Session Date/Time: 09 Nov 2022 09:30

mimi

Summary

The More Instant Messaging Interoperability (mimi) BOF session was held to discuss the problem statement and charter for a potential working group focused on enabling interoperability between instant messaging systems. The session covered the motivation for the work, key architectural considerations, and potential areas for standardization. There was extensive discussion regarding the scope of the working group, especially around identifier discovery, user preferences, and spam/abuse mitigation.

Key Discussion Points

Motivation for mimi: Addressing the poor user experience resulting from a lack of interoperability between existing instant messaging systems and regulatory pressures, particularly the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Problem Statement Overview: Presentation covered areas such as message format, end-to-end encryption (using MLS), message transport, identifiers, identity, and introduction/discovery.
Client-Server vs. Server-Server Interoperability: Focused on a server-to-server approach, with requirements pushed into clients for protocols like MLS. The goal is to interoperate and federate existing messaging providers.
Identifier Management: Discussions about how to handle different identifier types (e.g., phone numbers, email addresses) and how to discover the target user's preferred service. The question of is it at the user level or system level?
End-to-End Identity: Emphasis on the importance of end-to-end identity to prevent impersonation and ensure secure communication.
Introduction/Discovery Problem: How to enable users to find and connect with each other across different messaging platforms. This topic generated significant debate around how broad the scope of this problem should be and user privacy.
User Preferences: How to respect user preferences regarding discoverability, reachability, and data residency. It was questioned how we can represent user preferences, are the preferences expressed, implied or both?
Spam/Abuse Mitigation: While acknowledged as a critical concern, the extent to which the working group should directly address spam/abuse mitigation remained a point of contention. The consensus was that protocol support that would enable platforms to mitigate spam would be within scope.
Charter Review: Discussion of open pull requests on the draft charter, focusing on language related to federation, message delivery, introduction/discovery, and data residency.

Decisions and Action Items

Refine Charter Text: Action item for Rowan and Ted to refine the charter text, especially regarding the introduction/discovery problem and user preferences, based on the discussions.
Address Issues on Mailing List: Participants agreed to continue the discussion of user preferences and spam/abuse mitigation on the mailing list to refine the charter text.
Remove PR7 from consideration. It was decided that specifying metadata residency was over specification in the charter.

Next Steps

Continue refining the charter text based on feedback from the BOF session and mailing list discussions.
The area director (Marie) will assess the BOF results and determine whether to charter a working group with the discussed scope.