it should be abandoned by anyone who cares about these things. Not only does it leak a fuckton of metadata by default, there is a global censorship blocklist ran by a single person ( see xmppbl ) named jonas, which is implemented by a large portion of servers on the network and supposedly many clients, though i havent verified which clients implement it yet. for a “decentralized” network, there should not be a central authority that gets to decide who can interact with fellow users or other servers. The creator also actively tries to hide the fact that he is behind the service, and makes no mention of it on his XMPP wiki page. if this doesnt scream “ill intent” already, i dont know what does. previous chat logs proves that he runs it. the person also runs the jabber chat room search engine which has a history of censoring MUCs. To mitigate against this threat, its recommended to use darknet federation wherever possible. In an ideal scenario, like minded individuals would leave XMPP and opt for better alternatives, such as self hosting their own ircd over TOR and I2P, or using truly decentralized peer 2 peer protocols.

  • pjoterAEnglish
    1·
    15 days ago

    it should be abandoned by anyone who cares about these things. Not only does it leak a fuckton of metadata by default

    • people, even in so-called hackers/nerds/privacy communities, tend to use whatever’s popular and convenient at the moment, not what’s “good”

    • until alternatives (https://xkcd.com/927/) become just as convenient and have user-friendly clients (including mobile ones), you won’t convince anyone to use them, no matter what you say.

    • the bandwagon effect might work, like when a famous person encourages using a particular messaging app (https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153?lang=en).

    there is a global censorship blocklist ran by a single person ( see xmppbl ) named jonas, which is implemented by a large portion of servers on the network and supposedly many clients, though i havent verified which clients implement it yet. for a “decentralized” network, there should not be a central authority that gets to decide who can interact with fellow users or other servers

    Not that I’m defending those blacklists, but it doesn’t change the fact that server operators aren’t forced to implement them, right?

    • lostuserOPEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      people, even in so-called hackers/nerds/privacy communities, tend to use whatever’s popular and convenient at the moment, not what’s “good”

      fair point, but odd of you to assume that XMPP is whats popular at the moment, when its probably the most least used thing. i mean, just join a few chats, youre bound to see mostly the same names in every roster. maybe its convenient, especially for phone users, but thats neither here nor there. XMPP clients themselves have alot of issues, that is no secret. also, if youre relying on a “smart” phone for communications, how much do you really care about privacy? i bring this question up because you said “user-friendly clients (including mobile ones)”. as for “hacker/nerd” communities, ive managed to find much more productive ones on IRC, and barely any active ones on XMPP, especially if you have more niche interests.

      Not that I’m defending those blacklists, but it doesn’t change the fact that server operators aren’t forced to implement them, right?

      yes, youre correct. but its still a problem when a large portion of the federated network implements it, because even if you dont use it, your server or JID can be added to it, and youre still blocked from a large portion of the network.

      Edit: a solution might be to try and convince other server operators to stop using it, but good luck with that.