alt Hacker NewsDuring Iran's Internet blackout, I set up a chatmail server on an interanet VPS, installed Delta Chat's client (https://delta.chat) on every family member's phone, and they are using it even now after the Internet is back.
I have tried Matrix, XMPP (Conversations), Signal and even some Nostr clients but Delta Chat has by far the best UX and reliability. It has groups, channels and private messages, stickers and built-in video calls. My only gripe is that it doesn't have video messages or screen share like Telegram yet.
If you want to try it out you're always welcome to message me.
Replies
Hadn't heard of that one before. The instant profile thing sounds a bit like Simplex Chat? (Which I would like to like, but the founder seems to be intent on shooting his feet off with altright twitter posts, sigh)
Wow. Sounds interesting. I also looked for a solution to talk to relatives in case the internet gets blocked. Ended up with XMPP, since it has independent servers in different countries that can talk to each other. But the XMPP clients I tried are pretty bad, with no images or audio/video calls.
Did video calls work during the blackout too? I think calls should work like in the good old Skype days, pure P2P.