Three reasons to choose a decentralised private messaging app

Centralised messaging apps are by far the most popular option when it comes to chatting online, but they come with significant trade-offs: privacy risks, unreliable infrastructure, and a lack of user control. Decentralised messaging apps are changing the game, offering a new way to communicate that prioritises user sovereignty, reliability, and security. Here are three reasons why you should make the switch 👇

1. Decentralised apps don’t require trust.

Who do you trust? We rely on the people close to us because they have demonstrated that we’re able to do so. They keep our secrets, and wouldn’t act in a way that goes against our interests for their own personal gain. Those who we grant our trust have earned this privilege.

Centralised messaging apps ask for your trust, but have they earned it? The opposite might be true. Billions of people have fallen victim to data breaches in recent years and had their personal information compromised because they entrusted it to a company who stored all of that intimate data in a centralised database without adequate security.

Even if you’re using end-to-end encryption (PSA: you should be using end-to-end encryption), sensitive information about you and your conversations is still visible to the company that operates the servers that send, receive and store your messages. Things like who you are, who you’re talking to, as well as when, how often, and even where you’re sending messages—this information is entrusted to them.

Decentralised private messaging apps don’t require trust, because there is no centralised database hoovering up and storing this sensitive information. Session, for example, employs advanced metadata protection on its network to ensure—by design—that those who operate its servers, build and maintain the app, or try to snoop on the network are all unable to gather this information about its users.

2. Decentralised apps have no central point of failure.

When centralisation fails, everyone feels it.

Centralised messaging apps rely on a small number of servers—or sometimes even a single server—to send and receive your messages. This makes them more vulnerable to outages. When those servers go offline, so do you. We’ve all experienced the frustration of being unable to communicate with friends and family when an app goes down, and many users of secure messaging apps may rely on them to be able to communicate with safety. 

In recent years, massive global outages have taken some of the most widely used messaging platforms offline for hours or even days. These outages can be caused by server overloads, technical failures, or even cyberattacks targeting centralised infrastructure. In a world that relies heavily on real-time communication, such downtime can have critical consequences.

Decentralised messaging apps, by design, do not have a single point of failure. They operate across a distributed network of nodes, so even if one or several nodes go offline, the rest of the network can continue functioning as normal. A fire which broke out in an OVH data center—the largest provider of cloud servers to Sessions operators—once resulted in roughly 15% of the network going down.

Session users were not affected, and it’s estimated that around 30% of Session’s network (currently 500+ servers) would need to suffer downtime before the app would begin to function abnormally—and this would still not result in a total outage.

This design makes decentralised messaging apps inherently more resilient to outages and much better suited for the kind of reliability modern users demand. Instead of relying on one fragile hub, decentralised apps spread the load across a robust system of independent servers.

With decentralisation, your communication doesn’t hinge on the success of one company or a few vulnerable servers. It’s a network designed to endure, and that makes all the difference.

3. Decentralised apps put users back in control of their data.

Who controls your personal information?

In the centralised model of communication, the answer is simple: the company behind the app. Every photo, message, and interaction you share becomes their property to collect, analyse, and monetise. When you use a centralised messaging platform, you’re signing away control of your personal data to a corporation. 

Decentralised messaging apps flip this model on its head. Instead of entrusting your data to a corporation, the community of users and network operators retain ownership and control. There’s no company hoarding your messages or monetising your metadata. The power shifts away from centralised gatekeepers and back to the users, where it belongs.

The servers that store, send and receive messages on Session are operated by everyday users of the platform. And here’s the best part: if you want to, you can join the network too. Running a node is open to anyone, meaning you can directly participate in the network you rely on and help ensure its independence.

This isn’t just about protecting privacy—it’s about democratising the infrastructure of communication. Decentralised messaging apps empower you to take more control over your data by participating in the network, and freeing yourself from the grip of faceless tech giants. Instead of being products to be mined for data, users become stakeholders in a system that protects their personal information.

The future of messaging doesn’t belong to corporations—it belongs to the people who use it. When you use decentralised messaging apps, you’re not just sending a message. You’re making a statement: the ability to control your own data is not a privilege, it’s a right.