VC funding destroys everything it touches.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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SimpleX Chat – Many suggested this and I will explicitly recommend against it due to the founder's positions on various topics. This includes being anti-vaxx, believing COVID-19 was a hoax, trans- and homophobia, climate denial; In the SimpleX Groupchat he's also been seen basically bootlicking trump a couple times, but I've lost receipts to that.
I did not know this. I've seen people recommend SimpleX on lemmy too, but probably they didn't know.
This should be an awareness post on some tech communities
Thank you so, so, so, so much for saying this!
Me neither, this is actually disgusting, immediately uninstalled, a founder that has these views most likely shouldn’t be trusted with your data, anyway.
So happy the article linked to the Fediverse post, immediately liked and boosted it.
Never used SimpleX much really but will be immediately uninstalling it. Saw the guy's tweets, he's fucking insane, and retweets RFK Jr 🤢. Will do my best to inform others.
Fuck... Is there an alternative? Can't use telegram cus banned, won't use signal because usa and for a while they got very buddy-buddy with the zucc, matrix requires me hosting and it isn't exactly private... So what's left?
XMPP? The clients not supporting things can suck, but it's worked well for me.
It is forkable if necessary. I do think SimpleX is a great piece of software that shouldn't be reinvented because of the founder.
The write-up I'm referencing has some at the end. Maybe Delta chat?
why does matrix require you self hosting? There’s a bunch of free open-signup servers available
Although I don't totally oppose judging people because of their views (shaming has been and can be a very useful for improving societies), I wonder if software written by such people should be. Seems to me that we don't have the abundance of software yet that would allow doing that.
Especially I'm wary of judging people for being dumb in applications like Twitter that use dark patterns to entice them into being dumb. In some way it feels to me like punching down, like blaming the victim.
This attitude has worked so well for allowing the current crop of tech billionaires to grow and cement their influence over the entire world. If people would just stop using their platforms when they hear the CEO's batshit views then they would be nobodies.
The SimpleX Chat is AGPL. If the founder is problematic, one can fork it and avoid reinventing what has already been made.
go on then
Are you asking if I insist that the minds behind my secure private chat have some moral standing and common sense? One would hope so. I wouldn't trust encryption made by anti-vaxer more than I would trust a plane put tougher by flat-earther. I don't want to be the hero of the next leopard eat my face song.
I wouldn't trust encryption made by anti-vaxer more than...
Important to note: SimpleX Chat has gone through two security audits.
I wouldn’t trust encryption made by anti-vaxer
My understanding of encryption is that the point is that you don't have to trust the people doing it. You just have to trust the security research community that proved that the algorithms/protocols work. Or if you're a hardcore security guy yourself, you can review it yourself.
Also, my understanding of people is that what they seem like is no evidence for what kind of people they really are.
It's a tricky line. On one hand, I agree that you don't need to trust the person—just the code and the cryptographic model. But at the same time, if the dev is actively pushing misinformation or has a history of hostility toward marginalized groups, it erodes my confidence in their ethical choices about security and privacy. Trust isn’t just technical.
...that proved that the algorithms/protocols work.
You can use a perfect algorithm and still be insecure because the implementation was bad. You are trusting the SimpleX Chat devs to a degree.
On the other hand, when people show they who they really are... you should believe them. There are some views that are either ignorant or bad will. I think evidence of those is a reasonable deal-breaker. And it's perfectly ok if you have your line drown somewhere else as well.
Views that seriously harm or endanger other people are dangerous.
If the founder would have opposing views in e.g. should we narrow down the car roads in cities and widen the pedestrian walks - ok. I think there's a lot to this question, I think pedestrian walks should be wider, cars are dangerous, etc. But this is not as dangerous as:
"Do you deny scientific evidence that COVID is real and a real danger to a lot of humans"
How complicated is a federated messenger? Because it feels like matrix is the only one but there's always an issue
It feels like there could/should be a good modern chat protocol and voice protocol and you just pick which interface you want to use, much like email currently does, except for chatrooms.
There is: XMPP 🤷
Add voice to IRC. 🤷🏻♂️
Good idea. That makes me wonder if voice over IRC is a thing. I feel like there might only be four people who know how to use it, but I bet I would enjoy hanging out with those four people.
Edit: Poe's law applies, apparently: https://github.com/asiekierka/voirc
I think it’d help them a lot to disable new signups on the m.org home server for a while and direct people to some of the other popular options, they spend too much on their own example server imo
It is a bit counter-intuitive but restricting new signups will not help them much. The way the matrix protocol is designed, i.e. replicating everything on every server, means that clients connecting to their server have only a minor impact. As long as most rooms of the entire matrix network are replicated on the matrix.org homeserver their costs will stay high and there isn't really much they can do about that other than shutting it down entirely.
As long as most rooms of the entire matrix network are replicated on the matrix.org homeserver
Is this a dealbreaker for people though?
There is not much they can do about it short of shutting down the entire server. Due to how matrix functions internally any sufficiently large federated homeserver replicates most of the entire network.
Personally have been hosting my own server for me and friends. Cheaper and easier than I expected it to be 🤠
cheap and easy? I tried running it myself and ran into several hurdles, and gave up. How did you host it? VPS? Docker? Bare-metal?
I'm not who you replied to, but there is a big stack of ansible playbooks for it that make it pretty pushbutton. They primarily use docker. This is what I used and I got it setup in like an hour.
yeah I did the ansible. You just fill out a config file point it at any Linux server with python installed and it’ll set things up for you
This article is nonsense. The Foundation was always a front for New Vector and their board is largely made up by New Vector employees. So of course they knew what was going on.
New Vector simply decided that the strategy to make Matrix appear as an open standard was against their business interests and thus left the foundation to fend for itself with obvious consequences.
Knowing it or not, the result is the same, isn't it?
Man, that's depressing, thanks for sharing, that was well worth the read
I like the concept of delta.chat the most. Anyone here use it? Any reason why it hasn't caught on?
Could it support technical FOSS channels with thousands of participants, like what IRC was awesome for and Matrix seems to be pretty ok at?
For me, the reason why Delta Chat hadn't caught up on me is stickers. There's a sticker picker on desktop, but not on mobile, and its behind more settings. Weird that it doesnt do it like WhatsApp where stickers are added to personal collections (favorites) that only sync between accounts and can be added manually; it's not necessary to make it like Telegram or Signal where you can add a collection from a repository.
For chatting it is really enough. Like email.
Deltachat works ok for 1:1 chats and small groups. It is totally unsuitable for large public channels as it doesn't really have a concept of group chats and just pretends so by (in email parlance) adds every one in 'CC'. This only works ok for small private groups.
IRC just needs to get it's shit together and start adopting IRCv3 features on the larger servers. The problem is really only that networks like libera.chat run a feature set that is at least 15 years behind what IRC can actually do.
I never heard of ircv3 before. TIL. But, some parts of it don't seem irc-like, and sacrifice the aspects that have made me stay on irc all this time. Hmm. I'll look at it more later.
Ah, too bad. That was perhaps too much to ask.