Giving Up on Element & Matrix.org
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The thing is... What alternatives are there? Signal can't be trusted (on the very same website there is an article about it). I'm not using closed source alternatives, Simplex is kinda shady too tbh and I'm not even sure I could get anyone to use it.
I don't like Matrix/Element either but sadly its the best open source chat solution we have.
I forgot to add nextcloud talk!
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I just want a self-hostable open-source alternative to the shitty closed-source IM systems I'm forced to use
I'm sticking with Matrix for now, hopefully some of the issues I've had will get ironed out
Nextcloud talk?
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But they both closed source protocols locked down to specific corp
But locked in a way where nice third party clients could still interact with them. I never used official clients after a time.
That seems to have gone away.
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I agree with all this. The thing which caused me to uninstall was suddenly being pushed lots of abusive message with disturbing contents.
When I complained about it, Matrix told me that my public complaints were hurting the ecosystem and I should be quiet.
I had a wild ride with matrix, originally wanting to run a node on my server. That did not turn out well, because I was a bit stupid and just assumed there would be more admin/mod tools out of the box. As it turned out, I had inadvertently allowed spam/abuse accounts on my node without even noticing, because naive as I was, I assumed my admin-level account would get informed of stuff like user registrations and abuse reports in the standard Element frontend. As a bonus, when I checked what was supposedly the official matrix support channel, it was repeatedly getting spammed with CSAM and gore at the time. That was when I realised, that it definitely was not the ecosystem for me, and running a node without experience had been a pretty stupid idea on my end.
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Does it let you be logged in as both ?
If I want to send and receive messages from another account, I have to press 2 buttons to switch to it. Otherwise, I still get desktop notifications from all of them, I think.
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I tried it, joined a couple rooms. Wanted to leave those public rooms but I kept getting notifications of rooms I already left.
Very wonky experience, so I dropped it and I use deltaChat now for my Tech-aware contacts
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XMPP is still an option
That is what the author said they switch to, but TBH XMPP also has issues with MFA and messages frequently not being decrypted (using OMEMO) and 'unencrypted metadata'.
I wouldn't say that it works better than Matrix, it just has some different strengths and weaknesses.
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The thing is... What alternatives are there? Signal can't be trusted (on the very same website there is an article about it). I'm not using closed source alternatives, Simplex is kinda shady too tbh and I'm not even sure I could get anyone to use it.
I don't like Matrix/Element either but sadly its the best open source chat solution we have.
Why don't people trust Signal?
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Why don't people trust Signal?
Its a 18 months old but OP means this on the same site. https://マリウス.com/if-you-must-use-signal-use-molly/
The blogger also stopped using proton mail. So idk. Seems to be their thing atm.
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The IRC (Biboumi) and Discord bridges (slidge.im) for XMPP work still fine and running your own server is super lightweight.
running your own server is super lightweight.
Not IME. Are you running Synapse? Gigabytes of disk usage and memory leaks requiring restarts.
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I am glad someone can admit it failed and we have to learn from this.
I am just wondering what it takes to succeed. -
The article author went back to XMPP, which does appear to be the best option currently.
In what universe is XMPP better than Matrix?
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The thing is... What alternatives are there? Signal can't be trusted (on the very same website there is an article about it). I'm not using closed source alternatives, Simplex is kinda shady too tbh and I'm not even sure I could get anyone to use it.
I don't like Matrix/Element either but sadly its the best open source chat solution we have.
Going back to TS3 and IRC. They never left
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In what universe is XMPP better than Matrix?
XMPP is significantly less decentralized, allowing them to """cut corners""" compared to Matrix protocol implementation, and scale significantly better. (In heavy quotes, as XMPP isn't really cutting corners, but true decentralization requires more work to achieve seemingly "the same result")
An XMPP or IRC channel with a few thousand users is no problem, wheras Matrix can have problems with that. On the other hand, any one Matrix homeserver going down does not impact users that aren't specifically on that homeserver, whereas XMPP is centralized enough that it can take down a whole channel.
Meanwhile IRC is a 90s protocol that doesn't make any sense in the modern world of mainly mobile devices.
XMPP also doesn't change much, the last proper addition to the protocol (from what I can tell, on the website) was 2024-08-30 https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0004.html
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Nextcloud talk?
I'm not sure how much it would make sense for me as I don't use Nextcloud for anything else
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Its a 18 months old but OP means this on the same site. https://マリウス.com/if-you-must-use-signal-use-molly/
The blogger also stopped using proton mail. So idk. Seems to be their thing atm.
I started reading the article but didn’t finish. This guy is a fool. He’s bitching about vendor lock in? The data isn’t supposed to be portable. That’s the point.
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I agree with all this. The thing which caused me to uninstall was suddenly being pushed lots of abusive message with disturbing contents.
When I complained about it, Matrix told me that my public complaints were hurting the ecosystem and I should be quiet.
Oh fuck that culty nonsense!
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I had a wild ride with matrix, originally wanting to run a node on my server. That did not turn out well, because I was a bit stupid and just assumed there would be more admin/mod tools out of the box. As it turned out, I had inadvertently allowed spam/abuse accounts on my node without even noticing, because naive as I was, I assumed my admin-level account would get informed of stuff like user registrations and abuse reports in the standard Element frontend. As a bonus, when I checked what was supposedly the official matrix support channel, it was repeatedly getting spammed with CSAM and gore at the time. That was when I realised, that it definitely was not the ecosystem for me, and running a node without experience had been a pretty stupid idea on my end.
I have to wonder if there is a major commercial interest in that though.
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How about jabber/XMPP
How active are communities on these nowadays?
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I always liked the concept of Matrix, and still actively use it, but there's some serious jank. Synapse is generally bloated and not fun to run an instance, Dendrite is perpetually in Beta, and the clients themselves range from adequate to awful. The default Element client on Android is so broken for me that I'm forced to use Element X, because I can't even log in with Element.
It's disappointing, but there's a ton of issues that aren't so easy to resolve. New Vector and the Element Foundation are basically two separate entities that have some kind of hard split between them, neither of which seems to have the money necessary to support comprehensive development. The protocol is said to be bloated and overtly complex, and trying to develop a client or a server implementation is something of a nightmare.
I want to see Matrix succeed, I think a lot of people see the potential of what it could be. I'm not sure it'll ever get there.