Davinci SpaceAll Chat Programmers Are Crazy
I am on a long journey on finding a good, open source, privacy-respecting chat program. There are several well-known candidates, and at first glance, I should be spoiled for choice. But each and every one of the suitable candidates have at least one self-inflicted shortcoming that makes it unusable.
Simplex Chat
Simplex came highly recommended by a security researcher I trust. Its architecture and features look all very promising. No user id needed, full anonymity, onion routing, forward secrecy, no/minimal metadata. All the right stuff.
I actually used it for a short while. The client apps are clunky, unconventional UX solutions, but nothing major. Par for the course for an indie app. The only thing that gave me a pause was that for some unexplained reason, you couldn't use spaces in your password. Ugh, this is weird, should not happen in an app that uses standard cryptographic libraries, but OK. I chalked it up as one of the weird UX choices.
Then I built a bot for my own use. I always build a bot, I like building bots for my chat programs. It was quite good, but I had some technical questions, so I joined the official channel. The channel is frequented by the founder / main programmer, who could not stop talking about how great AI is, and that they completely switched to agentic development. They have agents upon agents, coordinating and verifying each others' work. He isn't looking at code anymore, and anyone who still is is a dinosaur.
Now that's not what you want to hear from the lead developer of the communications tool that you are about to share your deepest secrets with.
He was not hearing any critiques. He had his loyal followers who were jumping at anyone who had a different opinion from the boss. I guess I can't critique him for that one. His project, his channel, he has the right to select who he is surrounding himself with.
He also disclosed that he is integrating Simplex with a blockchain(!). In 2026. And they are going to sell NFTs (!!!) as domains. So you can buy and sell identities on Simplex. As NFTs.
This was a bad idea even back in 2017, when it was novel. But in 2026, it's not only a bad idea but also super outdated. And remember, this is on a platform that is supposed to be ephemeral and no-user-id. Instead of that, there will be unchangeable, permanent records on a blockchain. For me, this is inexcusable and even without the full-agentic-nonsense is a deal breaker.
Delta Chat
Delta Chat looks really good. Federated, encrypted, a lot of work is put into privacy. Looks really good. There is only one gotcha, in a group chat everyone is admin. So anyone can kick/ban/remove anyone else.
When I came across this limitation, I thought I must be doing something wrong. Surely nobody would design a feature this broken. I was wrong. They did, and they stand by their decision. For many years, this is probably the most commented-on feature by new users. But the response is always that the devs like it this way, and adding in permissions would be difficult, and anyway in their groups everyone trusts each other. So I assume I am in the wrong groups.
I still love delta chat, and for one-to-one messaging I think it's great. But I am at loss of words by this implementation choice. Even the technically simple solution of "the creator of the group is an admin, and everyone else are non-admins" would work, even as an optional setting. But no. We all should find better friends instead.
Briar
Oh, Briar, the uncompromising tool of maximum security, used (supposedly) by whistleblowers, journalists and other professionals who need maximum privacy.
You can't move your account. Once it's on your phone, you can't move or back it up. You can delete, for sure, but then you lose all your contact and history. Need to change your phone? Too bad, time to build that address book again. Lost your phone? You should have been more careful. You need to travel with your phone and you rather not have sensitive information on your phone? Too bad. They are, supposedly, working on adding a feature to make it possible to backup / restore an account.
They are promising that for years. Don't hold your breath.
I guess I'll keep using XMPP.