So I can't be the only one who wishes this community had a better platform for connecting with the other people we meet here. This site works similar to Reddit - great for posting news and comments, but not very good for having private conversations. The problem with Discord is that it's centralized and insecure, and they monitor conversations. Telegram requires a phone number to sign up and has other issues as far as security and privacy.
But I have found some open source software called Matrix that solves these issues. It is a federated network of peers called homeservers. Every homeserver is independent and private and sets their own rules for users and chatrooms. Groups can be either public or private and end to end encrypted. Private messages are always end to end encrypted so not even admins can read conversations they are not party to. There are already apps developed for all platforms, including mobile. It even supports voice and video calls.
I've spent the last few days setting up one such homeserver and I'm proud to say it's now up and running, though still pretty barebones. Need people to join and start adding content now. Go ahead and sign up and check it out. No personal info required. Email is optional.
Bookmarking to dig later
I encourage you to consider XMPP:
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp
I know you already went through all the work for Matrix though, but I thought you should at least be aware of what's in that article.
Thanks for the article. I've used both, and I like XMPP, but I found it was confusing to get working. The server is difficult to get online because there are so many different versions and the documentation is out of date.
I disagree with the article though. I don't find his objections compelling which are mainly with the company matrix.org. Most of those issues can be overcome by hosting your own server, which is what this is.
Updoot for this idea and getting a Matrix server going. TDW/PW had a Matrix running for all of the caravans/organizing around J6 protest. The had a public channel that wasn't encrypted, but for obvious reasons, many of the channels used encryption.
While I liked it, it was pretty difficult to read past messages people posted unless the client was running 24/7, or you jumped through hoops to try and unencrypt past messages - and that didn't even work 100% of the time either. Maybe they've somehow addressed it since then. Wish there was a better compromise between security and ease of use :(
Nomatter what username I put in, even gibberish, it shows in red and won't let me create an account. Been trying on and off for days.
Cool.
It sports mention of twitter. That's cabal??
Where?
Only thing I see is a link to the main org's twitter feed on the signup page.
That's what I meant.
Seriously? Why would you be concerned about that?