280 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
280 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
title:The chat app of 2021
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---
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pub_date: 2021-02-09
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---
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author: ungleich
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---
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twitter_handle: ungleich
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: no
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---
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abstract:
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Why we use Matrix and things to consider
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---
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body:
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## Introduction
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At this point we've all seen many chat apps - some very popular and
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some not. Some very secure and some not. Some very centralised and
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some not. The difficult thing when choosing a chat app is that the
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most important differences are not something you can intuitively find
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out. That is more a question of how each chat app was designed from
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the beginning.
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What we are going to do in this post is that we will talk about what
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we have used as chat so far and why, and we will discuss what you need
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to consider when making a decision for yourself. What are the
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differences between the chat apps out there, and what do those
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differences mean to their end-users?
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## About us
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Each community or individual has a different need for the chat and
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what's best for others does not necessarily mean that's going to be
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the best for you. Before starting we want to give you an idea about
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who we are.
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- Our team is rather deeply into technology probably more than most people.
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- The age of our chat users is somewhere between 18-55 (with minor exceptions).
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- Many of our chat users are working with laptops for a big part of the day.
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- Most of our chat users are comfortable using English for communication.
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- Our chat users are about 80 % male and 20 % female.
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- A big part of our community values sustainability and the environment
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- A big part of us is interested in software with its code publicly open - in other words, open source.
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The evolution of our chat was really finding what fits us the best. We
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have started our team chat at Slack many years ago, then we moved to
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Rocketchat, and then we moved to Mattermost. While keeping Mattermost
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running, we started our Matrix instance on the side. We have gradually
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moved more to Matrix over time and now have most of our main
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conversations in Matrix. There were reasons for each of our moves, we
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will explain them below.
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## What we based our decisions on
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### Work chat
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We (ungleich) are a company working with Free and Open Source and
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Linux. Our work happens around many text information and we have many
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parallel projects shared with people from different timezones. This
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requires our chat to be as efficient and organised as possible, so
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that everybody can get their work done and collaborate easily. This
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was the reason why we were initially landing in Slack which has an
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interface suitable for our work life. Apps designed for more casual,
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mobile use such as Telegram and Signal did not fit our need.
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### Self-hosted
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We need to mention that for a Swiss company like ourselves
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[that physically runs our servers with local hydropower,](https://datacenterlight.ch/en-us/cms/hydropower/) we knew
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that it is senseless to have our chat somewhere in the U.S. (whose
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privacy laws are more relaxed than ours) run by servers with fossil fuels.
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That's why we soon moved away from Slack to chats that we can host on
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our own. We first moved to Rocketchat, and although the transition was
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easy and smooth at the beginning its mobile version was not as smooth
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as we liked it to be at that time and our team would miss getting
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messages often while on the run between different data center
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locations.
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After spending some time with Rocketchat we moved to self-hosted
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Mattermost looking for a more stable experience. With its robust
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performance and friendly UI (that we still think is one of the best
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out there), our team became quite happy with Mattermost.
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### Decentralised
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You might have noticed that we are not the most typical company:
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renewable-only energy driven Linux, FOSS and IPv6 aficionados in the
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Alps. This means we attract quite some people who have a lot of
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stories and chats to share with us. More and more over the time it
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became clear that our work chat is not only for our internal work -
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but it's also for a community chat, a community with very diverse
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backgrounds for that matter. Hobby computer lovers, mountain lovers,
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hackers and makers, climate activists, penguin lovers, you name it.
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While happily staying on Mattermost we started to receive requests
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from our community for enabling our chat to be more decentralised:
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meaning not all the chat data staying in our server only
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(centralisation), but enabling others to connect from their servers
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too (decentralisation).
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This was a fair request and we knew it was the right way to go. As a
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solution we started to phase in Matrix into our chat - we first
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started it as a side chat from our main channels in Mattermost.
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Over time we moved most of our conversations to it, while keeping
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Mattermost on the side. Using Matterbridge to bridge between the two
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chats, this dual system has been working quite well, and it is
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especially useful when one of the instances experiences downtime.
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## What you should consider when choosing a team chat
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Above was our specific case and you probably have a different use for
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the chat app. Should you consider Matrix? Mattermost? Or Slack? Some
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questions need to be answered first to see what your requirements are.
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### 1. Workspace or SMS
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This depends on what your use case is. Are you looking for a secure
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version of SMS, or are you looking for an organised place for
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different groups and tasks to be handled? The former fits the use case
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of Threema, Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, and the latter is better handled
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by Slack, Mattermost, Rocketchat, and Matrix. We are not implying that
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all these chat apps have the 3 baselines passed, but just giving you
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examples.
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### 2. Can you be anonymous
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This is closely linked to the #1, because the chat apps that function
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as SMS replacement such as Threema, Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, need a phone
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number to work. So if staying anonymous is an important factor for you
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this is something you want to consider in choosing a chat. For using
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Matrix or Mattermost you do not need a phone number, and in the case
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of Matrix you do not even need an email address that can identify you.
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### 3. Where is the chat server
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This is something most people don't think about: the physical location
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of the servers where the chat is running. It mostly becomes a crucial
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question in two ways.
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One is if you face the possibility of having to deal with
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authorities - meaning you need to care which law will apply in case
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you are being investigated.
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Two is if you care for the environmental and ethical impact of your
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servers, such as [what kind of energy source is being used and what is
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the ethical stance of the
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hosters.](https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/06/28/how-run-really-green-datacenter/)
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The ability to decide where your servers will physically be, either by
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running the server by yourself or by somebody you can trust is a big
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difference between some chat apps and others. Chats that offer home
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servers, self-hosted options such as Matrix or Mattermost give you the
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ability to choose, and any chat app that does not, locks you in the
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chat provider's choice.
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### 4. Decentralised or centralised
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Does all of our conversation only go to one company in one country, or
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can it be in the different small or big streams everywhere and be
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independently open to each other? Most chats out there are the former,
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and federated chats are the latter.
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Say there's a special house where everybody goes to for communication,
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and you have to go there whenever you want to talk to anybody, and the
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conversation stays only in that house. Anybody who wants to say
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anything to anybody, has to go into this house. Doesn't it sound
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really strange? That's what most chats are.
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But what if we can stay in our own home and call each other and still
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can have a conversation? And the conversation does not only stay in
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one house, but in everybody's house for when it's their own
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conversation? That's more like how Matrix imagined how chats should
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work.
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This is the single most standout identity of Matrix, that it has
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built-in federation. Means you can stay on your chat and go to other
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Matrix instance and talk to them.
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### 5. Are you into the latest, hottest technology
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It might sound silly but it is still an important factor for a lot of
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early adopters and people who just gotta have their hands on the
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latest groundbreaking stuff (cough). This is it. Matrix is the hottest
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chat system of 2021 and hands down the most innovative project amongst
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all the chat apps out there because of its federation and security
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design.
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## The baselines that you shouldn't compromise
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A lot of us brush off the topic of privacy thinking "But I don't have
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anything to hide." but it is not that simple. Even though you might
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not have anything to hide now, people who you have a conversation with
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might have a very different stance and you affect them with your
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choices.
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Using a chat app for communication involves the privacy of everybody
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in your network - family, friends, colleagues, and more. That's why
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whatever chat you choose, there should be some baselines you shouldn't
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compromise. These are what we think is important in choosing which
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chat to use in 2021.
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## The baseline 1: End-to-End Encrypted
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As a very base your chat should be End-to-End Encrypted (E2EE). E2EE
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means even when the 3rd party (including law enforcement or the
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hosting company itself) snoops into the chat data, they will just see
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a series of useless encrypted texts that can not be decrypted.
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Not all chats have proper E2EE and especially not all chats have it as
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default. Matrix has E2EE as a default for example, and Telegram does
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not. It works quite the opposite way in fact: disabling E2EE has to be
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manually opted in Matrix, whereas enabling E2EE can be done only by
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choosing "Secret Chat" Function in Telegram.
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## The baseline 2: Not collecting your data
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Even when the chat app can not read your conversation thanks to the
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encryption, some chats do access a lot of other information, such as
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with whom you are talking to for how often and for how long ("meta
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information"). We tend to focus on not revealing the content of our
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chat and to forget that the other information can be collected while
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being unnoticed.
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Whatsapp is a particularly risky choice for this reason, because it
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belongs to Facebook whose entire business model relies on collecting
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user information for monetisation.
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## The baseline 3: Is the code open for public
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The thing about closed code is that nobody outside the chat app
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company can see how and what is built in the chat. Is it having some
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back doors users are unaware of, is it monitoring the user activity
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without letting the user know, with closed code we will never know.
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So for a chat (or any software for that matter) to be claimed secure,
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its code has to be open for the public, so unbiased third parties can
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review its sanity. If you think about it, it's quite simple - no
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system can achieve robust integrity without transparency.
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## Try it yourself
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When it comes to technology, the best approach is trying it
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yourself. Our ungleich chat, both Matrix and Mattermost, are open for
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anybody to join: we heartily invite you to give it a try. Create an
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account, join rooms, say hi and ask questions you might have.
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We claim our chat is one of the safest places to try a chat app you
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are not sure about yet - it does not collect your data, it does not
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need your phone number, it runs on 100% renewable energy.
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* [Try our Matrix](https://chat.with.ungleich.ch)
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* [Get in touch with ungleich](/u/contact/)
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More about us and Matrix
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* [Matrix for Climate](https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/matrix-for-climate/)
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* [ungleich open infrastructure:MaaS](https://redmine.ungleich.ch/projects/open-infrastructure/wiki/Ungleich_Matrix-as-a-Service_(MaaS)
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* [The Matrix foundation](https://matrix.org/foundation/)
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