Telegram is giving away FREE Premium subscriptions! All they need from you is to use your cell phone as a relay to text out their OTP codes! And the recipient of the OTP sees your phone number! What could POSSIBLY go wrong with this deal?
PLEASE don’t use Telegram! I personally recommend Matrix as it’s totally FOSS, you can self host, there are tons of front end clients to choose from. Or even use Signal. I have my own issues with Signal, the fact they don’t allow third party clients, you can’t self-host, they have a proprietary shim in their stack that only they know what it does, they were pushing crypto, etc, but at least Signal is better than this garbage.
Reading the discussion here. I’d never heard of xmpp. Probably just never registered as a messaging alternative. Just checked out https://xmpp.org/. Wow! Tons of apps. Even some android apps on fdroid. Guess I’ve got some exploring to do.
XMPP is an old protocol. GTalk (google talk) and Whatsapp used it, then extended it, then didn’t give back to the community. So here we are…
The problem with alternative protocols and apps and whatnot is that people are reluctant to change and won’t try anything new if only 2-3 other people use that protocol/service. I can’t even convince my best friends to use Signal, let alone XMPP.
https://joinjabber.org is also a good resource for learning about XMPP.
Xmpp died. Don’t try to bring back the dead
XMPP died for no good reason, we absolutely should be bringing it back instead of trying to reinvent the wheel again and again unsuccessfully.
IRC v3 anyone?
Nah, just call it retro.
Retro has this meaning that it’s stagnant & no longer evolving while the protocol + XEPs are actively being worked on & not like a hobbyist making Sega Saturn games in 2024, but to solve modern, real-world issues.