Privacy

Matrix isn't going freemium, the matrix.org server is to pay for all the hosting costs. But there are tons of other servers to choose from.

I'm a techy person with my own home server and lots of self hosted services, and I'm still not sure how to set up XMPP and figure out which servers and which clients all support which features, and which of the various encryption methods to pick from.

Matrix was easier to set up and I ran one for awhile, because at least it's not as crazy fragmented.

There are no good, trustworthy, full feature xmpp apps for iOS, at least as of a year ago. Either the apps aren't full featured or they don't support push notifications for whatever reason.

Matrix going freemium isn't just inaccurate (they plan on adding a premium option only on their homeserver because they need the funds, which is reasonable since they're not growing magical money in their backyard) but mentioning it beside Whatsapp's ads is pure comedy. You don't need to stage things this way to bring people to push the team behind Privacy Guides to accept a few XMPP apps in their recommendations list. Just look at what the developer of Conversations ended up working on. Aren't you going to add that beside Whatsapp too? FFS, just support your favorite developers and stop trying to put down other developers of open source privacy focused software.

Simply: XMPP is a protocol, and non-tech people don't know "protocols", they know "apps", at best.

Plus XMPP has challenges (and I've used it since about 2000, on my phone in 2009).

E2E is possible, but problematic (in that it's not simply just "on").

Even worse, none of the apps look polished...it's all clumsy, there's no one app on all OS's. And the names, FFS us geeks need to get a fucking clue.

And I use XMPP every day on my phone and laptop.

Matrix is E2EE as long as the room is. XMPP server/clients can enable OMEMO (as long as the server supports it).

'Matrix' is not going Freemium. Matrix.org's server access is going freemium. You don't have to use matrix.orgs servers to join or use the service.

An interesting alternative to both might be Delta Chat.

Matrix is going Freemium

No, it is not. The matrix.org public homeserver is planning to add premium accounts and put some limits on free accounts. People who want free access can accept the limits, or find a different homeserver, or run their own.

The Matrix network will remain open and free for anyone to use.

Is [XMPP's lack of popularity] really just a marketing/UX/UI problem?

No, there is more to it than that. Off the top of my head, these issues stand out as major hurdles:

• XMPP is a relatively basic protocol. By itself, it cannot compete because it lacks modern features like end-to-end encryption, persistent message history, group chat, etc. It does have extension specs (XEPs) to provide many such features, but it still lacks a single cohesive spec identifying and unifying the important ones. You could call it fragmentation. This makes it overly complex for implementors, and leads to the next problem:
• Someone wanting a messaging service with a competitive feature set must first identify at least one server that implements all the relevant XEPs, and a client for each of their devices that implements the same. That's not viable for most people, many of whom have only a vague notion of what a communications protocol is.
• Ever since public XMPP support was dropped by big services like Google and Facebook, the availability of reliable, free, public servers has all but vanished. Most people wouldn't know with confidence how to find one, let alone one with all the needed extensions. And even if they do find one, most will be unable to assess whether it will still be running in ten years or more. This makes it quite a gamble to tie your online identity and network of contacts to whatever server you find.

So, while XMPP (with appropriate extensions) is still a capable protocol, the expertise and support required to make it competitive is not readily available to most people. I might suggest it to small groups who have local expertise to get it all set up and keep things running well, but not to the general public.

Meanwhile, Matrix has a unified spec with a rich feature set, a variety of homeservers and client apps that support it, sufficient momentum for continued development, and the critical mass to make it viable for global public use.

XMPP is hard to say and easy to forget for any who do not already care.

XMPP has most of the features Signal offers, and then some, and has had for a long time. In fact Signal's encryption scheme is derived from OTR which was pretty iniquitous on XMPP at the time. With the addition of key ratcheting, which was added with OMEMO. XMPP has groups, and video, and has had those for far longer than Signal. What Signal lacks is roster privacy. But for the longest time that was really very weak if your adversary was a Five Eyes state.

As for UI/UX, check out Dino. It's really nice.

In my opinion Gajim for desktop looks pretty sleek. Cheogram has a 2020 look to it, but it's still great looking imo. Not everything has to have sleek gradients and overly rounded borders. I actually prefer 2015 UI where things were more boxy and very slightly rounded e.g. the old instagram app logo.

I've also gotten my friend to use Cheogram, and her #1 complaint is not having chat effects from imessage. I feel like if you just slap on integrated gifs and add a couple of UI animations, non-techies would be all over it. Maybe XMPP just needs some frontend UI pazazz for people to take notice

Is it really just a marketing/UX/UI problem?

The UI is definitely a problem. I've never seen a remotely modern-looking XMPP UI.

If XMPP had a killer app with all the features that Signal/Whatsapp/Telegram has, would it have as many users?

Well, first of all, these 3 all have vastly different amounts of users.

Secondly no, marketing is still a big deal. WhatsApp is leaning heavily on Meta's other products for marketing and integration. They're able to use these to make them convenient to sign up and get messaging. What I don't get is why Meta doesn't just unite all 3 under "Messenger".

Anyone have thoughts on cwtch?

The only XMPP I ever knew how to use was Gmail Chat, and they shuttered it, so I don't know how to use XMPP anymore or how to talk to anyone on it.

Signal is just easier.

UI is not really a problem. Every time I hear complains about a given FOSS client of something "UI" not being "modern" it's basically complaining "waaa waaa this does not look exactly like Discord, I can't find a thing that is obviously labelled as a button!" or some such thing. Which is weird because, honestly, all chat apps like Signal, Telegram, Conversation or Gajim do basically have the exact same look: a pane for chatrooms, a pane for current chatroom, and a pane for typing. There: that UI was literally solved in the 90s.

Speaking of 90s, Winamp is from the 90s and the UI is doing quite well, to the point more modern programs intentionally want to look Winampy (eg.: Audacious).

UX however... it has quite a number of issues, such as there not being a practical way to know if all of the client, the server and service you want to use support the features you want, in particular encryption and message archiving.

Even the "beforehand" / "onboarding" UX is annoying: would anyone here be able to point to the "join-lemmy" equivalent of the XMPPverse? Or point to a generalist server with long-term lifetime, kinda like how freenode was (note: was) for IRC?

If I had to venture, I'd say if an important group actually put effort into setting up and servicing long-term XMPP infra in the style and generalism that freenode was, then probably it could gain some good traction. If anything, it could help doing the join between "upgrade people from IRC" and "upgrade people from modern silos".