I already explained in my previous message how it is different from Signal, time to read buddy, bye

Meanwhile me not giving a F about this news because I use CalyxOS and the feature to auto-restart the phone on inactivity with fine customizable time and not a fixed 3 days exist since a long time already there

The purpose is already said in the title: private chats for the family

How you don’t understand the use case of chatting with the family?

As many other chat apps out there, if you meant the “why this one and not X?” Well there are other acceptable options out there, the advantage of this one compared to WhatsApp, Telegram and co. Is that it doesn’t depend on phone numbers or any private data, getting started with the app is painless and smooth, no SMS verification no captcha solving or complex registration, just set your name and start chatting. It is decentralized and anonymous, while having a nice polished UI easy to use on the level of WhatsApp and Telegram, unlike most other alternatives out there

One special feature is the ability to use in-chat mini-apps that are completely “p2p e2ee” between chat members without depending on any server hosting it and working offline first, among such apps: collaborative editor pads, checklists/to-do lists, shopping lists, split bills with friends, chess and other mini-games etc

Delta Chat no where to be found there 🤔

In iOS you can use Delta Chat (https://delta.chat/) ArcaneChat is a Delta Chat client

It is also possible to run GUI desktops in Termux since ages, for example take a look at:

AnLinux (Run Linux On Android Without Root Access) https://f-droid.org/packages/exa.lnx.a/

It was also possible to run a “full Debian” using PRoot etc

1. if they leaked something you wouldn’t know because US government law doesn’t allow them to disclose if they requested data.
2. uses AWS servers that also the gov could ask for access to Amazon directly without even talking to Signal, being centralized and depending on AWS infra is also a weakness.
3. needing phone numbers to register, often tied to passport and it is super easy to get your whole network when compromising 1 device
4. all centralized services start nice, attracting users, once they have you, and money starts being a problem… meet: enshitification

Or the classic “guys I am leaving WhatsApp, moved my whole family to Signal, another centralized US-based silo that requires phone numbers and runs on AWS, CloudFlare, etc.”

Sure thing! ArcaneChat is decentralized: https://github.com/ArcaneChat/server

I bet it is using more resources than my +1400 people server 😅 but yeah for 10 people it is probably OK with matrix as long as they don’t join some crazy federated groups etc

Yes

If you do, you can join this group: https://i.delta.chat/#6CBFF8FFD505C0FDEA20A66674F2916EA8FBEE99=&a=invitebot%40nine.testrun.org&g=ArcaneChat+Community&x=3KvvQZfzU4t-9u5s0PF3USGp&i=AQKH9_8x0R0&s=dbGW9xOhRQX

btw, Matrix server requirements are much higher, and the client apps are less user-friendly

For example, arcanechat.me server has more than 1400 users and the server is using around 800MB of RAM, CPU is idle most of the time or really low usage, less than 3GB of disk (including whole Debian operative system etc)

Yes and no, it allows to login without providing any data or using any email account, in that case a random/anonymous account is created in arcanechat.me which is an email internally but optimized for chatting with similar speeds of other chatting platforms

Also with arcanechat.me server unencrypted messages are not allowed at all so you can be sure you don’t accidentally leak any message, also all messages are removed from the server immediately after downloading them (or after a few days when using multiple devices)

the app is much more on the WhatsApp and Telegram level UI wise, much more user friendly for “normies” like family and friends, while Matrix and XMPP are more “nerdy” and hard to understand and onboard

Nice multi-device (that actually works without encryption problems) and multi-account support.

Security-wise it is easy to end up sending unencrypted messages in XMPP (groups are often unencrypted due unusable otherwise) and in matrix it is also a mess with “unable to decrypt” and the reactions are not encrypted. ArcaneChat groups and 1:1 chats have a concept of “protected chats” via scanning QR or invite links that are warrantied to be e2e encrypted and safe against MITM attacks.

Groups in XMPP depend on the server, if the server dies the group is lost, in Matrix the groups metadata is spread across several servers, in ArcaneChat the servers are agnostic of the group state, the group lives in the users’s devices and hence don’t depend on any server, user can even migrate account/address and keep participating in the group

The server requirements for ArcaneChat are super lightweight (ex. https://arcanechat.me/ has +700 users right now and it is only using ~500MB of RAM and ~3GB of disk) in this regard XMPP might also be similarly lightweight but Matrix is well know for the complexity and requirements on the server

ArcaneChat is offline-first, you can fully use the app while being offline, even create groups, search across all your groups, messages and contacts, play in-chat mini-games or use collaborative tools like in-chat WYSIWYG editors etc. send messages etc. and all will be nicely synchronized when you go back online.

ArcaneChat is super lightweight, apk size in google play is only 13-15MB while being feature rich and beautiful

creating bots to provide extra functionality (similar to telegram bots) is easy and there are already several bots available and discoverable in the app.

Now lets talk about some downsides:

ArcaneChat doesn’t support integrated phone calls at the moment (but it is planned, and it has jitsi meet videocall invitation integration)

ArcaneChat doesn’t support discoverable public groups or channels (it is an app for private chats, you can invite people to group via invite links tho, and telegram-like channels are in the roadmap) a public bot can be used to list and join “public” groups tho, but at the moment everyone in the group is admin, there is no group admin concept as groups are private

there are more stuff to say but this post is too long already 😅