Thinking about having _so many_ different messaging platforms exacerbates my existing problem with remembering to reply to people.
I find it so incredibly hard to remember to reply to people on Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, FB Messenger, Slack, Email, Twitter.....
Nowadays you're most likely to get me on WhatsApp, because what's the platform with the most people on for me atm. Although, email is a good bet.
Every service having a lock-in messaging system with no API is so damn frustrating.
I'd love to link all these platforms together in one unified place, but it's not in the companies best interest to allow 3rd party clients like that.
( Don't tell me about Bitlbee, it makes this easier, but every bitlbee plugin behaving differently, and the whole ecosystem being janky makes it hard )
Update in woes with messaging:
Matrix supports bridging lots of platforms (not as many as Bitlbee, but maybe less janky and easier to set up 🤷♀️ ).
Setting up a Matrix-Synapse server isn't super hard, but it's like, a day's sysadmin.
I shall try it. Not sure if I want to set it up on a cloud server, or have it on my internal home system.
I'm thinking it'll live next to my Mastodon instance.
@s are you old enough to remember Trillian? It interconnected ICQ, MSN, AIM, and others.
@Edent Unfortunately I think I got the tail end of MSN when I was in primary school and it was all BBM or Facebook Messages by the time I knew enough about computers to care about the problem!
@s Invest in Matrix.
@weirdwriter When all of my present and future friends are on Matrix, sure.
@s It has Bridging support. https://matrix.org/bridges/
@weirdwriter I didn't realise it had so many services bridged.
But the point remains that these bridges likely rely on hacks and undocumented APIs that might break, or get you banned.
I realise that unification existed before with XMPP.
I'm mostly just noting how the number of different messaging options massively reduces the possibility that you'll get a reply out of me (and others).
Which is like, counterintuitive to how it feels like it should be.