I’m thinking of moving away from US-based messengers.
Signal, telegram etc have the same problematic architectures. Of those kinds of solutions, I like Threema best, but nobody uses them (which is only a problem because of their architecture).
So I wanted to get a solution with a decentralized architecture, pretty much like the fediverse.
From what I can see, the fediverse activityPub with MLS layer project (to enable fediverse end-to-end encrypted messaging) is still in the functional documentation stage.
So, what do you think of Element as a messenger (which uses matrix protocol)?
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There is also SimpleX. Its decentraliced, secure and has no account or user ids whatsoever. Looks nice and is easy to use aswell.
Different POV:
I work on large Matrix-based state infrastructure which includes collaboration with Element. In my experience their team has integrity and is competent, though the UX aspects of especially Element X could progress way faster. Imo this is in part due to the fact that their key customer segments are no longer private individual users but rather large public bureaucracies in Europe going after digital sovereignty.
Imo the key point is: You are not choosing Element but Matrix. Element is just the most well-known of many client-side messengers implementing the open standard Matrix. While Element is very active in the Matrix foundation, they cannot unilaterally change said standard.
Imo moving to matrix is a great move for personal sovereignty, even if the protocol itself is at times a little resource hungry and quirky.
This all sounds very promising. Especially that they cannot unilaterally change the standard and that they have stable and high-volume clients. I’ll put together a list of client-side messengers implementing matrix.
https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
The matrix foundation tracks components (clients, servers, SDKs, etc.) and their respective maturity and repos on its website.
For mobile devices, Fluffychat is the main mature alternative to Element X. And Fluffychat actually puts private use cases first afaik and looks/feels more like Signal/WhatsApp as compared to Element X.
Using element with my bf. Its good
After hosting Matrix for eight years, I’ve largely given up on it. It is resource intensive, slow and always seemed unreliable.
I actually got into hosting XMPP because of that, as I really wanted something decentralised that works well.
Here’s a flyer from the Digital Independence Day (that was recently proclaimed by the Chaos Computer Club and a lot of other organisations in Germany) that shows two simple ways you can start using it:
English: https://shop.digitalcourage.de/files/xmpp-folder-engl-druck.pdf
German: https://shop.digitalcourage.de/files/xmpp-folder-Druck.pdf
French: https://shop.digitalcourage.de/files/xmpp-folder-F-druck.pdfIf any server goes down, I will not have much of an issue, as long as it is not mine. If it is a server my contacts use, I will only lose contact to a couple people, until those have access again.
It’s a very resilient network and that’s why I enjoy using it. It uses the same cryptography as Signal, the adaptation is called OMEMO.
Also, the clients run even on old phones, as they do not need a lot of resources, which helps when people have little money and also saves the environment.
It’s reliable and just works, I like those qualities in software.
Hosted matrix for a while. It is resource greedy and the message retention was/is a mess.
Honestly, I don’t see how my folks will ever switch. WhatsApp and Signal are conceptually much easier to grasp and use.
Currently I’m glad, whenever somebody switches to signal (and I choose to fight one battle at a time).
I know what you mean. The requirement is that friends and family will use it, too.
How long ago was your experience with matrix?
One issue is: As rooms are decentralised, if someone posts illegal content and your server downloads it, that could lead to legal trouble, especially as you’d then also host it.
The encryption often fails, leading to the meme “Message cannot be decrypted”.
Self-hosted and bridged: half a year.
I quit that experiment and registered an account at a generic instance. Needless to say: it is only me and some public rooms.
None of my peers engages me there. They really don’t want to waste time with registration, backup keys, and concepts.
https://digital-justice.com/articles/skip-signal.html There’s also a lengthy GitHub comment on that topic, but I dropped the link.
Deltachat is better for family/friends chats: https://piefed.zip/c/privacy/p/763572/looking-for-a-federated-alternative-to-signal-as-they-might-have-to-comply-with-chatcontro
For IRC replacement, Matrix indeed
Why is delta (using email protocol) better than element (using matrix protocol for messaging)? I’m a bit surprised
Matrix’s biggest issues are
- management of keys/verification of sessions
- inconsistent experiences across clients (even official ones, like Element and Element X).
The post I linked has more details about both of those points.
Also, in countries with heavy internet censorship, email mostly just works. I’ve heard DeltaChat works in China.
You see Russian people on the DeltaChat forum as well
I’ve used matrix on my own server since 2019. From the get go, I knew no one will immediately hop on to another service, as people are using mainly whatsapp where I’m living. Thats why matrix is really nice, I can have all those different IMs bridged to my instance, like I had back in the day I had everything bridged to irc.
So I mostly use element to chat people on irc, matrix and on whatsapp.
Element’s awfully named. It’s not as blazingly optimized nor as good (of course!) as whatsapp or signal. But it’s good enough for my use. It’s okay.
Do you have good resources to get started on setting up the bridges? I looked into it a couple months back and gave up after spending too much time reading contradicting and outdated tutorials.
Also I read that the WhatsApp bridge will break the E2E encryption for everyone in a chat, ist that true?
I’ve been using Matrix for a few years now, locally hosting my own server and having my family and some in the extended family on there. After the switch to their new Element X clients I consider it to have been smooth sailing. Additionally, since I run my own server I also bridge in other protocols (Signal, Meta, IRC … ) resulting in having all of my communication in one client.
If you don’t want to host your own server, you can either use matrix dot org which can be a bit laggy, or try to find another one of the servers allowing public signup (there aren’t that many).
