We'd like to remind everyone that a self-hosted #chatmail relay is best shared in some wider than family circles. In crisis situations everbody does better when helping others. A typical 1gb RAM chatmail relay VPS for 5-10 eur per month supports 50k+ daily users. chatmail VPSes are stateless. You can wipe all disk state, reinstall and chatting will resume. Conversely, #deltachat does not keep or depend on any server state .Operators under pressure do not need to feel bad to hand over data.

Overheard last night from two users in #Cuba user1: "the people are currently in need not only to save data plan but also to have more security in their conversations" user2: "also stability. Right now the whole of Guantanamo is in blackout with problems in several radio-bases/cell-towers due to the lack of power/electricity and here I am talking like nothing / without breaking a sweat" user2: "while WhatsApp doesn't even manage to connect" #DeltaChat is for when centralization hits the fan

Some people in #Iran successfully use delta with national email providers when outside Internet is cut. #deltachat designs are #OfflineFirst using delay tolerant protocols. Messages are queued when a path is blocked. email servers are made for this and run at planetary scale. Messages crossing the border may arrive three days later but they arrive. Peoples can stay in private touch across time and space, to the extent possible in current breakdown times. Which is what delta is about.

We don't see, or plan, a place for AI in our software stacks. A few notes. Some attempts to use AI tooling provided nothing of value in the chatmail-core-UI stacks that produce the #deltachat store releases on all platforms. Some in the community AI-generated a base #webxdc app and fixed bugs afterwards.That kind of worked and was borderline useful. AI is pretty boring. We have more interesting work to do: evolve private resilient messaging by improving UX, networking, encryption, etc

We are basically doing what #signal and in particular moxie refuses to do or declares impossible: federation. Both #email and #activitypub ecosystems are all about federation. However, #deltachat is vertically centralized in that all UIs use the same #rust core which implements all networking, encryption, chat/group/message logic in a single centralized place. The now 40+ #chatmail mail relay network is driven from centralized code. At each level replication and federation is built in.

Everyone returns to email in the end. We are there already. #whatsapp wants you to add your email to secure your account ... despite all the nay sayers and numerous well funded attempts and claims to kill #email not even WA can do it. #deltachat #chatmail and #webxdc are about deep collab between people, projects and operators to evolve email from within. It is not just about SMTP and IMAP and MIME and OpenPGP which are all exchangeable and can be improved ... Which we set out to do. Cheers.

You may setup "burner" phones for specific activities which may face repression including device seizure and forced unlocking. #deltachat does not require a sim card/number and works #OfflineFirst. Seek out wifi or mobile hotspots to connect. At best form or join affinity groups and pre-establish ephemeral chats so everyone can help each other stay safe. Group onboarding is trivial with delta. Note: Digital tools are only ever supplementary to the security coming from caring for each other.

#deltachat is secure against server-side group membership changes but for a very different reason than #signal which keeps encrypted group membership data in a central store. Delta Chat has _no_ central store but implements a rigidly tested #p2p group membership model where servers play no role

GitHub

models/group-membership at main · chatmail/models

Formal specifications for chatmail. Contribute to chatmail/models development by creating an account on GitHub.

Both signal and delta chat are safe against recently published attacks against #whatsapp that can add members to chats, breaking end to end encryption.

Ars Technica

WhatsApp provides no cryptographic management for group messages

The weakness creates the possibility of an insider or hacker adding rogue members.

#whatsapp claims end to end security of content but: - ties your identity to a phone number - owns your identity - can see who messages whom and who is in which group etc - forces you to send local search in your private chats to Meta AI - does not allow to disable Meta AI on the main screen None of these problems exist with #deltachat devs and distributors. We have arguably the world's easiest onboarding process for a messenger that offers a Whatsapp style interface on all platforms.

Since June 1st there is a big sudden surge of new Delta Chat users and so far things are going pretty smooth. We are happy that our #chatmail infrastructure is holding up and that there is growing recognition that #deltachat is a ready-to-use and resilient chat solution. Some stats from the last days, a brief discussion of centralization risks and what we plan to do about it, also introducing a brand-new chatmail OpenCollective with a european fiscal host.

Delta Chat: A big user surge and funding for decentralized scale

Beginning June we witnessed a sudden surge of Delta Chat usage especially in the US and Cuba. We don’t know the social dynamics behind it but it ...