> By comparison, Element is much more like a chat program than a phone messenger. It's good for "I want to connect with that person from GitHub"
Element is what messaging should have been from the START: a federated service just like email, where you register an account with your provider of choice, just like email, and start adding/chatting other people after getting to know their address, just like email. So, instead of asking that cute girl her phone number or her email address, you would ask her her element address.
Whatsapp spoiled this approach years ago, so now we are basically screwed because everyone is used to the central approach and it's almost impossible to move away from it. But TODAY's implementation of Element and their shiny clients 12 years ago, would have been a great success just like WhatsApp was (whishful thinking at its finest, I know).
There's also DeltaChat: It looks more or less like WhatsApp, but it uses email as the transport and storage mechanisms, and it is seamlessly encrypted with AutoCrypt. It supports both one-on-one and group chats. It has apps for mobile and desktop.
But I said with today's Element UI/UX. Anyway email was already a standard before corporations took over internet, it would have been really difficult to have a decentralized standard taking over in the 2009 Internet already. Also XMPP was EEE by both Google and Facebook around that time.
Element is what messaging should have been from the START: a federated service just like email, where you register an account with your provider of choice, just like email, and start adding/chatting other people after getting to know their address, just like email. So, instead of asking that cute girl her phone number or her email address, you would ask her her element address.
Whatsapp spoiled this approach years ago, so now we are basically screwed because everyone is used to the central approach and it's almost impossible to move away from it. But TODAY's implementation of Element and their shiny clients 12 years ago, would have been a great success just like WhatsApp was (whishful thinking at its finest, I know).