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

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/privacy

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (17 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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (14 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

They use email

They know....how to use them