I second the controversy, owners of the program kinda suck (like Lemmy really) but mainly I was using a fork of Conduit for my server called Conduwuit but the single maintainer got bullied off the internet and they couldn't hack the abuse, so they had to retreat and stop maintaining everything to recover their health. Here is their statement. They were open about having a furry/puppy kink and so constantly got people attacking them, spreading rumours and accusing them of bestiality and paedophilia.

Anyway, as my favourite fork was no longer maintained, and as Matrix the devs were working on proprietary modifications (Element X) that were basically already invented, plus some security issues alongside trusting them, the first of which being that some of my traffic between my server and my client was routed through them, I chose XMPP.

Speaking of Matrix, there is a recent vulnerability for federated servers that needs to be addressed by hosters.

XMPP does have its downsides, though. No pretty desktop clients, and the OMEMO verification with no backward decryption meaning when you use a new client, your previous encrypted messages are never readable.. In this Matrix trumps.

It's just really hard to stay mindful of ethics, privacy and stuff.

I just learned that Conduwuit has been officially taken on by both a stable team of developers under a fork called Tuwunel, and an unknown amount of volunteers under the name Continuwuity. The whole situation is messy as fuck. I might migrate back.

I migrated back. :)

I chose Matrix (continuwuity) because it's less involved for others to chat and set up settings, and that's key to bring more folk into a new ecosystem - as little friction as possible. It's far from perfect, as I have no call functionality*, but it's simpler to handle chat encryption, plus Element, Matrix and the maintainers of each server project are working hard to catch up to the mainstream.

Element are hoping to implement Element Call, as well as a QR scan that handles all of the security key validating for a new device, and MAS authentication) so people will be able to register accounts and set up 2FA.. And I concluded that, in the end, backwards decryption was more valuable and sacrificing previous messages was just too extreme a move. I have security, moderating traffic, and I'm self hosting. That's enough for my family.

*I swear I had calling available with Conduwuit, coturn and Element, but hey ho.

It lately had a bunch of controversy around it, development is pretty halted and the inability to stop randos from spam inviting you into chats with csam kinda is a nono for me.

XMPP is a protocol, not a program, so you can use whatever program that supports XMPP, it pretty much has the same functionalities as matrix, bar the screen share but there's several clients like Dino that let you video call, which with something like OSB virtual camera, I can bridge in the screen.

I do like the shiny new fads but having a mature protocol that is the used by shiny programs and lets you talk to older program users too sounds better.

Yeah, exactly. Any client works with varied features, and the OMEMO key encryption is solid and - while it is a pain with no backwards decryption - worth it. Movim is really popular iirc. I use Monocles on Android

I'd really like to suggest servers or networks but I host my own private server with TheLounge for my friends. We ran away from Undernet around 2010 and just stayed on our own server since.

Quakenet is where I sit