this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Can we make Matrix not suck first?
Technologically, very cool, much wow. But UI/UX wise, it's pretty terrible. I managed to convince 5 friends to move to Matrix from Discord. They lasted like 3 days before going back to Discord. One guy couldn't even figure out how to post a message and have it be decrypted by everyone in the group. We just kept seeing "Message could not be decrypted" or whatever over and over again. We had to fall back to Discord to reach him.
They probably won't be taking recommendations from me anymore. :|
(We used Element X clients.)
I beg to differ, they use Cloudflare, metadata leaks, E2EE chats are not properly encrypted, the servers can see your name and emojis reactions, it has all the problems that come from federation (you can't control your data beyond your server), their server package synapse is slow as hell even with a good server, specs wise, no plans to support Tor homeservers ( I believe they removed Tor support if I remember correctly )...
yeah..privacy and security wise, it's almost a disaster.. But I'll still recommend it over things like Slack
Selling Matrix as as discord alternative is not honest, if you ask me. A real alternative would be something like Revolt.chat
I agree. Revolt is a good alternative to Discord. Matrix does not feel the same as Discord, but just a WhatsApp alternative that is decentralized and federated.
Nrver heard of revolt before, cab i get a run down
Basically a discord-like that you can self host. You'd need to create a new account for each new instance/hosted server you want to join
So, not federated/distributed?
Nope, unfortunately. Seems to be very useful for corporations that want to do away with MS Teams and Slack
The Element X client has been much nicer for people I've found, and I've been "onboarding" users one by one making sure they get in and they can chat. I agree the verification is an annoying step, and all of the checks, I tell people that's just getting encryption set up, proving that it's secure. Once I get them going, they've been pretty stable on it.
I honestly don't think federated architecture is valuable for a chat room service.
while "Could not decrypt message" is the n1 meme for matrix, i haven't seen it happen in a long while, maybe a year. synapse and element x are quite good at this point, you should try matrix again
im not an element fan, company is a bit spoiled and sassy, but they stopped adding features and went all in on polishing recently. fair, as they're trying to sell themselves for national deploys
I saw it just yesterday.
And a week ago.
And a month ago.
And I had it myself 2 months ago, fixed by going to the online element client that just happened to still be "verified" after a while of no use and then I could verify the rest of my clients. I would be SoL if I didn't have one of my original sessions upon making the account years ago still. Interesting system.
That was in the 1 encrypted chat I am a part of.
99% of rooms aren't encrypted so are completely and totally insecure anyway. Which I guess is fine for community discussion spaces.
I like fluffychat but it doesn't have threading. Element is also fine and what I have to use on desktop because neochat fucks up so much, but I can't use it on my phone because it causes an extra 1%/hour drain on my phone battery in the background which is insane. Uninstalled it a year or two ago.
key backups are a thing: element tries to make you save the recovery phrase. if you lost your recovery phrase and all sessions, you can still rotate keys and recover the account, just no encrypted history. it seems you're not familiar with matrix, not that the system is flawed
if this is true, you wouldn't even be SoL if you lost your session: just rotate keys. very big rooms are unencrypted: what value does e2ee provide when the other end is 10k+ people? any of these may ne untrustworthy, you're just paying extra infra cost. also, if 99% of your rooms are unencrypted, how do you keep seeing encryption issues?
these statements seem excessively dramatic and in opposition with each other
you mention neochat and fluffychat. i explicitly said element, and element x on mobile
im rather upset at the fact that we have basically no choice: dendrite is getting left behind, construct is abandoned, conduit is weird and conduwuit is not super reassuring. on the clientside, fluffy mostly works but uses old crypto, cinny is slow and lacks a ton of stuff, nheko is a mess, fractal is really underfeatured and i don't even know what neochat is. using matrix basically boils down to "synapse+element(x)" or "lmao have fun fixing stuff"
it seems from your replies you lack understanding of how things work and are nonetheless choosing community clients rather than the stuff element does. super valid, i encourage you to do so, just maybe cast your judgment on the actual stuff you're using and not the whole project itself
i'd like to close saying that your anectodal experience is not of much value here: you are having issues? i'm not, and neither is all those i'm communicating with. what gives? it's instead observable that newer developments address the issues you're mentioning: transparent encryption and simplified sliding sync
element is entitled, ignoring feedback and constantly playing the victim. its practices with the protocol are despicable.
the protocol, however, works