I saw this a while ago when I was searching high and low for a messenger to switch to from Element (didn't end up switching to anything). I like a lot of things about it, but don't like that it can't support offline delivery or multi-device. I think no messenger without those features will ever take off because too many people demand them. In fact I remember that in group chats, it won't even do the faux offline messaging that it does for 1-to-1 chats! I don't know why but that was the biggest deal breaker for my own use case. I hope they eventually fix that, there's no reason they can't.

I also don't like that it has moderation features, which feel really out of place to me in a peer to peer system. I don't want that kind of social hierarchy in a context that more or less inherently assumes all participants are trusted. Moderation only makes sense in public forums IMO.

There's also at least one security cocern: https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/issues/426 Though the people pointing it out were pretty toxic and really exaggerated its severity :(

Despite all this, if offline messaging and multi-device aren't requirements for you, I'd say Tox is a great option, maybe the best option.

I'm proud to hear you're getting into Gemini, by the way :) I first heard of it a while ago but recently got really onboard and I'm working on converting my own website to Gemini.

Many of the top tier messaging platforms are trying to solve today's problems and vulnerabilities. I like that Tox does not require a huge centralized infrastructure (only DHT) and is P2P. Tox is very fast and works well over Tor too. However, P2P, DHT, and limited infrastructure has it's own challenges.

I think Session and Status.im are better positioned.

Maintainer stole money from the project ever since then it died with it + no audit. Main reason why I unlisted it from my privacy project.

Lots of baseless clams and whatnot, more hype around it which is not worth it. I would use it but not under the incompetent management.

If you’re interested in the concept behind Tox, I’d recommend taking a look at Jami. Tox’s development has been sporadic at best and I wouldn’t trust it to be a viable solution long-term. Jami runs with the same concept but has multi-device support and is backed by/part of the GNU project so it probably has more staying power. That being said, it’s still (like Tox) not very user friendly at this point.

Anyone here remembers Pond?

I cannot find that page again as it as obviously been fixed since, but i remember looking at Tox a long while ago and running away scared and laughing at the same time.

On some installation page (on a wiki!!) it used to recommend (from memory) something like "wget --ignore-certificate https://blah.blah/blah.sh | sudo sh"

My immediate reaction was that i wouldn't take seriously anything related to security from ppl recommending such insanely sloppy and insecure methods....

I tried using this, admittedly a while ago, for two months. It flat out could not deliver messages reliably to someone in the same household. Sometimes messages would arrive weeks after being sent, and sometimes nothing would arrive at all. Maybe it's changed since, but I doubt it.