Here’s Matrix CEOs answer to this article: https://lobste.rs/c/jekh0n – according to him the article is absurd amounts of FUD
Cooked al dente?
With a bit of green pesto and chianti.
I find it really frustrating that supporters of Open Protocols appear to live in cognitive dissonance of both wanting to be “used by everyone” and “to be a small gated community”.
You can’t keep money out forever and with that does come influence which I know. But eventually wouldn’t you like to talk to your mother on a protocol you trust, with a client she understands?
Yeah… well, it seems to me that Matrix is potentially there. I mean I could install Element X on my parents’ phones, set it up with some account and be done with it. It would be as good as signal and whatsapp from an UX perspective. And I could then chat with them with any of the existing dozens of Matrix clients.
The worst problem, if you can call it that, currently is that Signal is good enough.
All in all, I think reading through all these messages makes me feel like doubling down on Matrix. It is currently a very passable IRC, Signal and Slack replacement and the only remaining problem is that those things already exist.
(Discord doesn’t need replacing, just destroying)
Here’s Matrix CEOs answer to this article: https://lobste.rs/c/jekh0n – good discussion in that thread in general
That’s like saying POP3 is cooked.
Is anyone else using Delta chat as an alternative? I can’t fault their idea of basing their chat app on the well established email system.
Delta chat is hilariously slow. It’s less of an instant messenger and moreover next business day messenger. That’s ignoring the problems you’ll have running it on your own infrastructure.
SimpleX Chat – Many suggested this and I will explicitly recommend against it due to the founder’s positions on various topics. This includes being anti-vaxx, believing COVID-19 was a hoax, trans- and homophobia, climate denial; In the SimpleX Groupchat he’s also been seen basically bootlicking trump a couple times, but I’ve lost receipts to that.
I did not know this. I’ve seen people recommend SimpleX on lemmy too, but probably they didn’t know.
So happy the article linked to the Fediverse post, immediately liked and boosted it.
Never used SimpleX much really but will be immediately uninstalling it. Saw the guy’s tweets, he’s fucking insane, and retweets RFK Jr 🤢. Will do my best to inform others.
Me neither, this is actually disgusting, immediately uninstalled, a founder that has these views most likely shouldn’t be trusted with your data, anyway.
This should be an awareness post on some tech communities
Thank you so, so, so, so much for saying this!
Is that it? We stop using better programs because we disagree with the creator’s views?
What a disgusting, childish world some of these people live in.
“I was going to buy that house, but the owner’s views made me reconsider. I decided to go with something worse.”
Yes, unfortunately that is the current reality. Note also the subtle hints this article points to: if you disagree with any of the tenents of our clique, you’re evil. In this case, Matrix uses capitalistic toolsets, which implies it is evil, and you should rather use an unfinished alternative because it’s made a by a trans person which is virtuous.
Although I don’t totally oppose judging people because of their views (shaming has been and can be a very useful for improving societies), I wonder if software written by such people should be. Seems to me that we don’t have the abundance of software yet that would allow doing that.
Especially I’m wary of judging people for being dumb in applications like Twitter that use dark patterns to entice them into being dumb. In some way it feels to me like punching down, like blaming the victim.
This attitude has worked so well for allowing the current crop of tech billionaires to grow and cement their influence over the entire world. If people would just stop using their platforms when they hear the CEO’s batshit views then they would be nobodies.
The SimpleX Chat is AGPL. If the founder is problematic, one can fork it and avoid reinventing what has already been made.
go on then
Views that seriously harm or endanger other people are dangerous.
If the founder would have opposing views in e.g. should we narrow down the car roads in cities and widen the pedestrian walks - ok. I think there’s a lot to this question, I think pedestrian walks should be wider, cars are dangerous, etc. But this is not as dangerous as:
“Do you deny scientific evidence that COVID is real and a real danger to a lot of humans”
Are you asking if I insist that the minds behind my secure private chat have some moral standing and common sense? One would hope so. I wouldn’t trust encryption made by anti-vaxer more than I would trust a plane put tougher by flat-earther. I don’t want to be the hero of the next leopard eat my face song.
I wouldn’t trust encryption made by anti-vaxer more than…
Important to note: SimpleX Chat has gone through two security audits.
I wouldn’t trust encryption made by anti-vaxer
My understanding of encryption is that the point is that you don’t have to trust the people doing it. You just have to trust the security research community that proved that the algorithms/protocols work. Or if you’re a hardcore security guy yourself, you can review it yourself.
Also, my understanding of people is that what they seem like is no evidence for what kind of people they really are.
It’s a tricky line. On one hand, I agree that you don’t need to trust the person—just the code and the cryptographic model. But at the same time, if the dev is actively pushing misinformation or has a history of hostility toward marginalized groups, it erodes my confidence in their ethical choices about security and privacy. Trust isn’t just technical.
On the other hand, when people show they who they really are… you should believe them. There are some views that are either ignorant or bad will. I think evidence of those is a reasonable deal-breaker. And it’s perfectly ok if you have your line drown somewhere else as well.
…that proved that the algorithms/protocols work.
You can use a perfect algorithm and still be insecure because the implementation was bad. You are trusting the SimpleX Chat devs to a degree.
VC funding destroys everything it touches.
It’s fine if matrix.org goes down the shitter.
The protocol is what’s important.
Man, that’s depressing, thanks for sharing, that was well worth the read
How complicated is a federated messenger? Because it feels like matrix is the only one but there’s always an issue
Matrix is the best option and we should be focusing on improving it instead of restarting from scratch.
They need more resources and better design, but that comes with time. Don’t let them sucker you out of money to fuel their consumerist lifestyles.
It feels like there could/should be a good modern chat protocol and voice protocol and you just pick which interface you want to use, much like email currently does, except for chatrooms.
There is – jabber and jingle. And for a ver-ry brief few weeks, Google’s jabber/jingle worked openly with Facebook’s, and everyone could message each other. And then BOTH arbitrarily broke it with some sparkle-junkie resume-bait software 'up’grade and neither worked with anything else after that.
It was glorious.
no mention of tox chat, eh? Open source, p2p private chat, what’s not to like?
I think you can’t message people who are offline, right? I’ve used it before, and like the idea, but both people having to be signed it at the same time wouldn’t work that well for me & my contacts, since we’re in different time zones.
I like the concept of delta.chat the most. Anyone here use it? Any reason why it hasn’t caught on?
Could it support technical FOSS channels with thousands of participants, like what IRC was awesome for and Matrix seems to be pretty ok at?
Copying my post from up thread:
Delta chat is hilariously slow. It’s less of an instant messenger and moreover next business day messenger. That’s ignoring the problems you’ll have running it on your own infrastructure.
