Blog
Sovereign XMPP, self-hosting guides, and honest comparisons.
Sovereign group chat: a community you run, not a room you rent
In a big messaging app, every group is a room rented from a platform that writes the rules, shows the ads, and can end the conversation on a whim. A sovereign group is a place your community actually holds. Here's what changes when you run your own.
ReadYour chat history is yours: owning the record, not just the keys
Encryption hides what you say. Owning the archive decides whether the record of your conversations survives a reinstall, a new phone, and whoever runs the server. Here's what message history looks like when your messenger is yours.
XMPP is a living language, not a product you rent
ICQ got switched off by the company that owned it — a product dies when its owner decides. An open protocol can't be switched off by anyone. That's the real freedom from Big Tech, and it's what sovereign XMPP is built on.
Invite-only is the whole point: how a private XMPP network stays sovereign
An invite wall isn't a barrier to entry — it's the mechanism that keeps your server private, your community known, and your metadata out of the public graph. Here's why the invite model is central to a sovereign messenger.
How to actually move your chats to a messenger you own
Leaving WhatsApp or Telegram feels impossible until you realize what you really move — your people and your address, not your archive. Here is the honest how-to for a sovereign XMPP messenger.
Deleting a conversation is a quiet test of who owns your chat
Most 'delete' buttons don't delete anything you care about — they hide the message from you and keep the record elsewhere. Owning your messenger means knowing exactly what a fresh start really is.
The small fixes are the real test of owning your messenger
Read receipts that work, reconnection after a dead tunnel, history that survives a logout — sovereignty is decided in the small daily details, not just in the key exchange.
Sovereign chat is a trust decision, not a server decision
Every messenger is run by someone. The real question you're answering when you self-host is not 'which software' — it's who you trust to hold your conversations.
Metadata: the thing self-hosting your XMPP actually protects
End-to-end encryption hides your words. Self-hosting hides who you talk to, when, and from where. Here is what running your own XMPP server really changes about your privacy.
XMPP vs Signal vs WhatsApp: an honest privacy comparison
How sovereign XMPP stacks up against Signal and WhatsApp on encryption, metadata, and who controls your identity.
Self-host your chat on Prosody: a practical getting-started guide
A step-by-step guide to running your own XMPP server with Prosody on a small VPS — TLS, accounts, and where E2E encryption fits in.
What a sovereign messenger actually means (and why it matters)
A sovereign messenger is one you control end to end — your identity, your keys, your server. Here is what that buys you, and what it costs.