this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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I thought push notifications were inherently not private, since they all go through Google or Apple as the case may be.
It depends on the distributor:
https://unifiedpush.org/users/distributors
And how much info they collect. I understand the ntfy requires is really bare minimum compared to what GCM/FCM asks and collects.
On mobile, it's sort of a needed if you one doesn't wand to use GCM/FCM which is really bad privacy wise, and particularly needed on peer to peer applications, because they tend to drain the battery...
Some other benefit is that for those who can, they can self-host ntfy, nextcloud with unified push provider, and so on...
On the list of apps supporting unifid push, I even see element (matrix), but I don't identify any xmpp one:
https://unifiedpush.org/users/apps
Thanks, this is interesting, I didn't know how that stuff works. I did read in the news that in practice, most push notifications went through Apple and Google. But if you can self-host then that helps. So I guess the delivery method is normal internet? I was guessing it was special stuff at the carrier level. Does the phone have to poll the push distributor every so often? So it's not really push in that case.
The phone doesn't poll, instead it goes to sleep, and gets awakened by the push notifications. Just like GCM/FCM ones. Part of the key thing, because not any one can self host, is that it requires very little information in comparison, and some providers are open source and even free SW. The one I use is ntfy, there's the next cloud (next push), and not long ago you can use the conversation push service (up.conversation.im) through the Convesations xmpp client. I was aware of Conversations capable of becoming a unified push distributor, but actually was looking for it to use a unified push distributor instead.
But I was informed already it's not necessary, and doesn't make much sense, by being very low power consumer, even though it requires to keep unrestricted battery consumption on the background. So no issues by Conversations not supporting using a unified push notifications distributor.
Note that Prosody has a UnifiedPush community module that is simple to enable. This can save you from running one extra specialized server & one extra always-on connection provided you were already runnnig an XMPP server.
It feels a bit like a Scooby Doo reveal when you use Prosody + a Conversation fork seeing UnifiedPush is all powered by XMPP since it accomplishes the same task of a push-based messaging.