It will be open source, end to end encrypted using Signal’s double ratchet encryption protocol, and he plans to make it easy for fediverse platforms to integrate it. The beta will release later this month.
Not sure how I feel about this being a standalone app, it already feels like there’s so many vying for attention, with IRC, XMPP and Matrix being federated already. While Signal exists, I’m not sure how I feel about it being a walled garden despite being open source.
I do love the idea of it hopefully being added to Fediverse platforms though - even though it makes sense to use an actual messaging app for messaging, it’s user expectation that you can just message people on any platform you’re on easily, it’s something Mastodon desperately needs.
Edit: Really though, what I want to see is an interoperable protocol being picked (Signal is actually one of them, FWIW, the Foundation just doesn’t federate with its flagship app due to “user experience and innovation” per Moxie), and then people make their platforms on that, just like how ActivityPub has become the standard for interoperable social media.
Because I have no knowledge or understanding of programing, can someone please eli5 how an open source program can remain encrypted and secure? Is it just a matter of good faith that jerks won’t mess with it or does the encryption programming itself have protections?
From my understanding, open source encryption is actually better for privacy than closed source, since then you can have external auditors. Basically, encryption is doing a TON of math involving prime numbers, so even if you know the algorithms used, you still won’t be able to figure out what the secret (or password) is without using inordinate amounts of computing power.
without using inordinate amounts of computing power.
which is one of the big things behind quantum computing. we will (will, not might) get to a point where QCs can do the math to crack RSA/other large prime-based encryption standards.
I like Daniel’s constant work to improve/add features to PixelFed, but he also tends to rush stuff out and then have to fix it later. So personally, I would wait until he’s had time to figure out any flaws and bugs.
If you care about privacy and security, matrix has some glaring flaws. The biggest IMO is not currently encrypting metadata, so who you talk to and when is plaintext. The signal protocol encrypts everything, including the meta data.
I care about privacy and security so much that I don’t let a third-party own my chats, encrypted or not. I’m fine with unencrypted metadata on my server that’s in my own home.
Dunno TBH. It is apparently using the signal protocol, so there’s that, and it’s being spun out of pixelfed’s own IM/DM feature, which is generally all over the place across the fediverse, so it all kinda makes sense I guess.
Sure … it seems they were making a DM app for their platform and realised that it could be good as a standalone app.
Part of the picture for them is that pixelfed has started to experiment with transferable IDs or authentication, so that you can signup to pixelfed straight with a pre-existing mastodon account. It seems that want the same for this app. So the idea, I’m guessing, would be that if you want to start DMing with someone you know over the fediverse, you can go straight to this app, sign in straight away with your fediverse credentials, get your usual alias and find your friends with their same aliases. If true, I’d imagine that’d make it easier to sort side-load the app with any particular instance.
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