Zulip - Powerful open source group chat
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@scooke I gave up on that quest a long time ago.
People resist anything they think is effort or unpopular. That's why hyper-scaling capitalism has been so successful and every social media platform a business is expected to be on the ones from the hyper-growth capitalism capital of the tech world.
I see people using WhatsApp and Messenger as no different to people that work production lines to make my devices and clothing. Most just don't want to know any different, as then they'd have to be unsatisfied with their status quo.
It's more valuable for business to keep people believing, and do whatever it takes to retain those "users" (ironic term considering it is also common in describing drug addicts), than it is for them to try lesser-known alternatives, regardless of their superior privacy. So you're competing against an industry of global indoctrination as a business model in that persuasion endeavour.
For me it's:
Nextcloud Talk for all business and organisation ventures.
Signal for my friends and family that care about privacy, although that also has its issues, mainly in lack of ability to export data.
Mattermost + Element I believe has some traction with UK Government using it, and perhaps others, but even I found it confusing to get working at first.
WhatEver for everyone else that's too lazy to care about their own freedom and finds more comfort in giving their value to brands.
It baffles me how many people I care about are addicted to diet sodas, too, but regardless of caring, they just don't see the harm, and worse see anyone's attempts to divert them from such perceived minor vices as an attack on their freedom to choose, even if they know it's a junk brand, it gives them comfort because popularity feels safer than healthy to many.
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:
and do whatever it takes to retain those "users" (ironic term considering it is also common in describing drug addicts)
Great insight!
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@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:
It baffles me
I just found the "right-click, highlight text in post, quote" function. Anyway, I definitely agree, it is baffling and it is also a bit exasperating sometimes. A natural impulse to try and help others then needs to be self-curtailed. One ends up wanting to no longer support society.
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@LoudLemur I think the reality of the modern online world is everyone has multiple personas. There's the systems we use because we have to, and we are one persona there, and the systems we use because we want to, and we can be another persona there. Then there's the personas we can have offline and off grid.
The best protection anyone can have is just to make the persona that has to use systems unwillingly the least valuable to those trying to extract excess value from it, and reserve our most valuable creations for private systems and places.
Even this conversation would be wildly different on a public platform compared to in a pub.
Going back to Zulip. I don't see video and voice. Same for Rocket.Chat. Hence, for me, this one remains a luxury app to package, when Nextcloud Talk and Element do have those.
Sometimes we don't need every option, just the current best of the best, which I feel we already have.
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
We'll also never know what data we thought would remain private suddely becomes "training data" for AI LLMs.
Biggest cost in any organisation is change, so its easy for those organisation that have a high change costs for leaving them to just change their Ts & Cs and "feedback" systems to suddenly make it very costly to opt-out of sharing private data with them.
Hence, private self-hosting I see as the digital equivalent of prevention being better than cure for preservation of agency and value.
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@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:
lack of ability to export data
https://github.com/carderne/signal-export
AND
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@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:
Going back to Zulip. I don't see video and voice.
Jitsi integration would be fine.
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@robi you got it: https://zulip.com/help/start-a-call
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@robi said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:
@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:
lack of ability to export data
Hey, it sure is great to have @robi in the forum!
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@robi I remember trying the original and being suitably impressed by the author's commentary on this crime against data portability and determination to solve it where the organisation taking donations won't:
Welcome to Signal Conversation Archive Backup (SCAB)!
(alternative title: Conversation Retrieval And Persistence)
Why do we need SCAB? Well, Signal is hostile when it comes to letting users own their private conversations1. Just take a look at the dozen issues complaining about lack of ability to restore conversations. If you want to retain any sort of persistent immutable archive of your messages over time, Signal itself won’t help you and actually tries to stop you from retaining any continuity of communication2.
Signal’s explicit policy towards archiving conversations is “we don’t support it, just delete everything, the past never matters,” which is quite arrogant to say the least.
Signal Conversation Archive Backup to the rescue3! SCAB works around Signal’s poor owners-first, users-not-considered design decision by extracting your Signal database (and attachments) for long term storage of full conversation history.
Highly recommend reading this whole page - brilliantly insightful and revealing rant. You'll keep a close eye on Signal tactics in future when you understand their data moat strategy.
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@LoudLemur Pleasure, love a good technology rant - vast majority of this industry is lip-service and say one thing, do another.
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@marcusquinn said in Zulip - Powerful open source group chat:
Mattermost + Element
Do you mean Matrix + Element?
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@jdaviescoates Probably
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@marcusquinn did you set up your own signaling? I forgot
I've still got my teeny service available if you need an external signaling server. -
@doodlemania2 Speaking of relays... I filled out the form for Mastodon, and have been eagerly awaiting approval, but my request from https://social.futurnumerique.com/ is still pending. Is there anything else I need to do?
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@doodlemania2 For Nextcloud Talk? I don't remember needing anything beyond the app as-is, but it's running on a decent spec server, so speed and quality have both been good enough that I'd not thought to need anything else there.
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My 2 cents: Zulip has a unique approach to organising conversation thread which I find the best, is pretty well designed and easy to get used to for non-techy people. As such it would be a useful app to have and not just a duplicate of others.
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@avatar1024 +1 generally agree, it has value other apps don't have
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Some recent updates related to Zulip:
- Zulip has an officially supported, experimental docker image
- Zulip 7.0 was recently released: visual redesign, scheduling messages, streamlining messages, and more.
More information below:
https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/stable/production/deployment.html#zulip-in-docker
https://github.com/zulip/docker-zulip
https://blog.zulip.com/2023/05/31/zulip-7-0-released/
