Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Would You Solve the Instant Messaging Problem?
Artem Tashkinov writes: The XKCD comics has posted a wonderful and exceptionally relevant post in regard to the today's situation with various instant messaging solutions. E-mail has served us well in the past, however, it's not suitable for any real-time communications involving video and audio. XMPP was a nice idea, however, it has largely failed except for a low number of geeks who stick to it. Nowadays, some people install up to seven instant messengers to be able to keep up with various circles of people. How do you see this situation being resolved?
People desperately need a universal solution which is secure, decentralized, fault tolerant, not attached to your phone number, protects your privacy, supports video and audio chats and sending of files, works behind NATs and other firewalls and has the ability to send offline messages. I believe we need a modern version of SMTP. [How would you solve the instant messaging problem?]
People desperately need a universal solution which is secure, decentralized, fault tolerant, not attached to your phone number, protects your privacy, supports video and audio chats and sending of files, works behind NATs and other firewalls and has the ability to send offline messages. I believe we need a modern version of SMTP. [How would you solve the instant messaging problem?]
If everyone stopped messaging on insecure lines, the problem would solve itself.
Call it Kitchen Sink Syndrome, or the Second-System Effect. You are right that XMPP suffers badly from it.
The problem isnt a technical one, it is a business one. More specifically, every business giving you a "FUCK YOU" attitude when it comes to interoperability with different platforms. Facebook Chat? That was XMPP. Google Chat? (that thing before Hangouts and Voice), also XMPP. Countless other systems out there are XMPP too. It works. It works GREAT. There pretty much wasn't anything wrong with it. Then businesses were like "FUCK YOU", and decided they didn't want to cooperate anymore, and so it died.
I'll take an opposing position here. I see a problem. Right now, I have to maintain several different IM/messaging/chat services.
1) SMS because it came with my phone, and it's what a lot of people use. Honestly this is probably the most ubiquitous and useful, except that it's kind of bound to my phone.
2) iMessage sort of serves the purpose of SMS. It also basically came with my phone and lets me do SMS and not have it bound to my phone. Except... the thing that makes regular SMS messages also go to my computer randomly stops working, so I still need SMS for talking to Android users.
3) Slack for work. I don't like it, but it's what people use at work, so I have to use it.
4) XMPP for work. We use a VoIP solution that has a SIP client that also automatically sets up XMPP chat. Sometimes work people send messages through that.
5) Google talk/hangouts/whatever-it's-called-now because I have Google obsessed friends who like it.
6) Facebook Messenger, which I've finally deleted because it keeps getting worse. But now I have to log into the Facebook website to chat with my Facebook friends, because I have some Facebook friends that I'm *only* in contact with through Facebook.
I feel like there a few others that I'm not thinking of, to say nothing of all the accounts that I've had to sign up for over the years (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL, etc.). I'm also not including my multiple email addresses. Even though I think email could use an overhaul, I think that email is rightfully a different format.
So here's why I think that's a problem: I need to have a bunch of different apps using a bunch of different accounts, running on multiple different platforms, just to keep track of text messages. I can't consolidate them into one app because the services aren't compatible with different clients (e.g. I can't use pidgin to use all of them). I also can't talk with people across services (e.g. I can't use my iMessage account to talk to Facebook contacts). I don't even have a choice in client apps (I basically have to use Facebook's Messenger to talk to Facebook contacts).
It locks us all into inefficient communication platforms that are outside of our control. Imagine if phones worked this way, if every six months there was a new phone app that could only call other users of that phone app, and none of them were capable of calling each other. Or email-- what if you had to sign up for a new email account on every email host in order to email other users on that host. Like imagine there were no SMTP communication between servers, and if you wanted to email someone who had used an Outlook.com email account, you had to sign up for your own Outlook.com account.
The whole thing is actually really stupid and unnecessary. Having to have all those apps and so many accounts increases your attack surface, decreasing your security. Plus a lot of the apps are awful, unstable, and needlessly complicated for the simple purpose of text messaging. You say, "We just have a robust constellation of competing systems, serving different communities," but the systems don't really compete. They're each little monopolies of their own little walled gardens. There's also no reason why open systems couldn't serve different communities. The only reason there aren't standards is that the Internet has completely abandoned the idea of openness and interoperability in favor of locking users into proprietary advertising platforms that drive engagement.