I’ve been moving myself and my friends and even clients to Element, but I recently came across blogs about them helping onboard German, US armed forces, and NATO. This is shared with pride everywhere. And Element also goes so far as to say that they “choose who they work with” and not just everyone. And how they don’t work with governments sanctioned by the US, EU, and UK or governments that might “cause large scale harm” or something to that effect. But NATO is a harmless puppy I guess.
I’m so conflicted right now. This is both a rant post and an ask for advice and suggestions.
First of all if it’s open source and secure it doesn’t matter who made it. The instruments of capital will bring about it’s own destruction and all that.
My problem with Matrix/Element is that it’s shit. My online friends put up with it because they’re privacy nerds but my IRL friend group all said that it’s shit. They’ve mostly moved to WhatsApp and I can’t blame them, because it works. Heck even some of those privacy nerds prefer to use the IRC that’s bridged to our matrix chat.
With Element, notifications hardly work, sending files doesn’t consistently work, calls are definitely not reliable. And they do not bother to make a stable bug-free version, instead they focus on adding even more features for the next release. There’s an issue from 2016 that’s one of the most liked and requested features: multiple accounts. They closed the issue, and opened another one they can ignore. By now Element should be a stable piece of software and it’s slow and horrible. And I say this as someone who hosts two separate matrix homeservers.
Matrix being how shit it is feels like proper fifth column stuff. Entrench yourself deeply in the private messaging market, initial product shows promise, then let it remain unusable so that any normie who is not a masochist uses centralised and/or proprietary service and becomes sceptical of open source software.
I have the same feeling about it. And I even told one of my normie friends this theory and he said it’s definitely possible.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
I’ve given up on Element a long time ago. I’ve been bouncing between Nheko and NeoChat since those are the most mature Matrix clients that aren’t bloated webapps.
What bugs me more is encryption still is kind of a mess across devices and clients. Also I hate how there still isn’t any alternative Matrix Server that’s not Synapse or Dendrite and isn’t abandoned, doesn’t suck, is relatively fast and supports at least most of the Protocol. Can’t even really blame people because I’ve tried writing my own Matrix Server and Client before but I eventually gave up because the protocol is what I call “A JSON clusterfuck”. Why can’t the protocol be as simple as IRC? Why does it always have to be JSON over HTTP?
Is there something you would recommend? I’m definitely not going back to WhatsApp. Signal works. But the centralization makes me feel iffy
If you think that’s bad, wait ’till you hear what the Lemmy open source project is associated with 👻 ☭
What is it?
The Synapse drama is actually game over for Element/Matrix IMO. Move your friends to DeltaChat. It’s not a pain in the ass, it’s really snappy. XMPP is better for replacing the Matrix chatroom here for instance. I don’t have the energy to explain the drama or why. Go to the main Delta Chat developer’s fediverse page for more info
I’m not sure how robust it is as I have used it little, but Movim (an XMPP social media service akin to ActivityPub) seems like a much better option than Mastodon, various blogging services, and most IM apps. Really easy to have encrypted social media and then have a publicly shareable link through it. Check it out
XMPP is the answer. Alternatively, there is Session. I have never understood the obsession with Matrix (which allegedly had some Israeli involvement in its creation).
XMPP is cool but Delta Chat is the good shit
Can you send large-ish (~5Gb) files over Delta Chat? That was one of my favorite things about self hosting matrix was to be able to dump raw clips from my phone into a chat.
No but XMPP is fine for that. I use both of them. DeltaChat has a way to send larger files in smaller chunks and store them in a persistent cloud drive type UI through the webapps it introduces.
The webapps are really nice and actually work a lot better than all of the Matrix integrations. They may look rustic but I actually use them for almost all of my notes and todo lists now lol. It has a very valuable place in my stack because of how I use it to sync notes and files between devices.
I should be a little more measured in my hyping of DeltaChat lol it’s just surprisingly good for how in-development it is already, soon to add location sharing and video chats, they’re in testing currently.
Multiple devices is a little quirky as you either need to make a new account (instantaneously) to communicaye with the same contacts and yourself, use the backup (doesn’t have a password), or do the transfer thing where you need both devices on the same wifi network.
Again I have tried to stress test Matrix and I did hang onto it for a while to do exactly what you’re describing but I just moved on because of the issues I mentioned and losing old messages even while doing everything right. It’s some shit with device key storage I think, shit can get fucked up. Maybe a more competent person with a tech job/unemployment would do better than me haha
Also worth mentioning that Matrix does not encrypt the images while they’re on the home server itself and has a bunch of creepy issues like that. Homeservers have some weird privileges and attacks they can pull off on rooms, although in edge cases like when a room is totally orphaned and loses all participants.
Delta is notable for how you can delete all of your stuff off of the server after receiving it. I choose device based storage + higher security + the backup option over Matrix’s false promise of preserving old messages.
Matrix clients were insanely buggy and would still show rooms after my friends and I left them and stuff like that?? Augh. Also Delta lets you set a background image for impeccable atmosphere. Webapps open in new windows on desktop so it’s nice to throw stuff in them on mobile and come back when you’re ready to work at a full desk.
I think you should pick your fights. Matrix and Element are fully open source, which is already miles better than something like Meta’s suite of apps. Focus on improving people’s class consciousness and things naturally flow from there…
I have bad news, they are currently going through the process of closed source enclosure rather than fixing an important broken part of their software. Look up the Synapse Element drama. It’s so bad
I’m still gonna use Matrix via Matterbridge (it bridges everything check it out) because I like to diversify my options, but I’m not bug reporting their cruddy main client while they develop custom clients for NATO and other spooky organizations.
This isn’t about moralizing really, it’s a question of whether it’s worth trading convenience and access, and using up an amount of other people’s EXTREMELY FINITE patience to get them to at least add redundancy for their main social network online by figuring out a new app. People really hate using Matrix. It feels slow, it often loses all your messages. I have never lost old messages with Delta Chat, it can use traditional email servers & accounts in many cases (check the list on their site), and the backup system is easy even if it’s a little tucked into the UI.
Matrix has repeatedly lost my older messages for seemingly no reason, on the same device and everything, and on top of that randomly will not let me use my backups. I use a password manager! I know I did not use the wrong password on them! I would rather just have XMPP or Delta Chat’s device management than that haunted nightmare LOL. It’s so laggy!!! If you have like 3 voice messages or files on the screen it is visibly high latency. It is often high latency for seemingly no reason at all. It makes my phone hot and my computer chug. Some clients don’t properly implement encryption!
It takes too much energy to even describe what is wrong with Matrix! My patience has run out already
