Who should Win the Global Instant Messaging Battle?

“WatsApp turned evil, run you fools!” is the current theme. Should you run too? Before you blindly follow your friends to Telegram/Signal, please hang on for a second and let’s think about it together.

Once upon a time, WhatsApp was a small and independent organization with a great idea and “privacy coded into its DNA”. Then it was bought by Facebook for 19 billion dollar in 2014 and 7 years later people get scared by a Terms&Condition update because now the metadata (not the encrypted message content) will be monetized by Facebook — a platform that since its beginning is monetizing everything that you do on it.
So should you complain about the new terms, if many people still voluntarily use social media like Facebook where they are OK with the abuse and monetization of their posts? Yes you should, because the metadata alone is very sensitive and does reveal a huge amount of information about you. Overall, privacy is — like healthy food — the new thing for all the cool kids who have realized that it is better to have it and the cool kids now move to Signal, right?

Currently, Signal is a small and independent organization with a great idea and… wait did I hear this somewhere before? So tell me: Will Signal keep its promises? Will it stay strong? Will all people move to Signal and make it the one and only, perfectly secure platform such that we can once and for all settle this discussion? The answer is probably no.

So let’s analyze the problems of current Instant Messaging (IM) services, think, and then decide.

Problem 1: There will be money
Any large userbase requires a lot of costly infrastructure (Servers and stuff) and needs to be maintained by people that update software, fix problems, and replace broken hardware. That’s not all. What about a user support if you cannot access your account or have other problems? It would be naive to think that any single organization can provide a fully-functioning, secure, feature-reach IM service on a global scale for free forever.

If Signal or Telegram reaches the same popularity as WhatsApp, who will pay for that? Are you willing to pay? Maybe yes, but most people are not willing to pay even $2 and will just move to the next hipster we-have-money-from-investors startup that promises to make everything free and better than all these big evil companies that were so stupid to grow. Telegram has already announced that they will introduce advertisement to generate the necessary funds in 2021.

Problem 2: Privacy requires effort and trust
If you communicate with someone via your smartphone, your messages will be transmitted, processed and stored on computers not owned by you.
“There is encryption”, I hear you say? Yes there is, but if you encrypt messages, someone should also decrypt them or it is a useless pile of bytes.
First, encryption/decryption requires crypto-keys and crypto–keys are a hell of a nightmare to manage correctly. If you are not willing to learn how to store and handle the keys on your own, the platform will do it for you but then we are back at the trust relationship: They have and use the keys and so they could in principle abuse them.
Second, encryption alone is not all because there is metadata: How much encrypted data you send, at which time, from where, to whom is enough to figure out your sexuality and with which person you spend the night. But of course, you have nothing to hide.
Third, the platform and its app encrypts the messages and stores them on their servers. If either the app or the servers get hacked, your private conversation will be available in the Darknet the next day. So you need to trust the platform to have hired skilled security experts.

Problem 3: There is no single “one-size-fits-all” solution
There will always be people that want more features, people that want to keep it minimal, people that want performance and usability, and people that want robustness and security. It is not possible to satisfy everyone.
However, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram are centralized platforms — they lock you in without much choice. If their servers go down, you cannot communicate anymore. If you do not like their platform, you cannot switch. If they update their terms, you must either comply or leave.

Any good directions?
Let’s learn from the past. A communication service that has passed the test of time is E-Mail. You can say what you want but E-Mail is the most robust, most used digital communication method and has been around for 50 years. It just works. How did E-Mail do this? Simply by not being a single platform but an open standard implemented by different platforms. There are many E-Mail providers (gmail.com, web.de, etc.), some charge you money, others are free, some have many features, and some are very simple.

The promising outsider: Matrix

Matrix is a lot like E-Mail. It is an open standard and has many implementations. You can choose from several servers and organizations can run their own server (e.g. TUM university already provides a Matrix server). This will keep the load of a large, global userbase balanced and thus institutions can offer this service for free (like E-Mail).
Furthermore, you can choose from several clients to connect with the network and are not limited to the look & feel of a single app. Anyone could use her/his preferred software on his/her preferred operating system. To me that sounds great. With respect to security, Matrix is similar to Signal. Encryption is mostly enabled by default but you can also decide to have a non-encrypted chat.

Conclusion

Here is my final view on all the systems I have tried:

• WhatsApp is most mature and has the most users but is Facebook
• Signal is the most secure by default but has limited features
• Telegram has many features but is not secure by default
• Matrix is open, secure and feature-rich but (currently) not well-known

A more comprehensive comparison can be found on Wikipedia.

So what should we do? I don’t know. For my part, I will keep WhatsApp because of the users but I see Matrix as the most promising long-term solution. I will continue to use Matrix, spread the word about it and see how it evolves. However, do not take my word for it but try it yourself and test one of their many clients. At the end, all the four options above have their advantages and none of them is inherently a bad choice. I hope I could give you some ideas about what to consider.

Only on the long run, I believe we should quit this platform race for users and switch to a federated, decentral, and open system. Whether Matrix will be the one, is not settled but from my side it has huge potential.