Lately, I’ve been thinking about chat apps more often again. Actually, I’ve always been a fan of Telegram, and it’s still a good messenger, but I’m a bit suspicious about the latest developments (such as the Fragment platform, with which Telegram is now implementing its crypto plans again).

For this reason, I took a closer look at Matrix a few weeks ago. First, I briefly set up a server myself, but then I decided to just use the matrix.org instance, because I don’t want to be stuck with instance administration forever. With Matrix and the Element app, one of several apps for communication via Matrix, I can now communicate cross-platform. After a few tests, I like it pretty well and in the long run, this is probably my favorite Telegram successor. (Feel free to contact me there.)

But today I also came across SimpleX via the Kuketz-Blog. It’s a messenger that doesn’t need any usernames or phone numbers, is decentralized and encrypted end-to-end. The project was launched only a short time ago, but development seems to be progressing quickly. In principle, it all sounds very interesting, but cross-platform functionality is a real dealbreaker for me.

Delta Chat? I haven’t look at it for quite some time. It’s a good idea, but in the end it will probably fail because of the limits of email providers or because people don’t want to have their whole inbox filled with encrypted mail. Not everyone uses a service with infinite mail storage.

But after all, several chat platforms have their right to exist side by side. Matrix as a standard, SimpleX for anonymous communication, if that should ever be necessary, Telegram for the bots and WhatsApp for communication with customer services (I see more and more companies using WhatsApp Business). Let’s see where the journey goes…