's lack of popularity] really just a marketing/UX/UI problem?

No, there is more to it than that. Off the top of my head, these issues stand out as major hurdles:

XMPP is a relatively basic protocol. By itself, it cannot compete because it lacks modern features like end-to-end encryption, persistent message history, group chat, etc. It does have extension specs (XEPs) to provide many such features, but it still lacks a single cohesive spec identifying and unifying the important ones. You could call it fragmentation. This makes it overly complex for implementors, and leads to the next problem:
Someone wanting a messaging service with a competitive feature set must first identify at least one server that implements all the relevant XEPs, and a client for each of their devices that implements the same. That's not viable for most people, many of whom have only a vague notion of what a communications protocol is.
Ever since public XMPP support was dropped by big services like Google and Facebook, the availability of reliable, free, public servers has all but vanished. Most people wouldn't know with confidence how to find one, let alone one with all the needed extensions. And even if they do find one, most will be unable to assess whether it will still be running in ten years or more. This makes it quite a gamble to tie your online identity and network of contacts to whatever server you find.

So, while XMPP (with appropriate extensions) is still a capable protocol, the expertise and support required to make it competitive is not readily available to most people. I might suggest it to small groups who have local expertise to get it all set up and keep things running well, but not to the general public.

Meanwhile, Matrix has a unified spec with a rich feature set, a variety of homeservers and client apps that support it, sufficient momentum for continued development, and the critical mass to make it viable for global public use.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't think it's reasonable to say XMPP both lacks encryption and has a XEP for encryption. XEPs are how features are added to XMPP. There is support for encryption in the XMPP standard because there's a XEP for it.

The feature fragmentation used to be a real problem, which is why they introduced compliance suites.

[–] who@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don’t think it’s reasonable to say XMPP both lacks encryption and has a XEP for encryption.

This suggests that you read only a fragment of one sentence, rather than understanding the comment as a whole.

If you don't think it's reasonable to say that the issues noted above contributed significantly to XMPP's decline, or to its failure to catch up with other messaging systems, then I suppose that's your prerogative. But for the sake of discussion, you might want to offer an alternative explanation.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Encryption is an exemplar. It applies to all features in XEPs. My comment fully addresses two of your three dot points so the claim that I only read a fragment of a sentence is bizarre and patronising.

I don't feel the need to address every point because I'm not setting up an opposing argument, I don't even disagree with the overarching concept. I wanted to clarify some aspects of XMPP that I see as being misrepresented or overlooked.

[–] who@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago

Well, your critical comment failed to recognize that I was contrasting the core protocol against an implementation augmented by XEPs, and what the latter would mean in practical terms. It overlooked most of what I had written, which could most simply be explained if you had only seen/considered a fraction of what I wrote. No patronizing intended.

If hurried reading was not the cause, then I don't want to speculate on what was. Instead, I invite you to read it again later, and consider interpretations that you hadn't at first.

Or just ignore it. Good day.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 8 points 5 days ago

XMPP's problem is it got stuck in the federated protocol mire a long time ago, and never escaped it.

The protocol was never made for most modern things:

Depending on how you look at it, there is either no encryption standard, or there are roughly three encryption standards with varying levels of completeness.
Multi device support got approved as "stable" last year, but there's no reason to assume clients all implement it evenly.

[–] D06M4@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Matrix going freemium isn't just inaccurate (they plan on adding a premium option only on their homeserver because they need the funds, which is reasonable since they're not growing magical money in their backyard) but mentioning it beside Whatsapp's ads is pure comedy. You don't need to stage things this way to bring people to push the team behind Privacy Guides to accept a few XMPP apps in their recommendations list. Just look at what the developer of Conversations ended up working on. Aren't you going to add that beside Whatsapp too? FFS, just support your favorite developers and stop trying to put down other developers of open source privacy focused software.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I'll admit to misreading the Matrix news.

stage things this way to bring people to push the team behind Privacy Guides to accept a few XMPP apps in their recommendations list.

This is an amazingly bad faith interpretation of my post.

[–] D06M4@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Then I'm glad if I'm wrong. Regarding your question, I believe we're fortunate to have the options we have and to have found them and used them. I don't think any of them are perfect just as I don't think if any of them had one app to rule them all it'd make much of a difference. Most people stick to the worst possible options such as Whatsapp because it's what's shoved down their throats in the first place. You could have tons of cash lying around to burn on marketing your service and/or create something that makes lazy people even lazier. Whatsapp gained it's userbase through the years and thanks to a what I see as a mixture of good funding, interoperability between different mobile OSs, and accounts linked to phone numbers everyone had but without the cost per SMS most were used to nor regional limitations. We already had tons of instant messengers back then, and apps were already available around 2008 or so that let anyone use any of their IM accounts at once from their smartphone. But I guess tons of people wouldn't even have an email address if it wasn't for Microsoft and Google, and that says a lot. I mean, just look at how OpenAI's ChatGPT has blown up these past couple of years. Most people clearly don't care about quality, reliability, security or privacy, they just want to use whatever requires the least amount of effort. I wouldn't be surprised if people stopped using Tinder in favor of an app that booked hotel rooms for couples and groups based on all the data it learns about each user. 0% talking, 100% increasing cleaning personel's workloads.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I wish we had a secure, private, FOSS messaging protocol as the default.

We need a good alternative to having our friend networks fragmented across six different apps.

[–] D06M4@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Me too, but at the same time I'm glad we don't all use exactly the same thing as that usually means cyberattacks are funneled to just one option. You could also say XMPP has been the default for the longest time, but just as it still happens today using XMPP doesn't mean everything is compatible. Each app has it's own set of features, some only use OTR for encryption, others might use OMEMO but not the same version and mix up encryption keys... Matrix used to be more compatible between clients, but then 2.0 appeared and either some features aren't handled the same or some servers don't so federation breaks or gets laggy. My guess is the next widely adopted thing will probably be a freemium, falsely secure and not private at all centralized service based on FOSS software, already prebundled and preset together with whatever people use the most and with some "all-you-can-eat" offering (probably AI unless the fad fades out). So maybe an upgrade to Whatsapp or something else from Meta or Microsoft. Apple won't do anything that's crossplatform, Google can't persevere on a single IM solution without releasing 3 more that add nothing new and scraping them all in a year, and Amazon will probably stick to backend.

Still, nothing stops us from using whatever the hell we want. I have my XMPP account and I'm happy with it. I don't have much use for it, but I don't plan on deleting it anytime soon.

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

XMPP has most of the features Signal offers, and then some, and has had for a long time. In fact Signal's encryption scheme is derived from OTR which was pretty iniquitous on XMPP at the time. With the addition of key ratcheting, which was added with OMEMO. XMPP has groups, and video, and has had those for far longer than Signal. What Signal lacks is roster privacy. But for the longest time that was really very weak if your adversary was a Five Eyes state.

As for UI/UX, check out Dino. It's really nice.

[–] Sophocles@infosec.pub 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

In my opinion Gajim for desktop looks pretty sleek. Cheogram has a 2020 look to it, but it's still great looking imo. Not everything has to have sleek gradients and overly rounded borders. I actually prefer 2015 UI where things were more boxy and very slightly rounded e.g. the old instagram app logo.

I've also gotten my friend to use Cheogram, and her #1 complaint is not having chat effects from imessage. I feel like if you just slap on integrated gifs and add a couple of UI animations, non-techies would be all over it. Maybe XMPP just needs some frontend UI pazazz for people to take notice

[–] diealex@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Check out "monocles chat" as replacement for Cheogram. They look very similar but monocles comes with some functionality and UI tweaks.

[–] jupiter2643@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

Anyone have thoughts on cwtch?

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 days ago

The only XMPP I ever knew how to use was Gmail Chat, and they shuttered it, so I don't know how to use XMPP anymore or how to talk to anyone on it.

Signal is just easier.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Is it really just a marketing/UX/UI problem?

The UI is definitely a problem. I've never seen a remotely modern-looking XMPP UI.

If XMPP had a killer app with all the features that Signal/Whatsapp/Telegram has, would it have as many users?

Well, first of all, these 3 all have vastly different amounts of users.

Secondly no, marketing is still a big deal. WhatsApp is leaning heavily on Meta's other products for marketing and integration. They're able to use these to make them convenient to sign up and get messaging. What I don't get is why Meta doesn't just unite all 3 under "Messenger".

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Cheogram, Monocles Chat and Movim have pretty decent UI's, certainly on-par with Signal's.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 5 days ago

Disagree.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

What I don't get is why Meta doesn't just unite all 3 under "Messenger".

They needed a smaller app for countries that don't have WiFi, only cell plans.

A lot of countries use only Messenger or WhatsApp, and consolidating them would change the name and be a brand risk.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org -2 points 5 days ago

UI is not really a problem. Every time I hear complains about a given FOSS client of something "UI" not being "modern" it's basically complaining "waaa waaa this does not look exactly like Discord, I can't find a thing that is obviously labelled as a button!" or some such thing. Which is weird because, honestly, all chat apps like Signal, Telegram, Conversation or Gajim do basically have the exact same look: a pane for chatrooms, a pane for current chatroom, and a pane for typing. There: that UI was literally solved in the 90s.

Speaking of 90s, Winamp is from the 90s and the UI is doing quite well, to the point more modern programs intentionally want to look Winampy (eg.: Audacious).

UX however... it has quite a number of issues, such as there not being a practical way to know if all of the client, the server and service you want to use support the features you want, in particular encryption and message archiving.

Even the "beforehand" / "onboarding" UX is annoying: would anyone here be able to point to the "join-lemmy" equivalent of the XMPPverse? Or point to a generalist server with long-term lifetime, kinda like how freenode was (note: was) for IRC?

If I had to venture, I'd say if an important group actually put effort into setting up and servicing long-term XMPP infra in the style and generalism that freenode was, then probably it could gain some good traction. If anything, it could help doing the join between "upgrade people from IRC" and "upgrade people from modern silos".