I'd been thinking Telegram would be a sufficiently secure alternative, but as Western intelligence gets their hooks into that system I think we need to go self-hosted. Element is the biggest name here, but I'm curious what options are the best for a combination of both security and feature maturity.

  • Chronicon [they/them]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Matrix (Element is just one compatible client) is up there if Signal is too limiting feature-wise or too sus for yah. It can be annoying but not terribly hard to self-host, there are multiple server and client implementations that generally interoperate (though currently the server side you should probably stick to synapse unless you're resource constrained or know what you're doing)

    if you don't like the UI of element, try fluffychat or nheko or something

    • Cutecity [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Just take note that Matrix was originally developped by Amdocs, an israeli multinational with ties to the state intelligence. They made a foundation to pursue further development, but apparently the staff is the same. It might not mean much, but many people don't know about it.

      • gay_king_prince_charles [she/her, he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Matrix also also really, really bad when it comes to metadata. I would not trust Matrix when it comes to sensitive things or communication that can be used against you due to how much metadata it leaks. I also find the double standard here were people don't trust Signal due to funding but ignore funding issues in Matrix.

      • Chronicon [they/them]
        ·
        2 months ago

        good to know. I still feel their open-source practices and lack of centralization puts them above signal in some ways, but yikes...

    • zkrzsz [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Element's theme can be changed too. https://github.com/catppuccin/element

      • Chronicon [they/them]
        ·
        2 months ago

        I haven't used that feature but a bunch of non-element clients seem to support that according to this: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/ (filter by feature)

        Of them, I would say Hydrogen web, and FluffyChat, are the most serious based on features supported and what I've heard about them. I haven't used fractal since before it supported e2ee though