A reminder about Signal, Matrix, and what chat apps should look like.

EDIT: that sentence in the OP should read: "the couple of posts it points to are also worth a read", or possibly: "the couple of posts it points to are worth a read too."

From a previous thread:

> if they are managed by sane people

That's the trick. Decentralized systems do not rely on people's relative sanity. One might be talking to a lot of insane people through apps like Jami or over protocols like XMPP, they will never be able to control it and subvert it. Sane people can contribute to improve them without needing the approval of a God-like central manager.

The larger a system, the larger the power it gives to the people controlling it. Power corrupts, so one can only have corrupted people controlling large, centralized systems. Most people would agree that corrupt people are not sane - except, arguably, those very corrupted people, who might not even be aware of their own corruption. So we are left with an archipelago of small centralized systems, aka federated systems, or fully decentralized systems, aka peer-to-peer, as best options.

The only big advantages stemming from large centralized systems are for the people running them. And they are so big that these people won't relinquish them without a massive, protracted fight that only they could afford. Hence the deadlock. Of course, these considerations also apply to much broader topics than chat apps.