Yes!! I hosted it, indeed much lighter on resources! Broke encrypted rooms a few times, but overall was fine. However, it lacks deletion of old media and messages, so I broke it while trying to delete big media one by one (it broke displaying of ALL media). And when I reinstalled, a reinstall just didn’t launch. So… While it is 100% on me, feels like it’s still not the optimal solution if you’re constrained on disk space.

I’ve seen popular social media get banned. Again and again. It doesn’t really lead to local alternatives gaining traction, it just leads to even a gramma knowing what a VPN is.

I am very unfamiliar with jmp.chat and don’t use notifications, but from what I’ve heard - Conversations (with UnifiedPush notifications) isn’t that bad.

As for Simplex - a problem indeed, you effectively can’t have an account shared between devices, but I just have identical profiles on my phone and computer. Also, people have complained about it consuming battery quickly (they switch to checking for notification every set interval to save it).

But yeah - I think both are worth trying to see if maybe one of them fits you! They’re both super easy to host.

At the very least XMPP and Simplex, which are easier to host and lighter.

A good alternative is a federated, selfhosted solution hosted in a jurisdiction unfriendly to yours.

Another thing is that even if you set a PIN, you’d still have to log into your account relatively regularly so that if you lose access to your number, you wouldn’t lose an account. It’s logical, given that numbers are reused… But that means that if you want to register without effectively tying your account to your ID (KYC when buying numbers is mandatory in a lot of the world, remember!), you’d have to pay for another phone bill (expensive given that the number’s practically doing nothing!) or use a one-time rental… Which guess what, puts your account at constant risk!

I mean anything even remotely questionable from the government’s perspective. A meme is not worth ruining your life over.

Especially if we’re talking about children, like here - child martyrs are especially tragic.

No, it’s used by just about everyone. Generally the younger the person and the bigger their city, the more likely they are to gravitate towards Telegram rather than Whatsapp.

I know, and it’s terrible that it’s so unavoidable. I managed to avoid Whatsapp, but without Telegram managing university life would be incredibly hard.

Weird that this is your association as using it would require an iPhone which most youth don’t have. My thought was Telegram, which is omnipresent at least around me, with Whatsapp often being kept just for the parents or older relatives.

If we’re talking about the encryption - yeah, people have done so. If we’re talking about the whole service - from what I understand, it is not practical to selfhost. And even if it was, you cannot communicate with people using other servers…

I guess it refers to things like GoodbyeDPI. A lot of people use it to watch Youtube after it got “slowed” rather than using a VPN.

Edit: also realized that meant obfuscation protocols like VLESS because VPN protocols are stupid easy to block.

While it would be an improvement, it seems to me that going to another platform would be repeating the same mistake. Protocols are more sustainable longterm solution.

Yeah, exactly - I specified that. Back when I had some money for media, I bought games on Steam (because they weren’t on GOG, sadly) and had pirated copies correspond to this. That seems about as fair as a rip corresponding to a DVD but without clutter and inconvenience.

NOT a streaming service. Rather - DRMless purchases. GOG did it, Bandcamp did it, now we need it for films. If not available, I would rather buy a DRMed version to correspond to the one I downloaded.

But yeah, sad for those who are into collecting, the physical experience and extras.

As much as I would enjoy seeing Twitter crash and burn, a ban would be concerning. People who don’t want to use it would leave on their own accord without any bans anyway. People who do will find ways to bypass it, in process potentially opening themselves up to malware (random noname free VPNs, from what I see around me, are perhaps the most popular way to get to the banned sites, and they can be malicious). And maybe that can even make the people in charge of a ban to fight such evasion itself, which has much more horrifying implications.

Somehow impede their profits from Europe, like prohibiting corporations to buy ads there? Maybe. But not a ban. Bans would only hurt the regular people.

I normally don’t like AI, but a podcast reminded me of an important use of such a model - explaining images to blind people.

I personally have no notifications (aside from SMS, calls and calendar). Not like I would be checking the phone when I suddenly hear a notification anyway, only when already deciding to check it.

Simplex apparently does a similar thing in terms of draining battery for its notifications, I just didn’t allow it to run in the background in the settings. Maybe this could work for Whatsapp if you’re willing to ditch notifications?

I do remember a story a while ago about such French people… But those were previously involved in protests or planning thereof, in which case scrutiny is very expected regardless of what tools they’d use.

Why do you suggest OTR? It’s outdated, modern XMPP clients moved to OMEMO for a reason.