Daniel Gultsch

Due to the recent popularity of #Conversations_im, I've already earned more than enough money this month and have decided to make the app free this week. Use this opportunity to onboard friends who might otherwise have a hard time paying for the app

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations

Something @larma@mastodon.social and I have been working on during the #IETF125 Hackathon in Shenzhen:

Dino (@dino@fosstodon.org) and #Conversations_im can now give you a little warning if it's currently the middle of the night for the contact you are chatting with.

#XMPP #Jabber

I recently added a display to #Conversations_im showing the number of stanzas (XMPP packets) sent/received in the current session. What are your counts and how long has your session been active? (Account Details -> 'Server info' in the overflow menu.)

#XMPP #Jabber

Think this through: Imagine your #Signal advocacy is successful and we replace WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage and Kik with Signal. That leaves one single person in charge of global communications. One person who decides who can communicate with whom.
That’s an absolutely insane proposition.

Yesterday, I quickly put together a tutorial on how to replace ntfy.sh with a minimal, self-hosted XMPP server and published it as a GitHub Gist. Then I remembered I have a website and reworked it into two nice little posts:
https://gultsch.de/tags/ntfy.sh/

#ntfy #XMPP #Jabber #Prosody

Actually, even if you don’t care about #UnifiedPush, having this minimal #Prosody server that just accepts messages via a simple REST API and sends them out via #XMPP is great alternative to the various sendxmpp scripts out there.

https://gultsch.de/posts/xmpp-via-http/

If you are concerned about ntfy.sh recently turning into AI-slopware, you can replace both the #UnifiedPush Distributor and the curl-based status messaging with XMPP. You can keep your existing XMPP account and simply replace ntfy's functionality with a self-hosted Prosody instance.

https://gultsch.de/posts/self-hosting-up/

They deliberately engineered social media to be addictive to sell more ads. It’s pointless to talk about the symptoms while ignoring the underlying cause: a deeply flawed economic system that relies on you buying more shit than you need.

Twitter is turning 20 years old this month and we are slowly starting to have a debate about social media regulation (in the form of age restrictions).

I’m looking forward to discussing if and how we should regulate generative AI around 2045.

Historically, events like Meta announcing ads in WhatsApp haven’t significantly impacted #Conversations_im download numbers. This time feels different. February saw double the installs of a typical month. It seems the sentiment against Big Tech is finally translating into action.

#DiDay #XMPP

Conversations 2.19.11 fixes four security issues that have been reported to me by @soatok@furry.engineer. The release has been tagged and is currently under Play Store review.

Here are the commits. I've tried to include as much detail in the commit message as possible so you can make your own impact assessment.

1) https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/commit/86375d567b1120ee10acdd3d09f568ccabdc9c83
2) https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/commit/c18d469be3f54361e58f7c70d3567cb1958a9f99
3) https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/commit/f59806bca2b9e113c2d38a2379e461e2cb6d795f
4) https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/commit/6fdd6761e7edbaddb08d91f36d8feff75b601a10

Thank you @soatok@furry.engineer!

Every setting has a cost, both in terms of code complexity and the user's ability to understand how an app works. We never introduce a setting for no reason, and occasionally it's good to reevaluate the trade-offs we made.

I’m considering removing explicit Tor support in #Conversations_im. It seems that nowadays—12 years after I first introduced the feature—VPN mode is how most people use #Orbot, and many other apps lack a dedicated "proxy via Tor" setting anyway. Let’s do a vibe check with the following poll:

Nice! The #XMPP logo is now officially part of Font-Awesome. 🎉

https://fontawesome.com/icons/xmpp?f=brands&s=solid

I’ll be in Chemnitz, Germany, for the last weekend of March at #CLT2026, talking again about #UnifiedPush.

https://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2026/en/programm/beitrag/202

It’s been almost a decade since I wrote a blog post on the State of Mobile XMPP in 2016. Time to start working on an update.

The situation has only improved since then, and #XMPP has matured into a solid, feature-rich protocol for federated instant messaging

https://gultsch.de/posts/the-state-of-mobile-xmpp-in-2016/

An #XMPP sprint has just been announced for June 2026 in the Berlin offices of Wikimedia Germany. I will definitely put that on my calendar. Last year was great fun. Thank you @debacle@framapiaf.org.

https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Sprints/2026-06_Berlin

What I love about #Conversations_im as a #UnifiedPush distributor—aside from #XMPP being a reliable, secure, and efficient protocol—is that it comes with a healthy dose of decentralization.

Sure, you can technically self-host a Sunup instance, but will you? XMPP already offers thousands of providers out of the box.

RE: @django@social.coop

Dear #Fediverse developers, please do more cool things with #ActivityPub C2S.

Just note that "Direct Messaging apps" are way more complex than you might realize and that #XMPP has solved most of the problems you might encounter.

RE: @prosodyim@fosstodon.org

There are many good reasons (Bind 2, SASL 2, Occupant IDs, MUC avatars) to ensure your @ejabberd@social.process-one.net server is up to date.
Here is another one:

Unfortunately spam and abuse - like anywhere on the Internet - can be a problem in public channels on the Jabber/XMPP network.
That's why the next version of #Conversations_im is combining ban and message deletion (moderation) into one step.

Let's hope you won't need that functionality very often.

#XMPP #Jabber

The firebase-messaging library is supposed to provide developers with push notification capabilities. However, it includes many dependencies that add unwanted features like analytics and other "calling home" behaviors.

The recent vulnerability in Signal¹ reminded me to finally do something I've been planning for a while: removing that library and interfacing with Play Services directly.

https://codeberg.org/iNPUTmice/Conversations/commit/1abb22b542343642aacb4f7bd82f0bb2bc380ea4

1: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/14556

RE: @kuketzblog@social.tchncs.de

The problem isn't Signal itself; it's that including the firebase-messaging dependency is akin to including malware, even if Play Services aren't installed on the user’s phone.

That’s why having alternatives such as #UnifiedPush is so important.

Heute ist #DiDay

Der Digital Independence Day ist eine tolle Initiative, deren Werte wir zu 100% teilen. Die Empfehlung für Signal ist allerdings ein Schritt in die falsche Richtung und treibt Nutzer von einem geschlossenen System in ein anderes.

Zum Glück gibt es auch Wechselrezepte für die Independent Messaging Apps #Quicksy, #Monal und #Conversations_im, die wirkliche Souveränität bieten.

Ein Wechsel zu Quicksy ist genauso einfach wie ein Wechsel zu Signal.

https://imday.de/de/

#DIDIt

Happy Jabber Day 🎂 🥳

On January 4, 1999, Jabber was first announced to the public¹.

Twenty-seven years later, Jabber—or XMPP, as it became known after standardization through the #IETF—remains the only truly vendor-independent, federated instant messaging platform.

In almost three decades, XMPP has never stopped evolving and remains our best tool for digital independence.

¹: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/01/04/1621211

#DigitalIndependenceDay #Jabber #XMPP #DiDit #DigitalSovereignty #DiDay #JabberDay