XSF Discussion - 2021-05-12

flow: <active/> is the only "content message" state. If I understand well. It's the chat state notification which also includes message text. All other states, like <inactive/>, <gone/> ... are "standalone notification". If it

If it's important for push etc, there is no need to encypt "standalone notification" at all, because there is no other message which belongs to this <message/> - just a notification.

For <active/>, we need to know, if it should be part of the <envelope/> or not.

DebXWoody, if you know that the recipient supports <active/> in <envolpe/> then there is probably no reason not do it (besides another client of the recipient may not supporting it, but that doesn't strike me as a strong argument in case of <active/>)

There's a tension, as MattJ notes, between the ability of a server to identify that a chat state notification (or marker, or similar) is an ancilliary message that shouldn't be pushed, and the ability of a server to extract some quite extraordinarily detailed metadata on user activity, which in some setting (like personal IM) is almost certainly not desirable for the user.

I'd probably err on the side of encrypting it, but equally, add an indicator that the message is "unimportant" to XEP-0420.

Meanwhile moparisthebest considers it the server's responsibility to shield the client from unimportant messages... what fun :)

"Here client, someone sent you this encrypted message marked as 'important'. Client decrypts KBs of useless garbage payload."

I guess there is no counter against this?

Not really, no.

I mean, in some messaging systems, we'd encrypt stuff between one user's home server and the destination server, but we do that because of single-hop and TLS anyway.

Hello Kev, I wanted to ask if you can copy this into a Twitter post? https://fosstodon.org/web/statuses/106195170518281226 I can copy the text here too, if that helps