Lemdro.id

1 point

22 days ago

There’s nothing conflicting about it. It’s not a public timeline, it’s “public” only to people you’ve added, no one else, including the server that would host your content.

Basically old Facebook (sharing just to your friends), without the spying, is what I’m asking for.

You would manage who can access what, by allowing/not allowing people to follow you

It’s not a group abstraction, at least for the user, since you’re not asking everyone to join the same group, and see each other’s content. Only yours, and in turn theirs.

Matrix is basically a group chat with bells and whistles, which is really nice, but isn’t what I’m looking for.

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rglullis@communick.news

2 points

22 days ago

it’s “public” only to people you’ve added

Which means that you have a protected room!

You mentioned you are not a programmer, so maybe you are missing one key information: it only makes sense to talk about “end-to-end encryption” when the sender knows the recipient a priori. You can not simply broadcast a message to any unspecified “wide-audience” and have it “end-to-end encrypted”.

It’s not a group abstraction, at least for the user, since you’re not asking everyone to join the same group,

Yes, you are. If you want the messages to be e2ee encrypted and which can not be spied by the server owner, you are in effect asking people “come join me on this room where we will have a shared secret to exchange messages privately”.

I understand that you are thinking in terms of an unified view, but this is an UX matter. If you want only a selection of people to be able to decrypt your message, you will have to add them to a group that you will have to manage it, and Matrix/XMPP already provide these mechanisms.

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0 points

22 days ago

decrypt your message, you will have to add them to a group that you will have to manage it

Yeah, I’ll convince them to join a service/download an app, join a server etc, but not necessarily the same group (in the sense that they won’t see each other’s stuff, just mine and whoever else they add). The wide audience I’m talking about is all the people I add, not the whole internet.

I’m essentially proposing a mass e2ee encryption messaging service, with a UI that amalgamates it into a single feed AND that people can customise what they’re notified for. (This is the concept upon with Futo circles is built, I’m not making this up our of whole cloth)

Like what Facebook is. Except, end to end encrypted.

Or hell, what WeChat moments is, except end-to-end encrypted.

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rglullis@communick.news

2 points

22 days ago

Ok, I don’t know how else to explain. What you are asking (“A public timeline that anyone can follow, except end-to-end encrypted”) is physically impossible.

Like, really impossible. See if you spot the issue:

they won’t see each other’s stuff, just mine and whoever else they add

The wide audience I’m talking about is all the people I add

How would keep a single timeline where the messages you sent are only visible to your friends, but not visible to your friends’ friends?

The answer is: you don’t. You can not do that. You need to have a separate room for the contacts that you want to make your pictures available. Your contacts need each to have their own room for the contacts that they need to have available.

I’m essentially proposing a mass e2ee encryption messaging service, with a UI that amalgamates it into a single feed

To view the feed, yes you can consolidate all posts into one single view. But when you post something, you will need to define which rooms will see the content, and the message will be duplicated across the different rooms. You can bet that Futo does not gets rid of this abstraction.

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1 point

22 days ago

Ok, I don’t know how else to explain. What you are asking (“A public timeline that anyone can follow, except end-to-end encrypted”) is physically impossible.

I never even said what you’re quoting. I said a timeline anyone who you’ve connected with can follow. You’re correcting me for something I haven’t once asked for. I only tried correcting your misunderstanding of what I asked for.

How would keep a single timeline where the messages you sent are only visible to your friends, but not visible to your friends’ friends?

The same way you can mass text people, and only the people you sent messages can see it but not each others responses? Unless they forward your messages, which there is no workaround, save for making it difficult with the UI. There doesn’t need to be a way to prevent sharing your stuff. You choose to trust the people you add, there’s no way around that.

The answer is: you don’t. You can not do that. You need to have a separate room for the contacts that you want to make your pictures available. Your contacts need each to have their own room for the contacts that they need to have available.

Yes, I agree, in the backend. As mentioned, this is how Circles says it tackles the issue. And as mentioned, they will have a room each for every contact they add (in the backend).

To view the feed, yes you can consolidate all posts into one single view. But when you post something, you will need to define which rooms will see the content, and the message will be duplicated across the different rooms. You can bet that Futo does not gets rid of this abstraction.

No, I agree, Futo doesn’t get rid of this abstraction, it’s exactly how they do it in the back end.

I am asking for Facebook, but without the spying from Facebook, this is technically possible. It’s been made, just sadly abandoned.

I don’t know why you want to prove me wrong so badly: https://github.com/circles-project

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rglullis@communick.news

2 points

22 days ago

Sorry, I think we were talking past each other.

When you were talking about “Matrix is not a good” , I was understanding that you meant that the protocol was not suitable for it. Now I see that your issue is not with matrix itself, but with its most popular clients, because none of them (unlike Futo circles) provide any sort of unified view of the different rooms.

I understand how it could be interesting to have this type of unified view if you really care about emulating “the Facebook experience”, and perhaps it wouldn’t be that difficult to implement that. In practice though, I think that you’d come up with the following conclusions:

even if Futo Circles was still around, you’d still have a major challenge in convincing the people to create an account on a Matrix server.
even if Futo Circles was still around, most people are not interested in getting all their social connections sorted in all these different buckets.
even if Futo Circles was still around, you’d quickly realize that most people prefer the UX of separate group chats. There simply aren’t that many “circles” for most users. You’d have a circle for your close friends, another for work/school colleagues, another for some common activity like gym/chess/book club, maybe a bigger circle for your neighborhood, etc… so it doesn’t really provide a lot of helping when filtering things out in a timeline. The whole thing with “Circles” is interesting (and one of the most interesting features of Google+) but one of the reasons that Google+ failed was because and the UX of “browsing through the list of groups with new messages” is good enough for most people.

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1 point

22 days ago

No worries, appreciate you taking the time to engage.

Yeah, getting people to adopt something new is challenging, but I’ve had some success with Signal, and this is sadly a problem no matter what

The social connections wouldn’t have to be in different buckets, the app would give you a timeline of all your contacts posts by default (default behaviour on Facebook and Instagram, with public posts and ads baked in), and sorting into various buckets would be a choice users would make. As we discussed under the hood every contact would be technically in a separate matrix room with you, but the user is just presented with a unified timeline of posts they can interact with.

In terms of group chats, this is a subjective question. I’d argue the fact people post on their pages formally on Facebook and more commonly now on Instagram is evidence that people don’t only want to use group chats. To me, group chats are mostly useful in a small group, and I already have signal and other messengers for this purpose.

The idea here, and what I wish was still being maintained, is a way to connect with people on social media without being forced to invite people into specific groups, just add them, and then they can see whenever you post, and comment on your posts etc. Without the requirement for you to filter anything if they don’t want to, nor join specific groups of people.

i.e. I add 10 different people, they make posts, I see said posts from all 10 people in chronological order.

The app could optionally provide ways to sort your friends however you like (a feature which also used to be present on Facebook, not sure if it still is), but it’s the optionality that is attractive.

It’s much lower friction to say: “Hey, add me on XYZ social media app”. Rather than, “join this specific group”, which may not be suitable. Which is exactly how Facebook and Instagram work (and people frequently ask to add me on there still).

I realise the demand for this to be e2ee is not large, hence the lack of clients. But I’d argue the demand for this style of social media is huge, evidenced by the existence of Facebook and Instagram, which largely sees people posting things only to their followers/friends - just with Meta data mining you and advertising to you.

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