this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Is UX/UI and marketing really the reason XMPP lags behind Signal/Matrix/Telegram? (discuss.privacyguides.net)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by underline960@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Edit: Matrix isn't going freemium, it's introducing premium accounts to fund the matrix.org homeserver. Thank you for the corrections in the comments.

~~Matrix is going freemium~~ Matrix is introducing premium accounts and WhatsApp is adding ads, which is sparking the annual "time to leave [app]" threads.

Users don't care that much about privacy, but they do care about enshittification, so XMPP not being built for it shouldn't be a problem.

Meanwhile, I've heard for years that XMPP has solved a lot of the problems that lead more popular apps to fail.

Is it really just a marketing/UX/UI problem?

If XMPP had a killer app with all the features that Signal/Whatsapp/Telegram has, would it have as many users?

If not, why does it keep getting out-adopted by new apps and protocols?

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[–] brisk@aussie.zone 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I don't think it's reasonable to say XMPP both lacks encryption and has a XEP for encryption. XEPs are how features are added to XMPP. There is support for encryption in the XMPP standard because there's a XEP for it.

The feature fragmentation used to be a real problem, which is why they introduced compliance suites.

[–] who@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don’t think it’s reasonable to say XMPP both lacks encryption and has a XEP for encryption.

This suggests that you read only a fragment of one sentence, rather than understanding the comment as a whole.

If you don't think it's reasonable to say that the issues noted above contributed significantly to XMPP's decline, or to its failure to catch up with other messaging systems, then I suppose that's your prerogative. But for the sake of discussion, you might want to offer an alternative explanation.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Encryption is an exemplar. It applies to all features in XEPs. My comment fully addresses two of your three dot points so the claim that I only read a fragment of a sentence is bizarre and patronising.

I don't feel the need to address every point because I'm not setting up an opposing argument, I don't even disagree with the overarching concept. I wanted to clarify some aspects of XMPP that I see as being misrepresented or overlooked.

[–] who@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago

Well, your critical comment failed to recognize that I was contrasting the core protocol against an implementation augmented by XEPs, and what the latter would mean in practical terms. It overlooked most of what I had written, which could most simply be explained if you had only seen/considered a fraction of what I wrote. No patronizing intended.

If hurried reading was not the cause, then I don't want to speculate on what was. Instead, I invite you to read it again later, and consider interpretations that you hadn't at first.

Or just ignore it. Good day.