Jabber VS Everyone!! (WIP)

And why Jabber is especially good at combatting Enshittification!

FIGHT THE MACHIIINE!

In the main article, I focused on why I believe Jabber to be the best chat system we can use, and I specifically was sure to not point out the dismerits of big tech and other IM systems, since people can be rubbed the wrong way when tearing down something, and I didn't want to make a bad first impression. (fuck SMS though, nobody should be using that)
This article is not going to do that, this article is going to be very opinionated (though, I believe my opinions are based on facts and good logic), it's going to call out a few IM services directly, and it is going to focus on the intersection between tech and the larger image.

Jabber is a real solution to the so-called dying internet, and I am going to explain why.

Please note!! The main article is required pre-reading material! Please do not read this page if you haven't read that one yet!

Also understand that reading this article is not a requirement and should be considered more of a bonus rather than a part 2 of some kind.

Jabber vs Big Tech

So, how does Jabber save the IM space of the Internet? Let's first talk about big tech's offerings. Jabber, although the network effect is not as strong compared to the likes of Discord, WhatsApp, SnapChat, and others, it's a much needed escape from the endless slop farms of Big Tech's internet. Jabber represents the real Internet that Big Tech has tricked you into forgetting!

On top of being an excellent chat solution, it is free of the many distractions of something like Discord. No AI integrations, no popups or e-begging for Nitro, no monetization of features, it's all free of that. Jabber is not an astro-turfed shopping mall, like the others are.

You give the keys to your heart to Discord when you don't use Jabber. Frens, especially in today's very socially isolated world, are a hard thing to come by, and good friendships are harder still. Your friends are a part of you, and they are important to you; there's very few pains in this world that can hurt as much as losing a friend. It really can be the most heartbreaking thing, especially if it happens outside of your control. Think about the time you lost a friend through no fault of your own. Do you really want to let your connection to your friends be mandated by an extremely antisocial company run by inhuman pedophiles who would sell your body and soul, god forbid your connection to other people, for a few pennies more? Friendship is not a thing in twisted minds of the people who run Discord; you're normal, you love and value your friends, don't let Discord own them. Because you can run your own Jabber server or use any number of publicly available ones, you'll never lose contact with your friends just because a shareholder didn't like that you were talking to your fellow human.

Free Software, Free Society. Although it seems strange, liberating your communication is an important step to the individual's end of a free society. For the longest time, our communication with each other was limited but ours; it was hard to restrict speech irl, and talking to people in your home meant very high privacy. Now with the Internet, we have a new communication tool with new challenges but also new freedoms! It's important to keep this tool in our hands, not in the hands of a company with a few square kilometers in California. When we own our communication, we own our connections with each other.

Spam is a unique problem on Big Tech's internet. There is a myriad of methods IM platforms try to use to curtail spam, but since you can run your own server in Jabber, you can do what I do and have a family server that doesn't speak with other servers, pretty much cutting the spam to 0!

All big tech platforms cannot be trusted with your private messages. Thanks to Jabber having OMEMO encryption, you can keep your messages safe!

Jabber is a Free standard of 25+ years, and most of the software that uses Jabber is Free Software. More importantly, the software that many Jabber users and server operators use is NOT created by the same org in charge of the standards and standards process. (this is important later) It cannot be bought, censored, enshittified, and it will never die. Pretty much all big tech platforms come and go, but if you don't want to worry about switching from platform to platform (like how Windows Live Messenger died to Skype, then Skype died for Discord, and Discord to something else in the future), use Jabber!

But Greatsword! Jabber is not the only Free offering out there, what about $(OTHER_FREE_PLATFORM)

Yep, that's true! There are others like Signal, Matrix, IRC, Jami, Tox, Delta Chat etc. I'll explain why I think Jabber is better than all of them, but I will concede that using any of these is infinitely better than the likes of Discord. If you cannot or do not want to use Jabber, please consider these other services!

Jabber VS Signal (and centralized services in general)

Signal is a very well-known option, and it is quite secure, but it falls short. The fundamental problem is that it is a centralized service. It can be bought, censored, and enshittified, and you cannot do anything about it! Furthermore, although Signal's end to end encryption is very nice (nice enough to be ported to Jabber in the form of OMEMO), encryption is a moot point when all the ends in end-to-end encryption is controlled by one party. It takes only one update to Signal's server to go "hey! you must now accept this update to the Signal client that will leak all of your messages to all governments and all corporations on Earth, and if you don't, you're banned forever!" Signal being centralized is reason enough to avoid it!

There are, of course, plenty of reasons not to use Signal specific to them, such as I) requiring a phone number to use, II) requiring one to use Android or iOS to register, III) including proprietary Google libraries, thereby making the client proprietary software, IV) that one time they forgot to tell anyone about what they were doing with their server software for a year, V) grossly misrepresenting federated platforms and progress of Internet technology in general, and doubling down on that position even when people point them out for their foolishness, VI) that one time they tried to push cryptocurrency into their client, VII) disliking Signal clients that are not their own, VIII) ignoring features that would improve the experience of people using alternative android distros (for years!!!), IX) being a US org, X) using AWS, a service owned by a very powerful and morally bankrupt man situated in a very powerful and morally bankrupt country, XI) publicly doubling down on said use of AWS instead of just quietly accepting it as a necessary evil for a service of their size, XII) going out of service more than a few times in recent memory, XIII) not being profitable while also operating a service that costs around 50 million of dollars yearly, XIV) being wrong on the Internet, XV) destroying your battery for the sin of not wanting to be tracked by Google, and XVI) being Apple-tier in terms of insisting that their way is the right way and everyone else is wrong!!! And these are just off the top of my head!