description: Signal is often considered an alternative to Whatsapp, but is it really? Why you should gather a group of friends and consider staring into the abyss of self-hosted, federated messaging services.
summary: Signal is often considered an alternative to Whatsapp, but is it really? Why you should gather a group of friends and consider staring into the abyss of self-hosted, federated messaging services.
*This article was first first published on <https://homebrewserver.club> on the 9th of march of 2017*
*This article was first first published on <https://homebrewserver.club> on the 9th of March of 2017.*
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@ -79,7 +79,6 @@ Rather than having to swap one app for the other in an attempt to mitigate a lar
The federated nature of the protocol allows you to try, play and experiment with different network infrastructures with different clients. These clients can range from custom XMMP bots to general instant messengers that you would be able recommend your friends and family to replace Whatsapp, without making a fool of yourself. As these open-source technologies continue to evolve you can make incremental changes to your server or switch clients as newer versions arrive.
Hosting your own infrastructure allows you to scale your communication in a way that is the most meaningful for the group or community you belong to. It is also a way to make sure your system matches your own threat model[<sup>?</sup>](http://homebrewserver.club/beginners-guide-to-xmpp-speak.html#threat), while simultaneously allowing you to deal with trust that is not mediated by an app. It also allows you to experiment with economic models other than those linked to large-scale infrastructure involving surveillance and capturing of your social graph for financial gain. Maybe you want to share the cost of the server or the responsibilities of administrating it, maybe you want to collectively learn how to run all this stuff, or maybe you want to start meetings to exchange tips, etc. However, this does not mean that you need to cut yourself off from the rest of the world and this form of localism should not be misunderstood for a hipsterist and reactionary form of escapism. Instead, such an approach is quite the opposite as it provides a possibility to actively engage with societal issues. It allows groups to collectively think, in the sense of defining questions and hypotheses themselves, acquire skills and knowledge and respond to issues that are both relevant to their own situation but that can also resonate globally, enabling others to start a similar process.
The goal of this article was to provide some tools and insights which not only allow for contextualisation of the technology we are using and supporting, but also help making sure that the instant-messaging you and your friends use happens in a trusted and secure environment, as much as possible outside the economies of surveillance. For this reason our motivation for writing this article was two-fold. On the one hand we wanted to show that the issue of privacy is more insidious than institutional eavesdropping and not merely solved with the use of end-to-end encryption. On the other hand, and as a consequence, we wanted to suggest not a different app, but a different approach altogether on the basis of XMPP federation and collective action. Therefore we've written two guides. [One on how to configure a server](http://homebrewserver.club/configuring-a-modern-xmpp-server.html) and [one on how to choose and use clients](http://homebrewserver.club/picking-modern-xmpp-clients.html) that can go along with it. These allow you to put a self-hosted approach, an approach that brings aspects of trust, scale and implementation to the forefront and into practice. Once again, such guides should not be perceived as definitive answers but more as tools to keep us, and hopefully you too, busy formulating the right questions and building networks of mutual help.
So while we are unable to recommend you the next big app that will solve all user surveillance and financialisation once and for all—as we are pretty sure no such app will ever even exist—we hope to at least help shed a light on the confused and confusing discourses that surround crypto-sound alternatives which may obfuscate less obvious problems.
On the 1st and 2nd of june *varia* will host a gathering with Daniel Gultsch
On the 1st and 2nd of June *Varia* will host a gathering with Daniel Gultsch.
Daniel Gultsch is the developer behind [Conversations](https://conversations.im), an open source instant messaging application for Android. In 2014 he decided to work full time on Conversations and try to make a living from it. Rather than starting from scratch with Conversations, he built it as a client for the existing federated messaging protocol XMPP.
Since an XMPP messenger can, in a way, only be as good as the entire ecosystem, Daniels work on Conversations included work on expanding and improving that larger ecosystem. This work included helping to draft and implement protocol standards, such as introducing OMEMO, modern and user-friendly end-to-end encryption based on Signal's protocol. In addition he has contributed code to other XMPP servers and clients in the ecosystem to bring them up to speed and [through his critical essays](https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html) he has been a vocal defender of XMPP and open standards in general.
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Conversations is notable because, through its singular focus on user experience, design and security it has garnered a lot of interest and revived work and interest on the XMPP ecosystem as a whole. This makes it an interesting example
Since an XMPP messenger can, in a way, only be as good as the entire ecosystem, Daniels work on Conversations included work on expanding and improving that larger ecosystem. This work included helping to draft and implement protocol standards, such as introducing OMEMO, modern and user-friendly end-to-end encryption based on Signal's protocol. In addition he has contributed code to other XMPP servers and clients in the ecosystem to bring them up to speed and [through his critical essays](https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html) he has been a vocal defender of XMPP and open standards in general.
Conversations is notable because, through its singular focus on user experience, design and security it has garnered a lot of interest and revived work and interest on the XMPP ecosystem as a whole. This makes it an interesting example.
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This is a chat protocol which has at one point also been the underlying technology of both Google and Facebook chat before they closed it down and made it proprietary. From the onset Conversations focused on a combination of user friendliness, security and ultimately visual design to be on par with mobile messengers such as whatsapp and telegram. The work of Conversations has reinvigorated the XMPP protocol. Partly because it focused on implementing the double-ratchett encryption algorithm almost immediately after it was open-sourced. This is the modern userfriendly end-to-end encryption algorithm developed by Moxie Marlinspike for Signal and licensed to companies like Whatsapp. Another effect of the work of Conversations is that the decades old protocol has been updated in the span of a few years to work very well for mobile usage. For me one of the interesting aspects of the development of Conversations is the role that modern thinking on UIs, design and user friendliness played in its popularity. This especially becomes apparent in the very technical and awkward world of XMPP software. The developer has mentioned multiple times that he 'bases' his design on that of his GAFA 'competitors'. Apropos tactical media, this project's appropriation of corporate design, yet very clear and solid political stance (see <https://gultsch.de/objection.html>) leading to an increase in popularity and community involvement is an interesting development.
