XMPP is a failure in terms of freedom and privacy.
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 7:56 pm
it should be abandoned by anyone who cares about these things. Not only does it leak a fuckton of metadata by default
• people, even in so-called hackers/nerds/privacy communities, tend to use whatever's popular and convenient at the moment, not what's "good"
• until alternatives (https://xkcd.com/927/) become just as convenient and have user-friendly clients (including mobile ones), you won't convince anyone to use them, no matter what you say.
• the bandwagon effect might work, like when a famous person encourages using a particular messaging app (https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153?lang=en).
there is a global censorship blocklist ran by a single person ( see xmppbl ) named jonas, which is implemented by a large portion of servers on the network and supposedly many clients, though i havent verified which clients implement it yet. for a “decentralized” network, there should not be a central authority that gets to decide who can interact with fellow users or other servers
Not that I'm defending those blacklists, but it doesn't change the fact that server operators aren't forced to implement them, right?