ambitiousslab

Yes, me too! But, only if I have the autonomy to improve things where I can. Otherwise, I just find it demotivating

I think (and hope!) it would likely only get applied to the biggest services, and would be enforced by removal from the app stores.

Then, the logical next step for the government when this doesn't work would be to allow this requirement at the OS level.

To answer seriously: unfortunately, the UK is one step ahead with the Online Safety Act. They've already given Ofcom the power to enforce client-side scanning. Ofcom themselves are deciding whether they want to use this power yet and this should happen sometime next year.

The frontends provide other benefits on top of just privacy - e.g. invidious lets you watch youtube videos without javascript, download videos directly on some instances, etc.

Just as a warning, this is licensed under the AGPL, with a CLA that requires copyright assignment. So, they could pull the rug at any time:

2.3 Outbound License. Based on the grant of rights in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, if We include Your Contribution in a Material, We may license the Contribution under any license, including copyleft, permissive, commercial, or proprietary licenses.

On iPhone, I recommend Monal.

Monal comes close.

To be honest, I think the above clients and services like Snikket fit that description.

Now, I wouldn't say they're all on the same level UX-wise as WhatsApp, Telegram etc. But I do think they are 90%-95% of the way there, and in my experience that's enough to convince friends and family to switch over.

In my experience, when people haven't wanted to switch, it's normally not been because of the clients, but because they don't want to install yet another app to talk to someone.

Any new open source software is always a net positive.

But, there are a few small caveats to the way they've done it (depending on how cynical/cautious you are):

• Because Proton are not accepting contributions, they own all the copyright, so can make the code closed source again if they want to (that wouldn't affect the already released versions, but future versions)
• They could likely take down any derivative on iOS, since Apple will always take instruction from the copyright holder, for GPL'd code
• Since the builds are not reproducible, there's no guarantee that the binaries they distribute are built from the source code

How do you define modern? I would call these modern clients personally:

• Android: Conversations
• iOS / MacOS: Monal
• Linux: Dino
• Windows: Gajim

Perfect, now you just have to wrap your program inside a debugger in production!

I'd like to second Snikket - it's designed for this use case and is very simple to set up.

If you'd rather not use Snikket, check out these recommendations for clients and servers.

Hope it works for you! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.