Giving Up on Element & Matrix.org
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there should be a more efficient re-implementation but i don't have time to even attempt that
Conduit is a Rust implementation that runs OK, but obviously doesn't have feature parity
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Can't agree on Discord being hot garbage, unless you're specifically talking about how monetisation has creeped its way into it.
However, with Vencord I don't have to see any of that shit, while also having a far more functional and feature rich client.
Of course, a FOSS, potentially federated alternative would be greatly preferred, but it must have at least the basic functions of Discord.
None of the popular/successful apps are bad.
They usually have great ui/ux and are being actively developed or at least maintained. Think google maps, apple wallet, or of course discord. What is hot garbage, however, is having to accept massive privacy violations if you use them. Vencord unfortunately does not mitigate that.
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running your own server is super lightweight.
Not IME. Are you running Synapse? Gigabytes of disk usage and memory leaks requiring restarts.
I've been running the same matrix instance since ubuntu 18.04lts, just upgraded the virtual machine along the ride, so that has to be +6 years it's been running 24/7.
I have not once rebooted my server due to performance reasons (like a mem leak). And like last 4 years I've ran the instance virtualized on a hp thin client, lately on a hp t640.
While I understand the criticism towards synapse being a complex and slow, and element being slow-ish, I don't feel justified saying synapse would need any restarts in general. At least I have never restarted it in 6+ years and my instance has been working without those required restarts.
Yeah, I miss the irc, too. I still use it via my matrix instance.
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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.
Yeah. I an hosting a homeserver for my ttrpg groups, but it doesn't have any federation enwbled at all, and sign ups are invite-only.
The amount of work needed to moderate a public instance, especially with the lacking tools available, seems crazy. Also, I don't love it that New Vector has an implementation for an admin console, that seems to be available exclusively for paying subscribers to the enterprise version of their element server suite.
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Revolt is a self hosted discord clone
The lack of group voice calls is what mainly kept me from adopting that. Hope they get that working soon.
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We really need to stop abandoning existing foss projects and thinking a whole new thing needs to be invented. Free and open-source software is not a product, it doesn't abide by the same rules and relationships that proprietary tech does.
It's more organic. It's also a commons that we can continue to draw on, and reshape. If I recall correctly, there were something like three different vector graphic editors from the same codebase before Inkscape managed to be the one that gained traction.
Matrix isn't perfect, but abandoning it just to reinvent it all over again just because some people really need a thing that works like Discord, even though Discord is absolute hot garbage; is just going to re-create all the same problems. Matrix today is better than it was two years ago. And Matrix in a year will be better from now.
What I don't like about Matrix is that it's most visible homeserver and client implementations feel like they are being developed as a product by New Vector Ltd., not a community project.
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I don’t really worry about that. I treat it like natural conversation, or traditional chat rooms. I mean I don’t need a recap when I show up at a party. I just jump in. I’ve never heard of a bouncer, but I think it would turn it into more of a feed than a conversation, which is the opposite of what I want.
I’m tired of feeds and timelines. AOL chat rooms were my formative internet years, and I liked that. I think the old style of internet communication is better than the feed silos we have now. Besides, I hardly ever go back and look at older convos in other spaces. I usually hit mark all as read when I open the app.
The bouncer is just the name for the technology that maintains your connection when your client disconnects.
I'm kind of socially awkward, so I really value being able to "read the room" and see what people were talking about before I joined. I have IRC set up so that when I open it up, I see the previous 40 lines or so of dialog from before I connected. (This is a setting you can adjust on the bouncer).
I could achieve something similar by joining a room and then waiting a few minutes, but sometimes the room is very slow and no one posts, etc., it's nice to just always be able to look at the scroll back when you log on.
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I've used matrix for a year now and it works, but it seems slow.
Lots of people tried to self-host it and reported it uses too much RAM for what it does. (It allegedly uses 1GB or more of ram even if it only has 1-2 users)
Efficient software is a must. Software must not waste resources simply because "they are there".
That's my biggest gripe with matrix.Disclaimer: i've not tried to host matrix myself, so i could be wrong here.
Matrix 2.0 is much faster, but seems like they've been building it for a decade.
The app is out, but still no Spaces support; which is what makes it a competitor to Discord.
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I don’t know why people don’t use irc, I’m in it daily and it’s busier than Matrix, and even busier than some Discord servers I’m in. And there’s mobile clients. There’s even way less bots and spam
I think IRC wins by being around the longest, but also being dead simple to set up and use.
I tried using Matrix and it just honestly frazzled my head a little. I know it's just a few extra steps to get registered, but it honestly feels like a few extra bits of friction to what amounts to trying to join a big social circle.
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We really need to stop abandoning existing foss projects and thinking a whole new thing needs to be invented. Free and open-source software is not a product, it doesn't abide by the same rules and relationships that proprietary tech does.
It's more organic. It's also a commons that we can continue to draw on, and reshape. If I recall correctly, there were something like three different vector graphic editors from the same codebase before Inkscape managed to be the one that gained traction.
Matrix isn't perfect, but abandoning it just to reinvent it all over again just because some people really need a thing that works like Discord, even though Discord is absolute hot garbage; is just going to re-create all the same problems. Matrix today is better than it was two years ago. And Matrix in a year will be better from now.
I agree with you, my main issue with Matrix is that it is a pain to self-host at the moment.
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Giving Up on Element & Matrix.org
The Matrix.org network has great potential, but after years of dealing with glitches, slow performance, poor UX, and one too many failures, I’m done with it.
マリウス (xn--gckvb8fzb.com)
This url is amazing lol
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IRC is dead simple. You cant compare something like matrix to it in terms of resource usage thats not fair. 1GB of ram usage if fine for a server application that does messaging, pictures and video.
So we need to bring back IRC, if someone doesn't know how it works - well, I don't want to talk with such person. Bring back gatekeeping
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This url is amazing lol
It's
マリウス.combut the "internationalized domain name" system pynycodes it to gibberish to prevent spoofing urls using lookalike characters.Like
https://xn--mzon-43db.com/isаmаzon.com. Those are cyrillic lowercase 'а', not 'a'.[EDIT] The blog itself actually has a great article explaining it.
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I agree with you, my main issue with Matrix is that it is a pain to self-host at the moment.
GitHub - spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy: 🐳 Matrix (An open network for secure, decentralized communication) server setup using Ansible and Docker
🐳 Matrix (An open network for secure, decentralized communication) server setup using Ansible and Docker - spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
GitHub (github.com)
Honestly, with this, it is easier than ever. Great documentation !
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I agree that the UI for discord sucks shit, however my thinking is aligned with what another commenter said, its what people already know and are used to. Trying to make anything new will turn users off. I'm very open to being proven wrong about that assumption though. I'd love for a foss project to have better UI/UX than discord.
The UI is not that important. Something a bit similar to Discord in appearance and experience is doable in plenty of available UI toolkits and libraries and frameworks and whatever.
The system itself is important, so that it would be functional with federation, yet not as prone to fragmentation as XMPP, yet efficient.
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The lack of group voice calls is what mainly kept me from adopting that. Hope they get that working soon.
I swear there were calls when I was testing it a year or two ago. Guess not then.
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I agree with you, my main issue with Matrix is that it is a pain to self-host at the moment.
Isn't everything a pain to selfhost?
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Can't agree on Discord being hot garbage, unless you're specifically talking about how monetisation has creeped its way into it.
However, with Vencord I don't have to see any of that shit, while also having a far more functional and feature rich client.
Of course, a FOSS, potentially federated alternative would be greatly preferred, but it must have at least the basic functions of Discord.
A large part of it is the obnoxious monetization and general enshittification and privacy violations, but that's not all. There are a number of usability annoyances. If I've been away from Discord for a little while and try to continue where I left off in a thread on a server, it never properly preserves where I last stopped reading. There are often times when I get notifications but it won't actually take me to the relevant message, and that can even result in situations where the ping just gets lost entirely.
Then there's things inherent in Discord's design and how people use it. It's become a tool that people have decided is a convenient replacement for chats, wikis, and forums - but it's a shittier version of all of those things. Pinned messages are such a tucked away and half-baked feature. The fact that people are using Discord both to organize and discuss projects - as well as using that same space to host documentation or other critical knowledge-bases has made information significantly less accessible. I don't want to join someone's niche club just to "learn more." If I want to read something I would rather just go to a wiki on the actual open web.
Discord is hot garbage ultimately for the same reasons as Facebook. It's trying to be everything to everyone, and dropping a black box on the open web by doing so. It's just another example of people trading convenience for actually using the appropriate tools for the kind of job they're trying to do.
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I don’t really worry about that. I treat it like natural conversation, or traditional chat rooms. I mean I don’t need a recap when I show up at a party. I just jump in. I’ve never heard of a bouncer, but I think it would turn it into more of a feed than a conversation, which is the opposite of what I want.
I’m tired of feeds and timelines. AOL chat rooms were my formative internet years, and I liked that. I think the old style of internet communication is better than the feed silos we have now. Besides, I hardly ever go back and look at older convos in other spaces. I usually hit mark all as read when I open the app.
Problem is then you miss important info, for example if friends are talking about a game server they're running and post the connection details, or if they plan an event with a location and time to meet, if you don't have a bouncer and were offline then you can't see those messages.
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I'm completely afraid of logging into fedora.im now. It's so engulfed in spam, not even normal phishing spam. Absolutely horrifying spam, like gore and killing and other deranged shit.
I had to move back to matrix.org and abandon my account.
Don't get your hopes up, I deleted my account on matrix.org because of that same spam, and there's no way to mass ignore invites to the hundreds of rooms from all the spam accounts they let run rampant.
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