How do they make money is the service is free to use?
How is it different from other VPN providers? and in terms of privacy who to make sure they keep no log what so ever? Speed aside, it can’t be better than Tor, right ?

I read crypto coin, I stay away from that cr^p.

And looking at the number of servers running, XMPP easily beats Matrix by an order of magnitude. Number of active users also seems quite a bit higher on XMPP.

From my own experience and what I gathered from others about XMPP, most XMPP servers active today don’t federate, they are insular instances operated by private entities (many social and dating services are xmpp servers at the core) like how facebook messenger at the time. and a lot of them run proprietary code and not fully compatible with all XMPP specifications.
According to the Matrix foundration they were around 35 million Matrix users world wide .
Yes matrix is one exemple of how open source software development should be done, they involve the community in every step of the development, support third party application, are transparent about what is changing and what is to come. they are not perfect but way better than shady Signal crypto shills .

All in all, Matrix is superior to Signal for my use cases.
Matrix could be the future, but in terms of privacy they still need to work on some aspects to prevent systematic leaks, you can read about it here : https://gist.github.com/maxidorius/5736fd09c9194b7a6dc03b6b8d7220d0
XMPP isn’t worst than Matrix, but lacks cross platform compatibility, and not all servers around support all XMPP extension’s as to allow E2EE by default or voice and video calls.
Matrix is where the momentum is right now, development is steady and they are working on spaces and low-bandwidth communications which is very thoughtful from them.

A wiki can’t solve much of the discoverability problem, for these platforms to be real social networks other than independent interconnected instances there need to be something with a wider coverage, and it shouldn’t just be about creators, every account on the fediverse should be equally discoverable.
The solution that I find the most adequate is having something like a distributed DHT that every instance of the fediverse can query and publish to.
Peertube for instance when they became aware of this, they created sepiasearch.org to be a one stop search node to all instances, then they added a peertube wide search feature from any instance search bar. but because of not all instances federate it still isn’t as efficient as searching youtube.
The real problem is because how moderation works across instances, we can’t have as a wider discoverability reach as on central platform

What about no tools at all ?, isn’t that what has got us in this mess in the first place ??

There is nowhere else where tech giants hold as big monopolies as in Africa. Alternative platforms usage is nonexistent.

I can give an insight from within
So most of third world countries (non-western) have had wide internet penetration only so lately, unlike western countries they have missed what is to me the golden age of the internet (late 90s to late 2000) i.e before the facebook era. they have missed the era where people used to blog and when genuine content was to be found on websites, blogs and forums. most people who have joined the internet lately have done so using smartphones. and their first entry point to the internet is the playstore, google apps and facebook apps.
I kid you not there are people who don’t know that the internet exists beyond those apps, they don’t know how to use a browser, and they show no interest in doing so. facebook has absorbed the huge masses of these netizens and has widened its offerings to the point that people don’t need to wonder out of those apps to find what they need. In most of these countries, there is no internet neutrality, ISP(s) offer very cheap plans bundling unlimited and un-metered access to facebook whatsapp messenger and youtube. most people have turned into content consumers and show no interest in making contributions if they don’t make the buzz or bring them followers and interactions.

Ublock origin

Side note : “PRIVACY REDIRECT” is a firefox add on that redirects websites to their FOSS front end alternatives : Youtube > invidious
twitter > nitter
Reddit > libredd.it Instagram > Bibliogram Google maps > OpenStreetMaps

Try this (sharing using wifi instead of bluetooth ):

• Install an opensource android app called trebelshot
• create a wifi hotspot on your android phone (with or without password)
  chose a dummy or empty doc on your phone (even a txt file with “hello world” in it)
• then on the trebleshot app click send > select that file > then click on “share on browser”, the app will the provide you with a link like : 192.45.0.1:45665
• when a customer comes to your store, ask them to connect to your hotspot and ask them to visit that link on their browser
• the customer can then chose the file they want to share on the browser, and sent it to you using wifi

Hope this will help!

Having sealed sender only with contacts is an anti spam measure

I would rather deal with spam on my own than have a central entity monitor my communications ( as we can’t verify if the signals servers aren’t running a modified version of the open source release) + turning on sealed sender for me won’t allow my messages to reach the other end if sealed sender isn’t turned by default on the other end, should I ask every contact to turn it on before starting a chat with them ? that’s a bummer for me ! a useless feature if it isn’t turned on by default for everybody.

at signal they are working on removing the requirement for phone numbers.

It has been too years since they have announced that and till now its crickets ! and by what I gathered for forums and github It seems they are not getting rid of phone numbers for sign-up (they might still be mandatory ) but you might have the option to add contacts using their usernames (which is better but not what the community has asked for the most ).

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for briar to get voice and video calls.
Its development is very slow. and It doesn’t seem like the dev team have shown interest in bringing calls.

This²

A truly decentralized and private internet with no need of government, telco and big brother oversight

Well, they are more concerned about growth than offering a true private solution, they can’t fathom scenarios were signing up using phone numbers will expose you to higher threats, as is demonstrated lately by government bans on signal account sms verification from Iran & china …
them only activating sealed sender by default for only contacts, is another sign to how much they are attached to harvesting user’s social graph and communications habits, + them not releasing the latest server version code adds to a lot of red flags.

Money has no moral !

Other countries would rather have one central social network to deal with, to ask for user data and send gag orders , rather than hundreds of thousands of intances.

Well (illegal content) could be defined differently by different governments.

• (LGBTQ ++++) is specifically in Russia illegal content.
• criticism of the state is illegal content.
• protest organizing is illegal content
• Blasphemy is in many regions illegal content.
• and many more
  IMO hammering twitter to delete C.P (that could even be planted by russian fake accounts) is just the beginning and not the end goal.

the problem here is discoverability! as it stands in all Fediverse projects fewer instances host the majority of the fediverse users. because without being able to discover threads of other instances from the one you signed-up to, those smaller communities will not be active enough and will end up duying.
We must think of ways of merging the feed form different communities of different instances so the user feels like interacting with one big universe rather than separate communities.

My bet is that Russia is working towards gaining more leverage on tech giants. this has been the same pattern with other tech giants. next they might ask for all data of Russian citizens to be stored in Rissia. then ask for easy direct access to it. just like the Prism program in the U.S!

If the state of things have though me anything. is that people don’t care about it being federated. if they block fediverse instances people won’t be so keen to keep hoping from one another. don’t forget that not only it is veryhard to buildup large online communities, but once those online connections (social graph) are broken. it will be very hard for them to be revived.
With the fediverse at the moment having very little traction, I bet government bans will be a deadly blow to the fediverse. people will go back to whatever central coercive solution is provided.

To be real mastodon or any other federated network will be easier to shut down than Twitter or Facebook. giant social media platforms benefit from their network effect. if blocked they will cause major problems to Russia ,and will further tarnish its image globally.

In this regard, It could be said that Linux has achieved success for its community. but has fallen victim to this exact community and can’t grow to meet other users needs.
There is also an outside market of users waiting and hoping for linux to become one day a viable alternative for their use cases to be able to switch over and free themselves from tech giants. with time, it has become apparent that this is very unlikely to happen. especially now that mobile phones have taken over.

Linux for desktop has missed so many chances over and over again, that I have stopped hoping for it take over.
the last of these was Chrome OS sales taking over Mac OS during the pandemic. Imagine if we had a viable lightweight fully featured Linux distribution with all productivity and office software installed with no drivers and compatibility issues ready to be used at schools. that could have been a real take off. google absorbed that market and is trapping students at early age in their ecosystem.

Fragmntation , a lack of vision and goal is the real problem with the whole open source development community at large.
Because in open source we have freedom, every one is trying to create their own version of software instead of coming together and putting all that hard work towards fewer projects. if all devs pulled their work together into a few distributions, linux could have had a bigger userbase and saved millions of users from the claws and walled gardens of microsoft apple and google. I perceive linux distros as hobby projects rather than real windows OS contenders.
maybe if a foundation was setup to collect funds and distribute those funds against certain goals and milestone to be achieved by the distributions. progress will come faster

I was waiting for something like this to come up, cheers!
Here is my idea of a FLOSS dating platform. I believe you can make a lightweight project by making it behave just like a profiles gallery, you can make use of pixelfed’s code to speed up the process.
you can also let people fill their profiles with their federated social media content. by pulling profile pics, bios, and posts and linking them to the their dating profile.
As for direct chats, because of how sensitive this data is. you can let people add their instant messenger handles, like matrix, xmpp, briar, or jami accounts and carry on the chatting using those platforms. this will save the instance admins from a lot of legal responsibility.

I have tried Jami about more than a year ago, It has its promise. but they need to work on resolving many connectivity issues. I might go back to checking it later.
I find it sad that this app isn’t more advertised and talked about in privacy and security circle it definitely deserves more light. but hey we always flock t champion the winner.
as for session, I don’t like the direction the devs are taking, as they are switching to using Loki net instead of tor. and they will be tying the app more and more with their blockchain and cryptocurrency. this is enough for me to stay clear as I can’t trust projects developed on money insentives

I have always had my doubts about how open and transparent signal is to its community, I so far have resisted the urge to join signal because of how adamant they are to creating yet another walled garden around their platform.
They have times and times again shown their disdain to interacting with their user base (unlike other open source platforms) and answering valid questions and concerns from their community. and them keeping secrecy about what is being worked behind the scenes and their very vague and evasive answers about future features.
To me signal’s attitude is more inline with silicon valley venture startups than with a non-profit who listens to its user base concerns and needs. though they are working hard on switching more whatsapp users and keep growing.
They ignored the most asked feature for years which is the ability to sign-up without the need of a phone number. while they kept rolling meaningless features to privacy like reactions, stickers, backgrounds, group chats… and kept answering that usernames are coming, but didn’t give any details to how that would be implemented.
Hopefully Berty if released could become a viable solution. as to me right now signal isn’t more than a whatsapp clone if they don’t give up reliance on phone numbers

Hhhh, good catch!

I am in no way a fascist sympathizer. I don’t stand their beliefs but I make it my own responsibility to avoid those spaces.
I understand this position, and I find it good that the devs are transparent about it, it is their project, their community they run it how the hell they see fit.
I can see myself out when I feel not fitting in anymore.

I am an absolutist I like to respect others free will and have my own free will respected. That’s how it is. sorry!

I don’t believe politics should be baked inside the code.
and by free software I imagine something I can use they way I want. you shouldn’t feel responsible for what others use the software for.

Why bake the slurs inside the code?
Why didn’t you make it so every instance admin makes a list of slurs they want or want not to ban? without having to mess with the code and mess with the license, especially AGPL.

1 - That’s what I have noticed, I didn’t find communities of other instances listed so I assumed they were not in the list all together. maybe adding another column citing the instance domain will help clear confusion.
3 - In that case a good addition might be giving the user a tool to group communities from different instances and aggregat them into a folder. so I can group abc1.org/c/privacy dce.org/c/privacyland and fgi.org/c/privacytools into one merged feed that I can name to my liking. this could be a good addition once lemmy gets bigger!

Excuse my ignorance.

1. So you mean when I click on the communities link from the top bar It shows all Lemmy communities even those which are not hosted on this instance ??
2. Do posts form say chapo.chat appear on lemmy.ml 's front page?
3. If another instance hosts a community with the same name lets say /c/privacy, will posts from that community show in lemmy.ml/c/privacy ? will those threads be merged and shown together?

Ok, I didn’t know about the technicality.
Just like reddit they required in the old version to hit enter two times to insert a line break. but in the new version one click is enough.
I might just have to learn more about markdown formatting and get used to it.

This needs to be highlighted more through the design. This is the keystone of the fediverse! yet it is hard for new comers to figure that out by themselves. more work needs to be done on this subject.

Make it so one click on the Enter key. is enough to add a newline, on both the post and comment fields.

Fucking great news !

I like using NewPipe to watch PeerTube. but had to add the instances and check them one by one! a global search engine will make it a ton better! I hope they will carry on supporting PeerTube.

Silly me, I didn’t notice that on main page the sidebar gives statistics about the whole instance great!

Side question, I’ve been fallowing the-federation.info a lot! and didn’t understand why It sometimes show big spikes and sometimes big drops (on project’s statistics), but they eventually get cleared out after a few days. Do you have any knowledge to why those erratic stats ?