[PLUG] Prav Messaging App project needs your support

[Pirate Praveen]

Hi,

We specifically need your help to register a multi state cooperative 
society, which needs 50 members each from two states and we have 50+ 
from Kerala and 26 from Maharashtra. If some of you joins and helps 
find some more members we can register this soon.
Read more below
Unpopular policies
In January 2021, popular messaging app WhatsApp changed their privacy 
policy to combine all the data it gets with Facebook, giving users only 
two choices: accept the new privacy policy, or leave WhatsApp 
altogether.

In a world where using WhatsApp has become a norm, that wasn’t really 
a choice.

There were many users who did not like this new privacy policy. They 
tried to leave WhatsApp for other messaging apps, like Telegram and 
Signal. A sizable amount of users disagreed with the push by WhatsApp, 
but leaving a popular app like WhatsApp comes with its own 
costs—losing touch with contacts on WhatsApp. That meant, unless they 
were willing to be cut out from a lot of their contacts, people had to 
still leave one foot in the WhatsApp door.

How different the situation is with phone numbers! If you had similar 
disagreements with a phone company A, you could have easily switch to 
any other phone company B and still be able to talk to other contacts 
by calls and SMS. Your contacts need not switch to company B to 
communicate with you. (In fact, the reason phone companies don’t make 
decisions like this is because they know customers will immediately 
leave them for a better provider. The ability for users to leave keeps 
phone companies under control).

A solution: XMPP
Imagine if all messaging apps were like phone and email, where users of 
any app can contact with users of other apps. In the above example, 
people would have a real choice to leave WhatsApp and just use any 
other service.

This is exactly what we need.

XMPP is a protocol that lets this happen. For the uninitiated, you can 
think of XMPP as a superpowered SMS, which works over the Internet and 
allows modern features like calls and image-sharing. It’s not a 
single company like WhatsApp but a standard that different companies 
can provide for.

Messaging apps and services that that use XMPP can talk to each other. 
Examples of such apps are: Blabber, Snikket, Siskin, and more (think of 
these like Google SMS, Samsung SMS, Silence, and any other SMS app). 
Examples of XMPP service providers include disroot.org, poddery.com, 
monocles.de, and a whole bunch more (think of these as different 
service providers, like BSNL, Vi, or Airtel).

To drive home the point: any user registered on any XMPP service can 
talk to other users of any other XMPP service. (disroot.org users and 
poddery.com users can send each other messages, just like BSNL users 
can exchange SMSes and calls with people on Airtel). This gives users 
choice of service providers: a single company does not control 
everything, and we won’t be forced to accept arbitrary terms by 
services like WhatsApp to be in touch with others.

Ease of adoption
Unfortunately, the current onboarding process on most XMPP services is 
not user friendly at all compared to WhatsApp. This issue, combined 
with the lack of awareness about XMPP services among common people, has 
made mass adoption difficult.

Things don’t have to be this way, and Quicksy is a leading example of 
this. Like WhatsApp, Quicksy allows users to register in a few taps by 
entering their phone number and receiving an OTP. But because it’s an 
XMPP service, Quicksy users can talk to users on other XMPP services.

We are developing the Prav app to complement Quicksy by providing a 
compatible app (Prav users can talk with Quicksy users) and offering 
more choice to users. People can easily sign up for Prav in the same 
way they do for Quicksy, but now they have more than one alternative to 
choose from. Before, the choice only existed for people willing to 
figure out the complex setup process on other XMPP providers; with Prav 
they now have another easy-to-set-up alternative.

Respects users’ freedom
Our app is ‘free software’, which means users get freedom to run, 
study, modify, share and share the modified versions. When we say 
‘free’, we mean ‘freedom’ and not ‘free-of-cost’. To avoid 
ambiguity of the word ‘free’, we also call it swatantra software. 
Examples of free software are VLC Media Player, Firefox, Debian, 
Quicksy, Prav etc. You can learn more about Free Software and why it is 
important here 1.

This means that the original source code behind a swatantra app is 
freely available for anyone to inspect; people can conduct independent 
security audits instead of having to trust a company’s word about 
what data they are or are not collecting. Such an auditing can also 
verify whether the app sends messages in end-to-end encrypted form or 
not.

In contrast, WhatsApp does not provide source code for their app and we 
can never verify independently whether the app encrypts messages as 
they claim.

Running as a cooperative
Choice aside, Quicksy is run by a single person, which has its own 
drawbacks—most significantly, having a single point of failure if 
something goes wrong. We want to offer Prav as a cooperative, adding 
more resilience by managing the service as a group, having a democratic 
decision making structure.

In India, cooperative societies can be registered under state 
cooperative laws or under central laws. Only people from the same state 
can become members if we register under any state cooperative laws. So, 
we prefer registering as a Multi State Cooperative Society to allow 
people from different states to join as members. Members elect the 
leadership team of a cooperative for a specific term and there will be 
regular elections to elect the leadership team giving members 
democratic control over the cooperative.

Every member will have one vote irrespective of the number of shares 
they hold in the cooperative, making it impossible for big companies to 
aquire the cooperative and take control of decisions. Acquisition by 
big companies is an issue as it can compromise the service: as an 
example, WhatsApp was an independent company, but it was eventually 
bought up by Facebook, which compromised the service in may ways, such 
as by weakening its privacy policy over the years.

Next steps
For this project to be successful, we need more people to join as 
members of the Multi State Cooperative Society. By law, we need at 
least 50 members each from two Indian states before we can do the 
registration.

At the moment, we have 50+ members from Kerala, 26 members from 
Maharashtra, and a few from various other states. Details are at 
https://prav.app/become-a-member 2.

By registering as a member of the Prav Multi State Cooperative Society, 
you can help us with your experience, knowledge and the amount that you 
give for buying shares will help us in funding for the app and running 
the service. Plus, your membership will help us cover the legal 
requirements for becoming a cooperative society.

In case, we fail to reach 50 members from a second state by June 15 
this year, we plan to register as a cooperative in Kerala. This is an 
intermediate measure: we will still work to meet the necessary 
requirements in other states, and once that’s done, we will register 
as a Multi State Cooperative Society as originally planned.

How you can help
If we don’t get enough members by June 15th 2023, we will have to go 
through a two-step process to get members. To prevent this, we’re 
trying to onboard members as soon as possible—and we need your help!

You can register as a member and spread the word to your friends to 
register as well, by visiting https://prav.app/become-a-member/

Read more 
https://azadmaidan.in/t/prav-app-reclaiming-choice-of-service-providers/83