As an excellent programmer once noted: constraints induce creativity and focused design. Delta Chat has been running against classic e-mail provider constraints for years and had to evolve its code to work against these constraints (rate limits, spam filters, signups, delays etc) and thus we were uniquely positioned to create a minimal #chatmail server template that beats Gmail, Outlook, iCloud etc regarding security, performance and efficiency. It's a similar story with #deepseek if you will. image
Signal has the most carefully designed cryptographic protocols that you can run on a central platform, thanks to Trevor and Moxie. They have truly inspired many end-to-end encryption advances everywhere in the last decade. Great stuff. However, Signal depends on Amazon/ DynamoDB, Intel/SGX , on Cloudflare, on Google Cloud ... and operations are expensive, with financing dependent on US jurisdiction and non-profit status there. Dear [@Mer__edith](
Mastodon
Meredith Whittaker (@Mer__edith@mastodon.world)
1.19K Posts, 314 Following, 32.9K Followers Β· President of @signalapp
 ) , isn't it time to revisit operational choices?
Preventing enshittification of platforms rests on credible exit for users and devs. #ActivityPub and #SMTP are not perfect but a) are implemented und understood by many players, b) enable freedom of choice of servers and clients, c) implement #RightToMigrate as well as self/community custody Many #p2p projects promise to remove servers but often promote and depend on a single implementation stack, have no spec and no interop among #p2p islands, and thus struggle to provide credible exit.
Did you know that you can add and use "ephemeral profiles" where all messages get deleted after a set time? The "auto-delete from device" will keep your profile clean. It's a one sided ephemerality that you decide about, not your chat partners. Good for coordinating things without digital traces and where only "the current day" or "week" is important but not all the past history. Saved messages stay, though, until you explicitely delete them. #ephemeral #deltachat image
Where we stand as a project: - delivering usable decentralized and secure super-apps across all platforms with many friendly forks and alternative, complementary community developments. - thinking/prototyping several "next big things" (tm) and working on delivering them for real. Delta Chat is a realist R&D endeavour involving many contributing world-class experts in their fields. Because real expertise is needed to cut through all the crap in specs and softwares. Idealism is not enough.
When not dabbling in undusting the venerable Email system we play with rewiring the Web to free it from the possibility of billionaire platforms. With a nod to @Cory Doctorow 's "Ulysses Pact" we just published "Replacing billionairish platforms with ZIP files" highlighting a bunch of new #webxdc features and community developments. The challenge is on who wants to join in de-platforming Venture-Capital-backed web apps that try to mediate our private communications
Delta Chat: Replacing billionairish platforms with ZIP files
How can we evolve and deploy web apps without allowing developers or operators to become a β€œbillionaire in the middle”? There are many ways to ...
PSA: please recommend newcomers to use chatmail servers instead of suggesting they start first with an existing classic e-mail address. #Chatmail servers provide a dependable, fast and secure messaging experience, with instant push notifications for Google and Apple phones. No personal data needed. Delta Chat profiles with chatmail servers come closest to mainstream messaging experiences and typically "just work" also in many repressive situations with bad internet or partial blockings.
A main technical and economic difference to #matrix servers/clients: The family of #deltachat apps uses #chatmail servers as ephemeral message transports that know nothing and forget everything: Servers don't store group metadata or cryptographic identities and delete messages after download by default. In effect, a 30EUR/month #chatmail server with 10K's of active users hums along with 2% IO and CPU pressure, 1GB RAM and negligible disk usage. No Pro-version or Kybernetes needed to scale ;)
Much of what is commonly said about #email and #openpgp is wrong. It can very well be fast and secure and that's a claim backed by working code and deployments and audits (#chatmail servers and the #deltachat family of apps). There is no both-sides-have-opinions game to be played here. Internet-scale messaging alternatives are arguably either centralized or brittle. There is however much room for further improvements including deep changes in how we commonly understand email today. Stay tuned :)
Dear @Soatok Dreamseeker ... may we suggest to disclose security flaw claims first with the developers? Yesterday you publicly attacked @npub1s9fl...tuql mixing opinions with security flaw claims Session devs got back today disputing the flaw claims:
Session
A Response to Recent Claims About Session's Security Architecture
This post provides a comprehensive analysis of Session's security design choices and explains why the supposed vulnerabilities recently described b...
 Responsible disclosure could have helped to sort out possible misconception on findings and is in the interest of users. Going for just an opinion piece is the other fair option of course. Mixing is questionable. ref:
Dhole Moments
Don’t Use Session (Signal Fork) - Dhole Moments
Last year, I outlined the specific requirements that an app needs to have in order for me to consider it a Signal competitor. Afterwards, I had sev...