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Ask HN: How did you convince family and friends to join your XMPP/Matrix server?
102 points97 comments0.8 average comments/hourSubmitted by mtlynch
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I love open-source software and open protocols, but my family and friends primarily communicate through SMS for exactly the reasons in https://xkcd.com/2365/
Whenever XMPP or Matrix threads pop up on HN, several commenters casually mention their "friends and family XMPP (or Matrix) server."
How did you convince friends and family to move away from SMS/WhatsApp and replace it with a niche messaging app?
My family and friends aren't hardcore nerdy, but they're more tech-savvy than average. Their needs in messaging are mainly pragmatic: they want ease of use, reliability, and fun features. They don't care that much about privacy, decentralization, or extensibility (though I care about those things a lot).
I've been experimenting with self-hosting XMPP and Matrix servers and clients in the past week, and the UX is even worse than I expected. It seems like all the clients either imitate Slack, imitate Discord, or imitate hot garbage. I haven't seen any that try to be a simple, friendly replacement for SMS. I'm a software developer who uses computers all day, and I find the UX for most of the clients incredibly hard to use.
The only angle I could see to pitch XMPP/Matrix to people for non-philosophical reasons are that there's a more consistent experience across iOS/Android. The biggest shortcoming I think is visible to regular users is that there's feature degradation and missing information when iOS users have SMS conversations with Android users, especially in group chats.
For people who have successfully won family and friends to XMPP or Matrix, what was your pitch? What do you recommend others do to make XMPP or Matrix an attractive experience for a regular person?
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I know this isn't the answer you want, but I sell people on Signal based on the user features. I’ve had great success in getting my friends and family to adopt it. Signal is incredible user friendly, privacy respecting, the gold standard for encryption, cross platform, etc. Yes, it’s centralized, yes it’s imperfect in many ways, but it’s easy and it’s pretty damn good. If you want to help the people around you to become more involved in understanding and owning their tech, it has to be an easy and good experience. It has to be tangibly better, not just abstractly better with tangible downsides. I use XMPP, but would never try to convince my friends and family to use it; it’s too complicated, the user facing apps all suck (Snikket and Cheogram are the best of the bad lot), and the incentives to use it aren't there. As you said, it’s just not attractive to a regular user, since it’s all around a worse experience than what they currently use. The one exception is that I do occasionally recommend XMPP for SIP access via jmp.chat to some of my more technical friends who have a tolerance for clunky user experiences in favor of privacy and affordability. I am holding onto an unreasonable hope that Signal or Whatsapp or others will consider XMPP+OMEO in the future to popularize the standard, but that is extremely unlikely. Matrix also is an unfortunately terrible alternative to discord (even Element is a rather lacking user experience), so while I have pushed to move groups there before, I no longer recommend Matrix. I suggest signal or nextcloud as alternatives when possible; the remaining large groups who need the closed server forum style system are usually unlikely to move to Matrix anyway.
Comment on Hacker News · 7 direct repliesThese platforms die all the time, it's my job to pick the replacement when that happens. Ward used to love Skype, so that's what I used to chat with him. Now that he's gone, and Skype went corporate, I've switched to Discord for chats with my friend Jim. I've got a VPS server with an instance of a local chat server if that dies, but it's nowhere near as polished. When you're the IT guy for the family, you just make a decision, and nobody else really cares about the details.
Comment on Hacker NewsI learned a long time ago that things like this might be really important to me but fall below the noise floor for everyone else. Unless everyone in your circle is on HN all the time, you will probably fail to convince them to change. The more likely outcome is that you wind up annoying everyone involved and don't get invited to the new discord server.
Comment on Hacker NewsMy advice is not specific to Matrix but other self hosted private services. Some of this may or may not be feasible with Matrix. (I have never used Matrix) - Whether family or friends, always suggest it as a "fallback" for when "preferred service" is down and to use when discussion ultra-sensitive topics or sharing financial files. With time they may just stay connected to it if the friction to do so is low. It has to be their choice, not yours. - What helps? Add more incentives such as perks that "preferred service" does not offer. No file size limits. No or few file type limits. No content filters. Add emoji's or gifs that align with their inside jokes and their style of humor. Keeping random people away is very important. Making your friends and family administrators or moderators and let them decide how it operates. Do not moderate or power-trip over your friends or family or they will leave. Limit rules to "Do not break the laws of this country in public chatrooms" and private chat rooms if you do not physically host the server. Database and file backups become even more important but they will feel in control of a thing. Have a keyword or code word they all learn means to go check the private platform that "primary platform" would not recognize. Maybe when they see "Turtle Farts!" they know to go log into your service. - They may just stay on their primary preferred service. Every group is different and not every group will see the benefits of your fallback service. They may not appreciate the work you put into setting it up for them. Do not expect to get the friends of your friends and family to move to your service. They may not appreciate the OpSec value until "Bad Things"(c)™2038 happen to enough people. Just be there for when it does. - If there are concerns that you would spy on them, consider instead using eJapperd or Prosody as you can implement OMEMO for individual and group end-to-end encrypted messages. Set up TLS fingerprint checks from multiple locations to reduce the risk of MitM attacks until XEP-0474: SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection is fully supported and active by default on both servers and all clients. This is the only thing holding me back from setting up a public Prosody server as 0474 is still experimental. See [1] - Avoid (block) federation on private servers for friends and family otherwise it is not a private server. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37955264
Comment on Hacker News · 1 direct repliesWell, my folks live/visit countries with insane govt censorship, so it was quite easy: I just said our private XMPP server is a good reserve comms channel, and over time they just got used to the peace of mind that it gives to them. Decent android (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/) + web (https://github.com/nioc/xmpp-web) clients played vital role though. Also, shout out to Delta Chat! (https://f-droid.org/packages/com.b44t.messenger/)
Comment on Hacker NewsDuring Iran's Internet blackout, I set up a chatmail server on an interanet VPS, installed Delta Chat's client (https://delta.chat) on every family member's phone, and they are using it even now after the Internet is back. I have tried Matrix, XMPP (Conversations), Signal and even some Nostr clients but Delta Chat has by far the best UX and reliability. It has groups, channels and private messages, stickers and built-in video calls. My only gripe is that it doesn't have video messages or screen share like Telegram yet. If you want to try it out you're always welcome to message me.
Comment on Hacker News · 4 direct repliesCurious if you've tried Snikket, and what hurdles you ran into (if you did). I made it with the primary purpose of moving my family communication over to XMPP, and I succeeded with that (improving a bunch of stuff in the process). I'm not claiming it's perfect (a known weak point is the iOS app, but we're actively working on solving that...)
Comment on Hacker News · 2 direct repliesI manually installed Conversations.im on their phones configuring accounts, joining groups etc then on my phone I've disabled notifications on other chat apps. If they want something, XMPP is the only way to reliably reach me. Over time they grew to like it even though it's not perfect (eg. no built-in gallery or message retraction).
Comment on Hacker News · 1 direct repliesMatrix is bad, the protocol is complex, sync is bad, it uses a lot of resources... I had only bad experience with it. I have an XMPP server which works on a small server, it has been running for nearly 10 years with 0 issues. We are about 20 on it. I didn't convince them, I installed the client on their device and told them "use this icon to talk to me". Then they realized they could talk to each other. They don't care about anything else. What I'd like to see in an XMPP client: On desktop: - something lighter, dino is not bad, but it can use quite a lot of CPU - better theming, some people like bubbles, other prefer irc like - GIF picker, it could require a server side proxy I don't care, I just want it - better control when sending image (crop, quality...) On mobile: - better sharing (vcard, image with good control) - GIF picker - a few UI tweaks, like text colors and layout
Comment on Hacker NewsIn trying, I discovered that most family members don't want to use anything that lets the government spy on its users, but one sibling is against privacy in general and only wants to use platforms that allow the government to spy on users, so there's no solution.
Comment on Hacker News · 2 direct replies