This. I know a lot of folks in the fediverse like Matrix, but the user experience feels like yet another platform that started with the platform architecture, and not the end user’s experience.

Then it gets adopted by a bunch of people who enjoy installing Hannah Montana Linux distros for fun, and no one else.

What you originally said was gibberish, but I digress.

I don't agree, and additionally when you say I'm wrong I have to pull the reason out of you with pincers.

The chat app is open source, so you can evaluate what it's doing with those messages for yourself.

yeah, evaluate what it does at the time of the audit.

uh, no? on smartphones, yes, but not on computers.

That's not true. Most operating systems at least have filesystem permissions, and on a lot of Linux distros you additionally get AppArmor or PolKit to further restrict what files a program can read/write.

I mentioned Linux specifically because something like this is the hardest to set up on Linux. I (wrongly) assumed that since you were complaining about it not existing, you were on a platform where setting these permissions up isn't straightforward. App-specific file-acess permissions are on MacOS out of the box as a configurable setting for all applications (in the system settings menu), and I'm pretty sure Windows 10/11 has something similar in its settings menu as well.

Edit:
Also, if we're being pedantic, this is also a setting on both Android and iOS, with Android displaying the option to change access pretty much every time you pick out a file.

but even just your chats on the phone

This is gibberish.

when you say I'm wrong I have to pull the reason out of you with pincers.

You don't. I've given it to you in plain English.

yeah, evaluate what it does at the time of the audit

...yes? They've also had several third-party professional audits.

This is gibberish.

I don't know what this means. you could have just said "fuck you", plainly, and it wouldn't have made less sense.

I mentioned Linux specifically because something like this is the hardest to set up on Linux. I (wrongly) assumed that since you were complaining about it not existing, you were on a platform where setting these permissions up isn't straightforward. App-specific file-acess permissions are on MacOS out of the box as a configurable setting for all applications (in the system settings menu), and I'm pretty sure Windows 10/11 has something similar in its settings menu as well.

Edit:
Also, if we're being pedantic, this is also a setting on both Android and iOS, with Android displaying the option to change access pretty much every time you pick out a file.

Also there are not many competitors to Matrix. Just XMPP for the most part.
SimpleX and Signal are not good at supporting chat rooms with large amounts of people. Telegram does it okay but isn’t decentralized.

App-specific file-acess permissions are on MacOS out of the box as a configurable setting for all applications (in the system settings menu), and I'm pretty sure Windows 10/11 has something similar in its settings menu as well.

I don't know about macos, but I doubt that it applies to software that was obtained outside of their app store.

on windows however, those settings only apply to UWP apps. not .exe and .bat and .msi and .ps programs, but .appx packages that you can install from the Microsoft Store. and installing something from the Microsoft Store does not mean that it'll be sandboxed, lots of regular .exe programs are also distributed there.

Also, if we're being pedantic, this is also a setting on both Android and iOS, with Android displaying the option to change access pretty much every time you pick out a file.

those are mobile operating systems, they have been designed with this in mind from the beginning. General purpose desktop computers are very different though, for better or worse. and, as I know, desktop computer users are still not a small minority

In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.

The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: https://matrix.to/#%2F!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn%3Amatrix.org%2F%24XpQe-vmtB7j0Uy1TPCvMVCSCW63Xxw_jwy3fflw7EMQ%3Fvia=matrix.org&via=element.io

https://paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cooked is fascinatingly incorrect

Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.

fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.

Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.

nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.

Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundation

Element has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)

At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.

No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.

Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.

No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).

Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.

wow.

the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is

so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing

this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.

In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:

Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable person

somewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth

it's ... not ... a simple messenger, if that helps?

SimpleX Chat – Many suggested this and I will explicitly recommend against it due to the founder's positions on various topics. This includes being anti-vaxx, believing COVID-19 was a hoax, trans- and homophobia, climate denial; In the SimpleX Groupchat he's also been seen basically bootlicking trump a couple times, but I've lost receipts to that

Unrelated to the main points I kind of always thought SimpleX seemed sketchy...

Didn't know it only applied to UWP apps on Windows. That does seem like a pretty big problem then.

I don't still have a Mac readily available to test with but afaik it is any application that uses Apple's packaging format. It could also be that it needs to be in the "Applications" folder, but I'm almost certain it isn't an App Store exclusive feature.