I decided to talk about something that has quite fiddled me around, hence one of the reasons I've started this blog.
Many people on Stoat will definitely suggest using Nerimity, or, literally have moved on to it.
I used to have Nerimity, known to be checking it out and allat. Honestly, the concept itself is neat. Have the ability to post, right into the app, is my favorite feature, in my opinion.
The app itself isn't bad. The UI/UX is pretty cool, the app is fairly optimized, not that much, but eh, it runs good on my main rig. So I'd consider that a thumbs up.
It's also open-source, which I'm mostly looking at when checking some messaging app.
However... I deleted my account. For reasons, that you may or may not know. I'll just do it in a nutshell.
Basically, it cannot be trusted.
Nerimity, is managed and powered by very few volunteers that uses their own time and money. I mean, that's cool, at least we know that's not a evil soulless corporation. But even corporations, SOMEHOW, have a bit of professionalism.
There have been a decent amount of takes where accounts and servers were deleted, for no precise reason. Only for the fact that "I am the owner and I delete server because I want it so". Well that's odd!
There also have been a take where some, apparent moderator called "Arsen" that had... some interesting behavior. (ignore the bad editing, not my video anyways)
I've also seen the extreme lack of professionalism. If you want to give a decent image to your platform, at least be at the SLIGHTEST, and I MEAN IT, on the professionalism. If you don't do that people will be weirded out by you.
It's not about the fact of "not being a corporation", look, even me, I'm a singular person, and yet I keep my professionalism when I need it to, e.g. when meeting new people that seems distinguished, and there's plenty of other reasons too, but I'm not gonna explain the meaning of life.
EDIT : Apparently, it seems that they also violated their own Terms of Service once. Unfortunately not surprised.
Based on their ToS, on article 2 :
"To use Nerimity or any associated services, you must be at least 14 years old, and meet the minimum age required by the laws in your country or region. Accounts reasonably believed to belong to users below the required minimum age may be suspended until satisfactory proof of age is provided."
And of course it had to happen :
It's not really private...
I mean yeah sure it's open-source, but privacy is something you probably should leave as a reason if you're that insane.
Nothing is actually encrypted, and neither can I really trust my guts over the platform mods/owner of Nerimity.
Abiding by their Privacy Policy, basically, here's what they can do, or what they are doing :
"To ensure users comply with the TOS, we may view your private/public channels (Message logs) only when receiving a report. We may warn you followed by account/server termination if you continue to refuse."Basically they're allowed to view any message if somehow someone reports it. Just like in most platforms. I guess.
Same for the notification pushing, requires Google Firebase, yada yada. Google ain't your privacy buddy.
But all this stuff happened. It's been maybe a while, so perhaps they changed but I'm still doubtful of the situation, but what I am trying to say is, Nerimity is a hobby project, not your new Discord.
Switching your friends and your communities to Nerimity is risky and anything may happen, there could be a data breach, a lack of responsibility over the admins, it's just not trusted enough.
They literally say it themselves, but at this day no one checks the ToS of stuff anymore :
"- This is currently a hobby project, but it may grow and expand in the future."
By that, it means it's NOT managed by professionals, just some guys (possibly in a garage), doing their life. So don't consider it as a real service, it's just a hosted chat platform by some hobbyist.
If you want an ACTUAL service, managed by volunteers that doesn't wait over nothing, you should try Stoat instead, it's twice as better.
And if you already do, there's nothing to change, it's perfect already.
Anyway, Nerimity is unsafe, it's not a corp-grade platform, and personally I wouldn't trust that. Stoat is more professional-looking, and the experience is decent enough.
If you prefer using other platforms, I recommend Delta Chat, and Matrix, which are both E2EE. Perfect for privacy psychopaths like me, I suppose.
Anyway, until then.