glitchsoc - Link to source
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Today I was reminded that old online chats offered context awareness for the people online: you knew you won't be a bother to a friend who has a smiley flower as a status; and you knew you might not be getting a quick reply from someone who's Away.

Today I don't even know if my friends are online or not. The messenger apps make the assumption that everyone is online, and if not, they will receive a push notification, and will reply to you as soon as possible. But this assumption is barely true. I bet it makes lives harder, especially for ND people

(Edited for a pixel-perfect screenshot)

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to distinctivestatic

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

@distinctivestatic I think setting it to "invisible" should be the default. Perhaps, G+ style, you'd want to expose your presence to one group of people but not the other. But on a sad rainy day when you really want to talk to someone, you'd set the status to "free to talk" and will enjoy a sudden reach out by an old friend, maybe. Plus, you won't need to assume things about your friends, you'd know if it's okay to message them if you feel like doing it
@distinctivestatic
in reply to Nina Kalinina

glitchsoc - Link to source

h3mmy

I still sometimes have to send the nohello.net link

I've also just politely requested people to simply ask the question or provide info else I will assume the hello is the start of some message and just wait instead of responding.

This has had a decent success rate but if it fails I'll go with the link. Once people understand that if they want my attention they need to actually give me info, they start using async messaging as intended.

@swetland @millihertz

@leah's tiny pc retirement home @Brian Swetland
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏

It's complicated. I clearly don't mind a customer having my phone number, but I might not want to let them know I'm online at 10:30pm, thus giving them permission to ping me with something that belongs in work hours. Same with bosses, etc. Ideally you want to be able to turn that on or off for each one of your contacts, but OMG that would make the user interface too haaaaaaard! Can't have that. simple simple, just one button max. sigh.
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Anton Klinger

rant about messengers

Sensitive content

in reply to Blackthorn

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

@Blackthorn I think this is a matter of personal preference. I used "Free for chat" when I was bored and would prefer messaging over anything else; I had "Online" for situations when I had other things to do but didn't mind a distraction all that much. Sometimes I'd start with "Free for chat" but switched to "Online" after having a couple of chat windows open - to indicate that I'm not might be available for a long/deep conversation
@Blackthorn
in reply to Santhor

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

@santhor when I was online from the phone, it was showing everyone that I'm "online (mobile)" or "away (mobile)", hinting that my replies could be shorter than if I was using a computer.

I think people don't use it because there is an assumption that everyone is always, permanently, terminally, online. If we foster the habit of "getting online is an action", people will be using it!

@Santhor
in reply to Nina Kalinina

glitchsoc - Link to source

0x10f/kalle/qalle

I used to think there should be this kind of priority system in phones: You would assign a priority (say, 1 to 9) to each of your contacts and also set your own priority. Then, only calls from people who are important enough to bother you right now would get through. Of course, the system would be more useful if a caller could also choose the priority of their own call, but then you would have to punish contacts who misused the feature.
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉

my phone is permanently on DnD, because there is no way to stop every fucking app from pinging at me all the time. Every time they update, they add a new category of notification so they can demand my attention. While there are types of notifications I might like to have, it's too much effort to selectively enforce "leave me the hell alone", so nobody gets to ping at me. Such toxic design.

I used to love gadgets and getting new ones, but now it's days/weeks to make it tolerable.

in reply to Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

@swelljoe I used to simply turn the data off on my phone, but then I started working for Facebook, and the coworkers quickly explained to me that DnD is the only way to survive. I kept turning off the data anyway 😁

As for the gadgets: Palm OS 5 devices are as neat as they used to be when they just came out. I also am having lots of fun with my Nintendo DSi and Gameboy Micro!

@Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Nick Silkey 📻 N5ILK 🪓🪵 🪣💧

👋 sharing one thought - next text, ask the friends to disable their push notifications.

sounds wild. hear me out. 👀

this enables you to free your mind from learned behaviors designed to disrupt whatever you might be doing in real life in favor of what some other human or even algorithm decided. yes, even if it is your bestie wanting to share a cute cat video - especially if it's a designed-to-deflate news headline. nope! 🙅‍♀️

opt into your phone existing in your life via your personal, inalienable free will. this seems like the strongest, way to take active control of reframing one's relationship with one's devices at present. 💃

**not trying to show up as a reply guy - just offering what seems to be working well fired me and sharing if others find use in it. ✌️💙

in reply to Nina Kalinina

glitchsoc - Link to source

Val Packett 🧉

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the only problem was that it's really hard to consistently/reliably keep that status updated..

Discord has it too. Typically people use custom status just for memes and not as actual status, and other ones are just set permanently and forgotten about, haha. But the automatic online/offline is sorta helpful occasionally (though way too often someone's "online" just because of leaving a PC running in the background haha)

in reply to Val Packett 🧉

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

@valpackett yeah, my Discord is permanently "away". But my ICQ used to switch between "Away" and "Online" depending on my usage of the app - it'd switch to Away when I was coding, but would switch back to Online when I opened the app. Discord allows me to set "Away for 1/2/4/8 hours" but won't show my actual status based on my actual activity. :<

If we don't count "Nina plays gdb" and "Atsuko plays KiCad", of course.

@Val Packett 🧉
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Cursed Silicon

I've said for many years (and will continue to die on that hill)

Chat services peaked at MSN Messenger 6.2!

Specifically 6.2 though. Everything after that in MSN Messenger was downhill

7.0 added "Winks" who the fuck liked using those?

7.5 added Nudge. And then people learned that nudging was controlled by the *sender* so you could spam it endlessly with a simple patch. A great way to end up slapped upside the head

8.0 onward had the "Windows Live Mesenger" gross UI rework

in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Unconverged Gradient 🧐

most likely this is indeed a cultural thing. I was talking about the times when you need to stay at home and have your PC turned on to be connected. By the times when mobile networks became cheap and fast enough to be widely adopted almost everyone has moved to the social networks. ICQ was mostly a remnant of the old times, not a popular thing, not to mention IRC.
in reply to Nina Kalinina

sharkey - Link to source

Jacob Hall

when I was just starting to use the internet as a kid, it was gchat. So many good conversations happened in the panel on the left of Gmail, and the status icons made it all possible. I know that descended from a long line of other online chat systems. I was really sad when gchat was phased out, and my friends and I had to develop new communication habits together.

You make a good point about the assumption that everyone is online. The closest thing I have to statuses these days is in Slack, but those feel less trustworthy in terms of auto-updating, and since push notifications are sent anyways they don't serve much of a purpose.

in reply to Jacob Hall

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

@jacob yep! Yep.... Yes T_T

By the by, I got the inspiration from reading blog.danpetrolito.xyz/i-built-… about a tool that would show "presence" in Discord. And then I found one of many papers from the olden days that actually did some research on the topic of "online presence" oppl.info/publication/oppl-200…

I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

This is a story that started back in 2022, but I think its a perfect time to reflect on the impact that it has had on my friend group still to this day.
Dan Petrolito
@Jacob Hall
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Al & Val's Modern Homesteading

I met my wife in an online video chat room. I was living in the south and she was in Canada. We enjoyed the same things, and eventually, created our own online video chat site with internet radio stations playing in their own rooms, etc. We had our own station (still own the domain name). At one point, our little Video Chat site (FanCamTastic!) had several thousands of users and our little radio station broadcast to thousands of listeners around the world. (Radio Bijoux).
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Al & Val's Modern Homesteading

The people that tuned in to our shows were pretty much fans (I guess like folks listen to podcasts now) and would tune in just to catch up with what was going on, request tunes, make dedications to other online friends, and cut up in chat rooms. It was like a Friday night out with buddies would be the closest thing I can think of. We all looked forward to it.
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

WildRikku

Probably the only reason why I kinda like Discord. People don't use its status feature a lot but at least it exists. I think a more relaxed (but very opposite) default for messengers would be to treat them like e-mail: Answers will come but you have no idea when. Which also includes that e-mail kinda feels more important, reducing the amount of messenger chat messages that are never answered ("oops forgot", "your chat moved to the bottom before I replied" etc) 🙄
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Andrés (personal views)

@reidrac Teams has something similar but I have been using it for two months and not sure what the Icons mean.

Find it interesting that Signal.org that AFAIK uses the same protocol as WhatsApp allows to schedule messages. Telegram could schedule as well. Outlook emails also offer you to delay post if person is away.

But WhatsApp does not have the delay feature. Maybe because it's business model is Mata data and this removes purity from the data?

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
Unknown parent

pleroma - Link to source

djsumdog

I never had an ICQ number. I just used AIM/Yahoo/MSN via Pidgin and Adium. That's an interesting feature.

I was one of the last holdouts on AIM, still messaging the one or two people on there in the last year it was alive. I do miss that era for sure. I still have some ancient AIM logs stored somewhere.

in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Ruth / Anarchae

Why I intentionally turn off "show my activity" in every app. Also no "pop over notifications" allowed. I don't like context switching/interruptions. I've heard people argue that we should go back to calling people more often, and be more open to random phone calls, but even back in landline days there were socially accepted norms of when it was ok to call people time-wise. We successfully made that more explicit with IM statuses, then lost it again.
in reply to Machine Lord Zero

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.
@MachineLordZero plot twist: you can convert a website into an "app"! Chrome's "Install the page as an app" will make the page behave like an app - it'll have its own window, etc etc, but it'll share the profile with your browser. It might even use less resources than yet another Electron.
@Machine Lord Zero
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

CT

Interesting. I would usually think “if everyone is on, NO ONE is on” and that, similar to texting or email, the un-statused blindness would lead to the assumption of “if they’re there and they want to, they’ll answer, but I don’t have to expect anything.”

On ICQ I was usually perma-offline anyway. Don’t think I saw anyone really lean into the myriad of statuses; would usually think that kind of “choice fidelity” would lead to its own stress.

in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Ivan Sagalaev

I used ICQ back then, and I remember those icons got pretty much meaningless over time, as people were under no obligation to keep their status up to date with reality. You could only assume other people's reply habits based on prior interactions. Just as it is now: you don't know people's notification settings, and there's no expectations of immediate replies in general.
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Owl Eyes

I've been using #XMPP for the last year or so, wondering if the halcyon ICQ days of yore are still to be had.

After testing it with several friends connecting to my own self-hosted #Prosody server, here's what I found:

- Yes it all works, on all XMPP clients. But MacOS/iPadOS/iOS clients are not all that mature at this time. The #Linux (#Gajim, despite no video or audio calls) and #Android (#Conversations) XMPP clients are the best, IMHO. Always favor those, I say, and they are confidently installable and reliable today.
- Yes, use OMEMO encryption on personal chats. But when it comes to group chats, OMEMO is not necessarily the right move.
- If you don't need privacy in an XMPP group, then don't create a private group, but rather a _public_ group (the safer choice for reliability of message delivery). No OMEMO is possible in a public group, and the messages propagating around will be reliable, even to clients who vanish and re-appear after prolonged absences.
- If you really need OMEMO encryption in a group chat, create a _private_ group, not a public group. **Clients who vanish from the group for prolonged periods may miss out on some of the messages when they return (say, a few weeks later)**.
- I kept a wiki with several more quirks noted, which came up, and felt confusing and frustrating to my (non-geek) friends using XMPP.

As to your Apple-ecosystem-confined friends, at this moment in time, maybe talk to them 1:1 in #Fluffychat/Matrix, which affords encryption, and is all #OpenSource, like everything above. (Groups in #Matrix have a track record of failing for everybody in them very badly every 2 or 3 years or so.)

#Android #Linux #matrix #xmpp #opensource #prosody #gajim #conversations #FluffyChat
This entry was edited (7 months ago)

Nina Kalinina reshared this.

in reply to Owl Eyes

mastodon - Link to source

Avoca

@d1
Can I suggest Delta Chat to you both?

Decentralised, can self-host if preferred, no KYC, no phone numbers, anonymous, group chats, multi platform, multi OS, synchronised accounts across devices/platforms/OS's.

Even works on TAILS OS.

I'm using it on an iPhone XS iOS 18.5, a 2015 MacBook Pro running Linux Mint and a Samsung S9 running Lineage OS, fully synchronised.

Great UI, awesome UX.

Well worth a look at least...

delta.chat/en/

Delta Chat: Delta Chat, decentralized secure messenger

Delta Chat is a decentralized and secure messenger app 💬 Reliable instant messaging with multi-profile and multi-device support ⚡️ Sign up to secure fast chatmail servers or use classic e-mail serv...
delta.chat
@Owl Eyes
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Avoca

mastodon - Link to source

Owl Eyes

@avoca #Deltachat feels Alpha quality to me, *once you stray off the path of plain old 1:1 encrypted text messages, with possible file attachments, including voice memos* - which Deltachat is brilliant at (uniform clients on all supported platforms is greatly appreciated).

The #XMPP world is more "Beta-quality" feeling to me - is the lesser of evils for those geeky types who can manage its quirky landscape, and still feel like they're having fun.

*The devil is in the details* for all these ecosystems: XMPP, #Matrix, and Deltachat.

If you want something to "just work", I say use #Signal and refrain from complaining about its centralized nature. At least something "just works" today in this domain (end-to-end encrypted instant messaging, which is also reasonably private), which is reliable and trustworthy *for now*.

#matrix #xmpp #signal #deltachat @Avoca
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Kiran Castellino

@amunizp @reidrac I don't know about Signal, but Outlook on the Web will delay delivering a message until the set time is reached (the email will hang out in your drafts folder until then). If the recipient is on a different mail server, the message will not be forwarded by your mail server until the set time. Outlook for Windows will keep the message in your outbox until the set time if you use the built-in scheduled send function, but it also supports the Exchange Server scheduled send mentioned above.
@Andrés (personal views)
in reply to wink

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

@wink that is true, but also consider: it means people weren't always online, there wasn't an expectation that someone would reply immediately if they're offline; but you could somewhat expect a reply if someone actually was online.

Imagine being able to login to WhatsApp once a day to check messages and chat with friends, rather than getting push notifications 200 times a day

@wink
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

wink

Yeah I know, I like the feature (like the outlook calendar integration that marks you as busy in slack) - no harm in adding it for modern clients, I just remember it wasn't used so much in ICQ in my circles.
Also as someone who has most notifications off and manually checks when he feels like it, it simply is not a problem for me, with the tradeoff of responding hours late :/
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@reidrac

I was involved with Jabber (before it was called XMPP) shortly after that decision was made, so when people still remembered why.

A big part of it was that Jabber wanted to support lossless bridging between different IM systems. Being able to run an ICQ, MSNM, AIM, and so on bridge on your Jabber server meant users could switch immediately and retain their existing contacts. If only a subset of Jabber features worked with those contacts, that gave them an incentive to switch (and a good migration path). If only a subset of other-system features worked, that made it much harder.

The ICQ protocol had this fixed set of states. One of the other messengers had status messages as free-form text. As a result, XMPP built in both. And, because it was XML, you could also put a load of other things in (e.g. the music that you’re listening to).

I wrote a little daemon (20ish years ago) that would record status messages and push them to a microblogging platform (back when Twitter was one among many and not a clear winner), so you could use a Jabber client to publish microblogging things in realtime to your contacts and more slowly to other people.

in reply to Cambionn

mastodon - Link to source

Cambionn

2/2
I would argue, people assume others reply asap, not the app. And that's those people's fault.

The thing I love about chats is that people can reach me when they have time, and I can reply when I have time for it in my own pace. Think about that thing you keep forgetting to ask me at midnight? Sure send a message. My phone is on DND-mode and I'll read it and reply after I wake up and have time, no rushing. (I don't do this to others unless I know they feel like this too).

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Qybat

I imagine this just reflects the shift to mobile. Before then, if someone was sat at the computer you could be sure they were paying attention to it - and if they were not, the computer would be off. But with mobile it's just always there. The software can't tell if the user is free to chat, busy, or sleeping. And few users are going to manually change status twenty times a day.
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

mastodon - Link to source

Beldarak

@me
On a very surface level, yes, but not really, no. I can't send you a burst of messages with 10 seconds between each one without it being super annoying to you by email.

Also not made for rapid exchanges , like if you reply to my message while I'm writing one, I won't be able to read it without reloading the page or something

Also not sure you can jump in a call seemlessly from an email exchange, it's just not made for realtime communication

@Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

endolexi

I understand, though I also feel the default assumption has shifted since ICQ days from 'chat is usually live' to 'chat is usually asynchronous'?
None of my friends expect me to reply immediately, nor do I expect them to. We're even used to (non-urgent) chats pausing without further comment. When something is important+urgent enough to requires rapid responses, usually everyone unterstands that and acts accordingly (like saying "gtg for now" when they have to)
in reply to Nina Kalinina

mastodon - Link to source

Mamlena

My ICQ nr. was 214402666, still remember it today 😄 I have to admit I experience problems with no status today quite often because I very rarely visit my Facebook profile, don't have Facebook nor Facebook Messenger app on my phone, only sometimes login from my PC to share some important news. And people don't understand why I reply after a week or two if they reach out there.

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