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.
  • 2910000@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    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

  • Sean Tilley@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    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.

  • supermurs@kbin.earth
    2·
    3 months ago

    For me Matrix is fine, I can use IRC, Whatsapp and Discord with it. But Element is not my cup of tea, especially with Firefox as it doesn’t play any videos other users are sharing. The same videos work fine with Cinny.

    • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      I can use IRC

      The fact that many Discord and IRC channels (servers?) block Matrix connections has drastically reduced its usefulness for me. When I was running my own Matrix server, I could have gotten around it by using a puppet, but Synapse is such a hog I had to shut it down, and most of the IRC rooms I want to use don’t allow Matrix proxies.

  • sunth1ef@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    From an outsiders perspective, element has never worked for me and never been stable enough to get anywhere close to discord. Joining servers is buggy AF and Element X is severely hobbied on mobile.

    I’ve been refusing to use discord for about 6-8 months and am often invites to join various discords by IRL friends and online communities. I wish Matrix / Element was a viable alternative but I’ve never been able to get it working for anythung other than DMs, and I’m already happy with Signal for that honestly.

    As a non developer I want to be sensitive to the amount of work involves, and the number of cooks in the kitchen, but the fact that we don’t have a FOSS- federated slack / discord killer app is leaving so much interaction on the table.

    I’ve heard of Revolt but it doesn’t seem to be there with encryption

  • Shape4985@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Iv tried matrix a couple times. I wanted to like it but couldnt get on with it.

    Signal and simplex are still my prefrence

  • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    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.

  • Trihilis@ani.socialEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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.

        • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.deEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          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

  • Mio@feddit.nuEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I am glad someone can admit it failed and we have to learn from this. I am just wondering what it takes to succeed.

    • Turret3857@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      start with a discord clone

      make it e2ee

      make it federated

      i feel like it shouldnt be this hard, but I’m not the one developing matrix, nor XMPP, nor the 3rd smaller option you the reader is wanting me to list that I am unaware of

  • edent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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.

  • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
    11·
    3 months ago

    The protocol is bloated to hell so third-party clients stand no chance, and the foundation spends more time bikeshedding or pissing away money than they do developing. It’s a doomed project.

          • InFerNo@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            The argument has always been, if when chat rooms are public, anyone can join and start logging the chats, encryption does nothing.

            It has the ability to connect over TLS, but that’s about it.

            I loved using it for its simplicity, except when using all the different flavours of nick registration (Q, NickServ, …).

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Slrpnk hosts an XMPP/Jabber for our users, mods and admins to communicate. Its worked pretty darn well for the past couple years, with very low resource needs.

        The clients are pretty slick now too, such as Cheogram or Monocles for mobile, and movim is an excellent web app with support for group calls.

        I’d certainly recommend it over Matrix/element.

        • muppeth@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          Not to mention you can run a server on anything pretty much and for surprisingly big amount of users. Toaster or potatoes will do just fine.

          • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            https://www.devever.net/~hl/xmpp-incident

            This article discusses some mitigations.

            You an also use a platform like simplex or the tor routing ones, but they aren’t going to offer the features of XMPP. It’s better to just not worry about it. This kind of attack is so difficult to defend against that it should be out of the threat model of the vast majority of users.

          • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Significant improvements to certificate pinning and validation have been added to all major XMPP clients as a result of this incident, but it should also be clear that hosting a server on infrastructure under control by an antagonist government (see also Signal) is a very bad idea and hard to mitigate against.

            • eleitl@lemmy.zipEnglish
              1·
              3 months ago

              End to end encryption between clients (also for groups) seems to partly address the issue of a bad server. As for self-hosting, any rented or cloud sevices are very vulnerable to an evil maid. So either in-house hosting or locked cages with tamper-proof hardware remain an option.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Signal doesn’t suffer anything worse than DoS if a hostile party controls the central service. That’s its point and role. It’s based on the assumption that such hostile parties as governments don’t like DoS’ing central services, they prefer to be invisible.

              For other points and roles other solutions exist. One can’t make an application covering them all, that never happens.

              Briar again (I’ve finally read on it and installed it, and I love how it works and also the authors’ plans on the future possibilities based on the same protocols, but not for IM, say, there’s an article discussing possibility of RPC over those, which, for example, can give us something like the Web ; I mean, those plans are ambitious and if I want them to succeed so much, I should look for ways to defeat my executive dysfunction and distractions and learn Java). Except it would be cool if it allowed to toss data over untrusted parties, say, now if two Briar users in the same group are not in each other’s range, but there’s a third Briar user not in that group between them, their group won’t synchronize (provided they don’t have Internet connectivity). If one could allow allocating some space for such piggybacked data, or create some mesh routing functionality, then it would become a bit cooler.

              • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
                0·
                3 months ago

                You are very naive if you think that is all the US government can do in regards to Signal, but suit yourself 🤷