Tech people talk about tech too much.

I really really REALLY want to use all the awesome privacy friendly FOSS (and similar) stuff, but I am not a techie person! I don't know how to program, nor do I want to.

And every SINGLE time I try to find out even what thing (OS, program, app, service, etc) to use, let alone how, and I search for it... I get techie-focused answers.

It's complete gibberish to me! Absolutely useless. It makes me feel actively unwelcome even though I really care about using alternatives to Windows, Meta, X and other dystopic nonsense.

For example: I'm like "How do I start a non-enshittified group chat to talk about a thing?" and all the results are technobabble to me. I don't even know if the words they use are supposed to be normal english words or if they refer to orgs or groups or apps or some weird coding wizardry.

I am so lost, every single time.

I stick with it though. But like. I wonder if the tech people realise that this is happening???? Because they probably understand what they're talking about. And they seem to not realise that not everyone does.

I'm not trying to blame or shame anyone or even complaining as such (a little bit complaining, ngl), mostly just giving feedback. This is not an issue with a singe thing but with ALL of it as a whole! Including #GNU/#Linux the #Fediverse #Matrix and most #FOSS apps.

My sincere wish: Give non-techie people an EASY TO FIND and easy to read and easy to understand and easy to implement guide about how to use the things as an alternative to using big corporation services, ie, "I just want it to work" and not have to worry about the technical side of things. (examples in thread)

I'm currently trying to start a group chat. I don't want to use discord, but maybe something with similar features could be useful. So I hear [matrix] is probably the best alternative to that???? At least it's one I've heard about from being in the fediverse (which is annoying and at times complicated to use tbh, even after having cleared the biggest hurdle of getting started).

So then matrix.org tells me that the easiest way to start is to just join their big group. Which seems to defeat the purpose of being federated???

I have questions like: What are the pro's and con's of using the biggest instance/provider/whatever the heck it's called?

Is it going to be slower for being in a different country?

Will the privacy laws of different countries between provider and me and group members affect us?

Do I have to pay for making a group happen? Am I planning on "hosting" a group? Or does "hosting" mean something coding/programming related and not the social thing of "I'm the host and invite people over to my house as guests for a dinner party (except virtually)"? I DONT KNOW

Would using the biggest provider be free but other providers cost money? (What exactly are they charging for? Using discord doesn't cost money, do these alternatives?)

Will people on matrix.org SEE my public group when they search for groups?

It's not impossible to find these things out despite not being a programmer, but like. Really fucking hard.

Why is it always so hard

#matrix #MatrixMessenger #fediverse

@Aurin_the_classtraitor you're not wrong

I've been on linux full time since 2010 and foss has come a long way since I've been using it but it's still so, so, so incredibly bad at Explaining Itself

Like, very few projects seem to have nailed the right Goldilocks area between "Don't worry about this it's not important (actually very important when it breaks (which it will, a lot))" and "Overly complex and technical information that doesn't actually help all that much"

@Aurin_the_classtraitor Matrix is way too complicated, it’s pretty buggy, and there are way too many technical choices that you have to make. like, what server do you use? what app do you use to talk to the server? etc. and then the server might get shut down soon after you join, which happened to me

I’d recommend Signal instead. it’s centralized (it only has one server instead of lots of federated servers) but it respects privacy, it seems secure and spying-resistant to me, and it’s really easy to set up and use. you start by setting it up on your phone, and then you can set it up on your computer(s) by using your phone to scan a QR code

I don’t think it has any equivalent of Discord servers though. just ways to DM people or maybe make a group chat. but! you can voice call and even stream your screen (no audio though :/)

@Aurin_the_classtraitor aw thx, I see you've been faving the moderation thread too haha :D

Yeah like, honestly I don't think Windows is much better at explaining itself either tbqh, or like the Windows community is any more welcoming or understanding, but there's So Much More resources for dealing with windows that it's easier to find documentation that explains things at whatever your particular Tech Level is purely because for every article about how to do a FOSS thing there are a hundred articles about how to do the equivalent thing on corpo software, it's kind of a numbers game in that respect

@kasdeya @Aurin_the_classtraitor please please please start telling people about delta.chat and not shitgnal

@Aurin_the_classtraitor@climatejustice.social The way I see it, it seems that you are sitting in an infortunate middle ground between normie and nerd, where you care about too many details compared to a normie, but too little details compared to a nerd. And the documentation presents more attriction than what you'd like to meet. It is hard to tailor it to everyone, given the different levels of detail each person wants, and how tailoring it for some people makes it worse for others. The way I see it, your best bet is finding someone nerdier than you and knowledgeable in this topic to help bridge you over farther to the nerd side. And then maybe in the process you can also even help improve the documentation.

Quote: "But picking a provider can be overwhelming for your first steps. The Matrix.org Foundation is hosting the matrix.org Matrix server for every newcomer to create an account. You can safely use it to create an account when getting started."

So. The answer to "picking a provider is overwhelming", which it is, is that I don't get to pick at all??? I don't even get told what the reasons are for picking a different one??? THAT DOESNT FEEL LIKE A CHOICE. Like sure technically I have a choice, but you're telling me it's too difficult for me to make so you made it for me. Which like. Idk that could be ok. But I have some questions.

Because I am super fucking glad that I didn't make the mistake of joining mastodon.social and I don't want to make the equivalent mstake by joining matrix.org

Plus again, if everyone is so proud about being federated (which from my perspective just seems like a complete hassle, but the tech people keep yelling about how great it supposedly is and yeah maybe they're right), then why go "just join the big centralised instance, it'll be fine, don't worry your pretty little head about it"

"You can switch later"

In practice, no, not really. For me, making a new account is a really big hurdle. I have a VERY BIG aversion to having to create accounts everywhere all the time (for various reasons, password management being a hassle is one of them, data privacy and disrespect for consent in some cases are other reasons why I have this deep seated aversion)

But making social media accounts in specific is a big step for me. I put lots of effort into it when I do it. I don't have spoons or time or mental capacity to waste, I am struggling just to SURVIVE and not literally die to death. So yeah it is a big fucking deal to me if I have to redo it all over again from scratch because the big centralised instance/provider of the thing that claims to be good BECAUSE it is not centralised, turned out to be a bad choice for me.

these turned into angry rants

I am asking for advice on this specific question: Do you think I will regret it or decide to move later, if I now make a group on matrix.org?

Context: I am a german living in finland and want to make a group for domestic (and other) abuse survivors, so for people who are BOTH in high need of privacy AND can't be expected to be tech-savvy or to have time and energy to learn tech things AND it could be very urgent for them to have access to this group (ie it is not just a "nice to have" thing) AND they are in danger from UK age verification laws (because we will discuss child sexual abuse and the space needs to be censorship free/explicitly allow NSFW content, and survivors may be undocumented or being stalked by members of law enforcement agencies)

Help is greatly appreciated!

@Aurin_the_classtraitor you may regret it because a bunch of people find themselves unable to see or send encrypted messages 😅 I'm not sure what's better at it, but every time I try to use Matrix something gets fucked up with the keys

@Aurin_the_classtraitor I don't know how to balance security with other stuff, but I find matrix too complicated and annoying to use and I am definitely a tech person.

With my friends of varying tech skill we have no problem using signal groups at all, which work on a computer just fine, allow video calls, and so on.

If there's a way to make what you want work using signal groups, I'd use that. Kinda depends on if it's a lot of people with different needs, channels and things I guess.

@Aurin_the_classtraitor I'm on Matrix and honestly it's not that great - end to end encryption is difficult to set up, it's way too easy to lose your keys (I've done it once before and I'm very tech-savvy), and it's really slow. If you're happy sacrificing end-to-end encryption, it's a bit more usable, but you'd need to find a server you trust.

Honestly every chat platform sucks in some way, so choosing which platform to use basically depends on what your deal-breakers are. Is it end-to-end encryption? The ability to have 100 members and not feel slow? Not being in the US? How easily your group can keep their chats private from abusers? Those answers should inform your tech choice.

The time and energy taken to learn new tech things is easy to underestimate when you know tech well (and I say that as someone who knows tech well and has done outreach work). So for your group you'll probably need to go with what your audience are familiar with, insofar as that platform can keep your group safe

@Aurin_the_classtraitor i moved accounts once a while ago and tried to move back recently, and i would not recommend it. i was on a server with conditional registration that would not meet your criteria. to find ones with open registration you could look through https://servers.joinmatrix.org/ (made by @austin) which also has links to rules and privacy policies.

i've been using matrix for a few years now and i try my best to explain things well for non-techies. if you need any more help or advice lmk!

@Aurin_the_classtraitor

+1 Matrix too hard.

+1 Signal

Signal is not perfect, it is just the best

@Aurin_the_classtraitor a few years ago a group of friends moved from IRC to Matrix. Maybe when the freenode implosion. Back then, and for a few more years, we had myriad of "this message can't be decrypted", so we moved on to Telegram and haven't looked back... yet.

1/

@raphaelmorgan
huh, that sounds annoying. Thank you sm for the reply!

@bipolaron
Last time I tried to make a signal account I couldn't, because it required me to have a google account, which I refuse to create. Has that changed? Do members need to give their phone numbers to make an account? That would also be a No Go.

@Aurin_the_classtraitor (this could easily be WhatsApp, by the way. So many people have WhatsApp)

@Aurin_the_classtraitor But this is not what I came to promote.

People forget about #XMPP. Yes, #jabber. TBH I haven't set one up lately (did manage one 20-25ya), but it's a single package with IIRC a single daemon instead of a horde of them, and maybe up to 3 config files. Requires no email, no phone number, and I think you can make it work with Let's Encrypt.

Edit: Maybe people with more recent experience can chip in here.

/end

@Aurin_the_classtraitor no problem! I hope you can find something that works well for your group

@Aurin_the_classtraitor

What @bipolaron says.

I am not happy to say this, but #matrix is not for you and not for that particular use case, I'm afraid. #Signal should be fine, check it out.

I do think I want to use [matrix]. I want to try. Maybe I'm stubborn and stupid, but I want to try. I want to push the developers and communities to accommodate people like me.

I personally am willing to learn some tech stuff along the way (though I might grump about it), as long as people can join without having to do that. But (at least in theory), bridging with discord should be a thing, and people can use their existing google accounts to login if they have those.

@mdione @Aurin_the_classtraitor@climatejustice.social

Last year i wrote a blog post on setting up Prosody on Debian Bookworm. Since then new versions of both Debian and Prosody have shipped so i really need to get around to writing a new version.

The old post will work fine for both the newer Debian and Prosody it's just that Prosody 13 has support for additional security features that i want to include in the revised write-up.

The old blog post can be found here: https://blog.hetherington.uk/2024/12/setting-up-xmpp-prosody-on-debian-bookworm/

The way that proponents of these solutions (and by that I mean basically all "I love technology and not capitalism" things from ubuntu to matrix) talk about their thing, they really emphasise how they want EVERYONE to be able to use it. I realise there are systemic barriers that make it not the developers' and communities' fault (entirely) why that's hard to put into practice, but it does feel like I'm getting lied to. Like if it's just a thing by programmers for programmers (or ppl who can pay a programmer to make it work for them), then, idk, just be honest about that? Or what is even going on?

@Aurin_the_classtraitor I think part of the problem is the issues you’re seeking to find a solution to are HARD to solve, in large part haven’t been solved yet, and to the extent they have been solved have been done so in very niche groups. Also, the network effect is very real, as you point out with your aversion to create new accounts.

That said, maybe simplex.chat may be a worth looking into for your use case.

@Aurin_the_classtraitor Thanks for sharing. I also try to understand more of this tech stuff but always very quickly come to the point where I‘m completely lost. Apparently I seem to understand even less than you do: Why, for example, do you say that you're so super glad that you're not on mastodon.social? I hear people say that so often - but don‘t get why /whats so bad about this instance. And: How do I find a ‚better’ one? I‘d be very happy if sb could tell me :)

@stuff
A big problem with mastodon.social is the moderation

TL;DR: The people who moderate mastodon.social are not members of marginalized and/or vulnerable groups. Their interest is to keep things more-or-less civil (that is, what mostly white male cisnormative heterosexual persons consider civil) and do not go out of their way to protect the vulnerable

Mansplanation: Many marginalized and vulnerable people somehow learn that 'mastodon' is a place to go where they can meet others of their kind without the surveillance, security and outright hostility of other social sites

But the instructions for joining are vague at best

There is no good explainer of what the Fediverse is (the loose network which connects mastodon and other similar programs together), how to join a server (the server is a computer or group of computers which provide the software and data storage for the social website), nor how to choose an appropriate one

1/
@Aurin_the_classtraitor

I—a very tech-savvy person—took four different attempts to figure out how to join a group. It is not easy, and a lot of the techies are fine with that as it acts as a kind if filter to keep out "stupid people"

Explaining things is hard, and technical people don't like to "waste time" and energy doing it

The people who operate mastodon.social have made an explainer, and it's lacking. If it laid everything out in plain terms, new people would just see a wall of text and go away 😅

So they pat you on the head, say "you can join our group, it'll be fine" and that's it

By the time someone has joined a particular server and figured out the whole Fediverse thing, they are either driven out by the bad people, or they've established a network of friends and peers and changing servers is difficult at best—sometimes one has to start from scratch

2/

@Aurin_the_classtraitor @stuff

@stuff

So, yeah, finding a server requires some work, using a lot of key words to filter out the sites that won't fit, reading descriptions which may or may not be helpful and even then it might be a while of listening to the site feed to get the feel of the group

You might have to do it a couple of times before you find the right place—bigots don't generally advertise themselves off the bat, and every site has drama and problematic people of one sort or another

3/3
@Aurin_the_classtraitor

@Aurin_the_classtraitor@climatejustice.social
I would think you may regret using matrix.org.
It is like using mastodon.social here at the fediverse.

About your other question: hosting doesn't mean programing, but that you yourself own the thing where the app connects to, like if you would have your own whatsapp server.
With matrix or xmpp it is like in the fediverse, there are many servers, but they can talk to each other.

If you don't have many spoons left, I would recommend you try out an xmpp app like https://conversations.im and sign up on their server.
You can always make other accounts on other free servers too, and even pay a bit to be in charge of your own some day (if you have the capacity to get into it one day).
But with this app you'll notice a strong familiarity to whatsapp or other popular messaging apps, and it basically works the same.
Only that you're then on a federated system and not a big player from thr USA.

@menel @Aurin_the_classtraitor Jabber is cool and it's what I'd recommend but it's worth pointing out that folk will need different apps because Conversations is android-only, on iphones they'll need Siskin (and the jabber server needs to have the right extensions to make notifications work on IOS (which most do)) and on Linux they'll need Gajim and on Windows I guess it's still GAIM or Pidgin or Trillian. You can also get browser-based clients that are the same across any machine but, like, browser-based.

Jabber is honestly my go-to messaging solution but it does entail knowing about and therefore supporting a range of often very different clients

@ifixcoinops
Ooooh I LOVE browser-based as an option!!!! That way people without internet at home (even in germany thats still a large number) can use it at libraries. Or, for example, people whose partner snoops through their phone.

@Aurin_the_classtraitor oh well brilliant, then check out https://conversejs.org/

Converse.js is the browser-based frontend bit, you can embed this on your website, even build it in/style it so it looks pretty like the rest of your site

Prosody or ejabberd is the program that the Jabber backend lives in, it squirts chat through to converse.js which makes it pretty and puts it on the site

You can tell folk chat here on the website or if you want a phone app (and it's safe to do so) use conversations on android or siskin on apple and just tell it These Credentials

(where These Credentials will be a Jabber ID - if you run Prosody or ejabberd on your own server then it'll be theirusername@yourwebsite.whatever, but it's federated like fedi so they can join from theirusername@chinwag.org for example (chinwag is a jabber server run by one of my mutuals here on fedi))

(Jabber is also called XMPP but that's a shit name that turns people off and makes it sound like a super techy thing for super techy people when it's Literally Just Internet Chat lol)

(edit: all the Federated Tech Stuff should be basically invisible to the ppl using it, they'll just see a web based chatroom that has an optional phone app. The complicated technical guts will be the problem of the person hosting/maintaining it (IE you). Like a pinball machine! But it's not, TOO bad, I run Prosody myself and would rate it a... maybe a six-cups-of-tea pain in the arse to set up)