[HN Gopher] The Matrix Trashfire
___________________________________________________________________
The Matrix Trashfire
Author : summm
Score : 277 points
Date : 2024-02-14 11:07 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.koehntopp.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.koehntopp.info)
| crimsoneer wrote:
| I mean, this is quite silly. Matrix is the open-source network
| infrastructure, Element is the client. Of course if you go to the
| Matrix web-page, it's not particularly user-friendly - if you
| expect to just use the thing, you should be going to Element. The
| ActivityPub page won't exactly help you sign up to Mastodon
| either.
|
| There are _plenty_ of problems with Element and Matrix (I say
| that as someone who has been trying to migrate off Slack for 1+
| year) but this comes off as the author just not doing basic
| reading.
| IanCal wrote:
| > if you expect to just use the thing, you should be going to
| Element.
|
| Element _sent them to matrix.org_
| crimsoneer wrote:
| I'll happily admit the Element/Element X migration they're
| currently on is silly and unhelpful, but the point being if
| they'd just gone to the Element home page, or download the
| actual Element app instead of the X one, it would have
| perfectly happily registered them to Matrix.org by default
| and everything would have been just fine.
| IanCal wrote:
| > or download the actual Element app instead of the X one
|
| MacOS app store only had element X, and also how is a user
| supposed to know to use the old one? Matrix.org tells me
| element X supports more stuff! The author says it's in beta
| but I can't see any indication that clearly tells me that
| and I'm _looking_ for it.
|
| > just gone to the Element home page
|
| The app doesn't take you there.
|
| But OK let's do that.
|
| element.io
|
| There's a big getting started button.
|
| Now there's a form asking for my _work email address and
| phone number_ and what challenges I 'm looking to overcome.
|
| > Setup a self-hosted or cloud deployment, with powerful
| enterprise capabilities.
|
| To get started I need to _not_ go to "get started" I need
| to go to sign in, which I can't do, then register.
| skywhopper wrote:
| You're missing the point. He's following a reasonable user
| flow. If he went to the wrong place in the beginning, that
| confusion itself is a problem that the Matrix community
| needs to address.
| LeonB wrote:
| 100% agree.
|
| The user should fall into the "pit of success" -- no
| matter where/how they first enter the pages of matrix or
| element ... it should be natural that they end up at the
| correct getting started for them.
| skowalak wrote:
| I disagree. I have been using Matrix with Element as my main IM
| with my own homeserver for 3 years now, and the onboarding
| experience is just bad. You have to read so many texts which
| are spread across so many pages just to get stuff to work and
| even then sometimes it just won't.
|
| Sure, the author could have prevented some of their problems by
| reading the documentation, but Matrix is trying to become a
| solution everyone can use. And noone _wants_ to read a manifest
| only to send some messages.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Honestly, on this I totally agree - hosting your own
| Element/Matrix instance is really unnecessarily painful, with
| the documentation all over the place. But hey, it's free and
| open-source.
|
| But as as _user_ , if you're even a little technical,
| downloading Element, registering and messaging your friends
| is really not the difficult bit.
| 4ad wrote:
| > his comes off as the author just not doing basic reading.
|
| Perhaps a technology will not have success if its users need to
| do basic reading.
| bhaney wrote:
| Perhaps I would prefer a chat platform devoid of people who
| can't do basic reading
| arlort wrote:
| A chat platform for the illiterates might not be the best
| business proposition
|
| Jokes aside, I don't think matrix/element, at this stage, are
| trying to overthrow telegram or whatsapp.
|
| It seems their main approach is somewhat aimed at the people
| who use(d) IRC on the general audience side and institutional
| clients who they work with to create ad hoc solutions for
| employees, in which case which client to download is slightly
| less problematic since it's going to be a custom one anyway
| joshsimmons wrote:
| As the Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation I can
| assure you I'd love nothing more than to displace
| centralized, proprietary communication tools.
|
| It just so happens that right now it's easier to land with
| folks who are patient with sharp edges and already believe
| in the value of FOSS, E2EE, and decentralization. Gotta
| start somewhere, right? :)
|
| IDK if you caught it, but the project lead, Matthew
| Hodgson, gave a main stage talk at FOSDEM a couple weeks
| ago and offered an update on the project and, in
| particular, on how we're taking advantage of the push that
| regulators are making for interoperability. WhatsApp, in
| particular, gets mentioned in this context and the writers
| at WIRED and Tech Crunch seemed to pick up on that!
| Havoc wrote:
| Things like this are technically correct but irrelevant. If the
| average person can't figure out the UI & flow without getting
| frustrated then it's game over.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I think the core of the problem is the naming separation
| between the default client and default instance.
|
| It is ok that matrix the protocol and matrix the server
| software have a different name than element. But the official
| server instance used by element should not be matrix.org but
| element.io because that is where you have to sign up and log in
| if you want to use the default official instance. Otherwise you
| redirect clueless end users to protocol papers and server
| administration docs.
| skywhopper wrote:
| He did start with Element. He only went to matrix.org because
| there was no way to set up an account through the Element
| client.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The ability of some in the FOSS community to always blame the
| user for poor UX design is truly impressive.
|
| Do we need to test and simplify our onboarding? No, it's the
| confused users who are wrong!
| turblety wrote:
| We also tried to use it, but frequently, messages will fail to
| decrypt with no option to retry. Threads is a mess, where
| messages will show as unread, but you can't actually see what
| message was unread.
|
| Matrix/Element is so close to a great alternative to Slack, but
| in it's current state it's totally unusable.
| wakeupcall wrote:
| > We also tried to use it, but frequently, messages will fail
| to decrypt with no option to retry.
|
| This is a years-old issue with Element, which never happened to
| me with other sending clients such as FluffyChat. It's
| unbelievable that it's unfixed given it's a dealbreaker as it
| results in _permanently_ unreadable messages on your end (the
| "waiting" in "waiting for this message" is a lie). And since
| this needs to be fixed on the sending side, you NEED to use
| another messenger to fix the conversation (if at all, as this
| requires reading extremely long issues on github with buried
| suggestions many won't do).
|
| After getting it a few times most users would just dump Element
| and blame matrix as a failure to never touch it again. The
| excuse "we're working on this on the next client iteration" is
| actually ensuring a growing list of users will hit this (as
| it's bound to happen) and avoid matrix in the future.
|
| UI/onboarding issues are minor compared to the fact that the
| conversation can be randomly broken.
| creatonez wrote:
| This just sounds like a description of Matrix's key sharing
| mechanism? Messages are supposed to be unencryptable if you
| don't have the keys, and bringing online another device (or
| having all your keys pre-shared so you don't have to) is what
| provides the keys. If you want to avoid this altogether, the
| UI prominently advertises the optional encrypted key backup
| service provided by the homeserver, and various manual
| options for sharing keys.
|
| If FluffyChat is not having this issue, it is probably overly
| eager to share encryption keys instead of allowing the user
| fine-grained access to control keys, which is successfully
| hiding the complexity of the ratchet encryption but
| potentially exposing the user to attacks to force the sharing
| of keys.
|
| _Edit:_ I was looking around. While Matrix is well
| documented, Element 's documentation is poor because they
| expect you to figure things out from popups in the UI -- fair
| enough, unfortunately most apps are like this, and Element's
| popups have gotten a lot clearer. But I did find these two
| pages from a university that seem to serve well as "Element's
| missing manual". Worth a read if you are trying Matrix for
| the first time, because it discusses some things that can
| look like bugs but are really user error.
|
| https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/settings/
|
| https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/faq/
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > messages will fail to decrypt with no option to retry
|
| In my experience, this is generally resolved automatically in
| the background. It occurs when the device that's supposed to
| share the necessary keys isn't online while any of your devices
| are online, and the moment enough devices are connected again,
| the messages will pop into your timeline. I'd like a "retry"
| button, but if the error shows up, manually clicking "retry"
| wouldn't really do much.
|
| As for it being a Slack competitor: just don't enable
| encryption and you'll skip over a lot of problems, and come a
| lot closer to Slack in terms of usability.
|
| The threads UX is a bit weird, but it does show you that there
| are unread messages hidden in threads through a little
| indicator by the threads icon. Not the greatest UX, I agree,
| but I wouldn't call it "unusable".
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| I gotta say, he nails it.
|
| I so wanted to love Matrix. I tried it for a year and it just had
| too many sharp edges.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I was on IRC when ircII and BitchX were common clients along
| with huge scripts on both for "irc wars" and shit. I can deal
| with jank.
|
| But the Matrix UI/UX still grates me on how bad it is. Just
| stop pretending, copy what Discord does and be done with it.
| kibwen wrote:
| Cinny is the Matrix client that copies Discord's UI. My
| friends and I use it as the default web interface for our
| private server, no complaints (other than the fact that it
| makes you appreciate Discord's sometimes-annoying "join all
| channels by default" feature; the opposite, classic IRC
| approach of forcing everyone to search for and manually join
| all channels scales better but is an absolute disaster for
| discoverability on small-to-medium servers).
| raziel2p wrote:
| This bothers me just as much in Discord as it does
| Slack/IRC. Has any chat software figured out this problem
| yet? Surely there must be some middle ground, like optional
| channel categories or something.
| spencerflem wrote:
| The discord solution is to hide channels behind a role,
| put a message in the welcome page with emoji reactions,
| and run a not to assign the role to anyone who clicks on
| the emoji. Only downside is that its publicly visible and
| very jank.
|
| I wish they had a built in way, & also some way to make
| channels line bot_commands default to muted
| bhaney wrote:
| I tried to follow along with the author by going to the same
| pages and seeing the difference between what he should have done
| and what he actually did, and it convinced me that there's no way
| he was doing this in good faith (unless something has changed). I
| still can't figure out how he managed to get to some of the pages
| he described, when the thing that he said he wanted was clearly
| right on the page he said he was viewing before.
| bowsamic wrote:
| The fact that the official Matrix Mastodon account as well as
| the "Matrix Director of Program Development" agree with his
| assessment with the Mastodon account agreeing that it is a
| "trashfire" makes me sceptical of your suggestion that he was
| manufacturing these issues.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| I mean, Element and Matrix are 2 separate entities, which is
| kind of the key problem with all these efforts - there have
| been plenty of posts about how hard it was to join a Mastodon
| instance, or creating 2 accounts etc.
|
| That said, the Element/Element X migration is a mess. But if
| he'd just gone to the Element website and clicked "get
| started", it would have just worked.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| agree, the author mainly complained about UX issues in the
| client, but then only tried one client it seems. Article
| should have been titled "The Element Trashfire"
|
| > my recommendation is to avoid Matrix for at least two
| years
|
| which seems arbitrary. Why wait 2 years and not one or just
| a couple months? The french administration is already using
| it now https://www.tchap.gouv.fr/
|
| In federated protocols it's always harder for the user to
| choose an instance for them. Not sure if the responsibility
| for that should be on the protocol managing party.
| Attrecomet wrote:
| The author tried the exactly one client that was
| available from element in the app store. Hard to fault
| him for that.
| bowsamic wrote:
| The thing is that people will defend this as a _feature_
| of this kind of system, rather than a problem
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Well, they tried to use an open source ecosystem by
| finding an app in a store where devs need to pay to get
| their apps in. Maybe not the best combination
| croes wrote:
| What do you think non IT people would do?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| They wouldn't even know Matrix existed, most likely. They
| certainly wouldn't have found "Element" on their own.
|
| If they did manage to find Element at all, I would guess
| that would be through the "try matrix" button on
| matrix.org, which has an "install Element" button, which
| then leads to a "download for macOS" button.
|
| More realistically, people would be typing "Matrix" into
| GPlay or the app store on their phones. The confusing
| Element/Element X situation would still apply, of course.
| dzaima wrote:
| If one knows about Matrix/Element, it'll of course be
| from hearing/reading about it somewhere. And thus if they
| were just told "discussion is at #foo:example.org on
| Element" or whatever they'll clearly go for Element (and
| I've seen "Element" be used for "Matrix" a couple times).
| Though then at least maybe they wouldn't manage to pass
| the blame on Matrix for what is an Element problem.
| IanCal wrote:
| > But if he'd just gone to the Element website and clicked
| "get started", it would have just worked.
|
| No it wouldn't.
|
| element.io -> get started gives this:
|
| > Get started.
|
| > Setup a self-hosted or cloud deployment, with powerful
| enterprise capabilities.
|
| edit - expanding.
|
| The element site is entirely about getting something for
| your business. It has a pricing page that tells me it'll be
| free for up to 200 users but I have to self host. _Nothing_
| on the front page of it tells me it 's a free app I can use
| elsewhere. I have to go to "product" (!) and choose the
| app.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| I mean, it's a commercial offering first. But "want to
| download the free app?" is right underneath it.
| bowsamic wrote:
| You suggested it based on your assumption that the UX
| would be sane but now after being told that it isn't you
| are backtracking. As it stands, your original comment is
| now objectively wrong, because you made exactly the kinds
| of assumptions the blog post author was making: that the
| UX would be reasonable at each step.
| IanCal wrote:
| > But "want to download the free app?" is right
| underneath it.
|
| To get started with element the app and create an account
| to chat you are saying I should not install one of their
| applications, instead I should
|
| 1. Go to the element site
|
| 2. Ignore all the talk about it being a product for teams
|
| 3. Still want to get started with not what the page is
| about, click on get started
|
| 4. Totally ignore what it tells me the page is for,
| because it's about setting up a server
|
| 5. Still want to download the application regardless
|
| 6. Scroll past all the CTAs and the form
|
| 7. Download the app
| bowsamic wrote:
| > But if he'd just gone to the Element website and clicked
| "get started", it would have just worked.
|
| Going to element.io and clicking "get started" takes you to
| a form to submit some kind of enterprise inquiry, asking
| what the name and size of your company is...
| linuxandrew wrote:
| > I mean, Element and Matrix are 2 separate entities
|
| Separate but they work closely from what I gather. New
| Vector develops Element/ElementX and has seats on the
| Matrix.org board. Element is the Matrix.org flagship
| client.
|
| I do appreciate that Matrix.org has its own foundation and
| I don't mean to disparage New Vector in any way, but they
| are undeniably closely linked. I'm not sure if Matrix would
| survive without New Vector.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Not only are they actually very closely linked, in that
| Element operates matrix.org, but to a new user (told to
| try Matrix -- what is this Element thing?) there's no
| difference.
|
| I onboarded a family member onto my Matrix server with
| FluffyChat as the client. This person is a power user,
| fairly technical, yet still refers to the chat as
| "FluffyChat" and although I've explained several times
| that choosing FluffyChat was maybe a mistake and they
| should use Element, it never seems to really click that
| multiple clients are possible.
|
| And really, they aren't possible. They have different
| subsets of features.
|
| If you want to see a trash can fire, just try to follow
| the discussion for adding custom emoji to Matrix:
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-
| proposals/pull/195...
|
| it's been going on for years. It's a feature the
| competitors have had for half a decade, as long as this
| discussion has been ongoing. I've been watching this
| issue for half a decade thinking "surely they'll decide
| on something" but mostly all I've been convinced of is
| this: Matrix is design by committee in all of the worst
| aspects and at every level of design. If anything gets
| done at all, it's a convoluted mess, and it's a miracle
| that it even happens.
|
| I wish community software developers would focus their
| attention.. somewhere else.
| cvwright wrote:
| Custom emoji?
|
| We don't even have captions for images yet!
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > The Element/Element X migration is a mess
|
| I think this is a key issue here. Element X is unfinished,
| but isn't labeled as such. The rest seems to be the result
| of a buggy, unfinished process, that I don't think exists
| on the stable client.
|
| It probably also doesn't help that the Element app on iOS
| has received relatively little attention over the years
| compared to the Android app, which has had several
| rewrites. This is probably also why Element X is getting so
| much focus, as it's the first fresh start for Matrix on
| Apple's platforms in ages.
|
| Matrix is cool tech, but it's not easy to get into. I'd
| argue the same for XMPP and other federated services, as
| their competition has the advantage of having one app
| managed by one company. Even things like email are
| confusing to people beyond the very basics; setting up an
| email client is still something technical support needs to
| hand-hold people through, no matter how many wizards and
| step-by-step guides apps may add.
| frereubu wrote:
| People at Matrix responded - see the bottom of the article - so
| they may well have tidied things already up based on his
| feedback.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I've never used Matrix, directly.
|
| However I use Beeper all day every day, via their iOS, Android,
| and macOS clients. Beeper (not the iMessage app, but their
| previous and continuing multi-network app) is pretty great. I get
| one consistent UX across all chat networks I use. Sometimes the
| networks drop out, but rarely due to Beeper issues.
|
| Beeper is essentially a Matrix homeserver, plus a bunch of hosted
| Matrix bridges, and as far as I can tell, that whole part of
| Beeper was a great technical decision. The Beeper clients started
| off as forks of the Element clients, and honestly they were a
| trashfire at the beginning, but Beeper have been quickly
| iterating and replacing parts, and they're now pretty solid.
| They're not yet WhatsApp quality UX, but they're approaching it.
|
| I don't think the problem is Matrix.
| LorenDB wrote:
| This. I use Matrix daily using nheko for my client. It's a rock
| solid experience (except for a bit of trouble with voice
| calling one of my friends). I've never been randomly told I
| have to reverify. If you are being asked to relogin and
| reverify every time you restart your client, you're doing
| something wrong.
| raziel2p wrote:
| Depends on how you define "Matrix", I guess. The technology is
| undoubtedly great, but it also needs to sell itself as a
| (standalone) product if it wants to catch on.
| danpalmer wrote:
| But Matrix _isn 't_ a product. There are companies building
| products on it, such as Element and Beeper, and as far as I
| can see the latter are doing a perfectly good job of selling
| themselves.
| raziel2p wrote:
| That may be technically correct, but reality is if Matrix
| wants to catch on (large scale) as a concept, it needs to
| _act_ as a product in some way. Even if that just means
| having a good landing page guiding users on how to sign up
| on a server, install a client, and connect the two - and
| making sure that this always works.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I think that's one approach, but many other federated
| systems don't do this. ActivityPub does not do this
| really, instead Mastodon, a product using ActivityPub,
| markets itself. Arguably you could look at HTTP and say
| that HTTP doesn't have a fancy landing page pitching
| itself to users, browsers have landing pages pitching
| their experiences to users.
|
| Matrix could have a fancy landing page pitching itself to
| implementers who implement homeservers, bridges, or
| clients, and they could market to end users.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Maybe "Matrix" is not the ideal name for it then.
|
| ActivityPub, HTTP, XMPP, etc sound like technical things.
| If you land on a page talking about the "XMPP
| specification" then you quickly get the idea that it's
| not where you want to be as an end user.
|
| "Matrix" does sound a lot like the name of an end-user
| relevant product of some sort, and a client sending users
| to matrix.org compounds the issue.
|
| There's a reason why big companies have brand guidelines.
| They have people on staff that understand that people are
| confused quite easily and don't want to figure out where
| "Matrix", "Element" and "Element X" stand in relation to
| each other.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I wouldn't read anything into a name. For a start that's
| very language specific, but also there are plenty of non-
| user facing technologies with non-technical sounding
| names, and vice-versa.
|
| The client I use doesn't send users to matrix.org, and I
| would assume that's by choice. Why do users need to know?
| Matrix.org is clearly a hub for the spec, documentation,
| GitHub links, developer community.
| cvwright wrote:
| Yeah it's unfortunate that they picked the "cool" name
| for the protocol, not the product.
|
| I keep saying that they should make a Matrix branded
| client that lets you easily donate to the foundation
| (like Signal does) and creates accounts only on
| matrix.org.
|
| Unfortunately that doesn't really work with the ethos of
| the project.
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| That's a very interesting thread, because this is one of
| the major issues we have with Matrix. It's not directly a
| product but a (technical) protocol that can't be
| presented as such to the general public.
|
| We definitely aim for Matrix-based products to be used by
| the general public, in the same way emails are. For this
| to happen, we need to be mindful of who our audiences
| are, what they are looking for, what they know and don't
| know, and how to deliver a message that works for them.
|
| If you're interested in how we thought the website, you
| can check https://github.com/matrix-
| org/matrix.org/issues/1502 and https://github.com/matrix-
| org/matrix.org/issues/1543 for example
| avtar wrote:
| Curious to try Beeper now. If anyone has a referral code,
| please reach out. Email address is in my profile.
| haltcatchfire wrote:
| We used Matrix for a couple of years at my company, but got
| kicked out from their managed hosting due to the new requirement
| of 50+ seats. The years we've been using it has been more of
| tolerating its flaws than a pleasant user experience. We migrated
| to Slack and was blown away of how It Just Works.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Who is "they"? Afaik the matrix organization doesn't offer
| hosted servers
| apetresc wrote:
| They do indeed: https://element.io/pricing
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Matrix and Element are no longer the same entity. Element
| (New Vector Ltd) is the core behind the Matrix protocol,
| but they're distinct from the organisation that manages the
| protocol.
|
| If Matrix does ever take off, this will be an extremely
| valuable distinction to have.
| apetresc wrote:
| I understand that completely, I even considered including
| a "Before anyone jumps in with 'akshually that's
| Element', [..]" disclaimer but decided nobody would be
| that pedantic.
|
| Element is the same team as the Matrix.org foundation,
| with the same objectives. I understand why they maintain
| a separation of concerns at the institutional level, but
| for someone to say "Matrix offers hosted servers" and to
| act confused like "What do you mean, who's 'they'? Matrix
| doesn't do that! Only Element, the organization run by
| the exact same people, who's only goal is to further the
| adoption of the Matrix.org spec. I can't possibly fathom
| what you think the connection is." is the very definition
| of being disingenuous.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| No, they aren't the same team (anymore), and there isn't
| just Element as a service provider
| maxidorius wrote:
| And yet Thib, mentioned in the article, does say in an
| another comment that they are employed by Element but
| working for The Foundation, making it quite hard to know
| the difference between the two:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39369239
|
| If you dig a bit, I'm sure you'll find this is true for
| quite a bit of the people either in Element or in The
| Foundation.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's hardly a secret that most people working on/for
| Matrix are employed by Element.
|
| https://matrix.org/about/ has a list of names for the
| "guardians" of the foundation (whatever that may mean
| exactly) which consist of 40% Element, 60% external
| parties. The core spec team at the bottom links to Github
| profiles, from which I believe 8 out of 10 people work
| for Element (though I'm not 100% sure if the last person
| in the list still works for them based on his Github
| profile tag).
|
| Thib isn't part of the foundation, he's just part of the
| business side, and quite a public part at that. I think
| his role is a good example of the distinction between
| Matrix and Element.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The people working on Matrix also have quite a few
| contributions from Beeper, which has little incentive to
| make Element popular (after all, they'd lose customers to
| their own service!).
|
| They're mostly the same people (80% of the core spec team
| works for Element), but not exactly the same people. The
| Element people that maintain Matrix certainly have a
| vested interest in Element, but that doesn't make Matrix
| exclusively Element-oriented.
|
| While you and I understand the distinction, I think it's
| important to make it clear to other readers here that
| Element and Matrix are not the same organisation. Because
| of Matrix's history, and the interlinking between
| matrix.org and Element, one might assume them to be, and
| if the opening post shows anything, it's that the Matrix
| ecosystem can benefit from some additional clarity.
| rglullis wrote:
| If your company ever considers going back:
| https://communick.com/services/matrix
| rglullis wrote:
| Ok, now do XMPP. Or Signal, but with the added requirement that
| you want to run your own server.
| rapsey wrote:
| i.e. moving the goalpost fallacy.
| rglullis wrote:
| My goal is "let's have a communication protocol that is
| secure, enables applications with modern features on all
| major platforms and _is not controlled by any single entity_
| ".
|
| If not for the last point, I'd be using WhatsApp just fine.
| But because of it, Matrix/Element is currently the best we
| have. Is it great? Absolutely not, but it is the best we have
| at the moment, and to call it a "trashfire" without putting
| things in perspective is a disservice.
| rakoo wrote:
| Interestingly Delta Chat kind of fits the bill thanks to
| their investigation of webxdc, i.e. mini apps that run
| entirely within the chat and never connect to the outside
| world, only with peers in the chat: https://webxdc.org/
|
| I can't say if this is the future, but I like it taking
| another direction. Taking a few steps back, this model
| solves a lot of problems with a very easy UX for beginners:
| shared calendar, shared expenses, shared notes can all
| happen inside your chat, which is naturally the place where
| you already share stuff with people, but now it can be more
| without any server installation or anything.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I find that XMPP interoperability (terrible as it is) is still
| just miles ahead of Matrix. For all intents and purposes
| Element controls the protocol and despite that I almost
| constantly find friction communicating the client for Android
| and the desktop Electron-based client. With 3rd party clients
| it is a nightmare.
| rglullis wrote:
| When https://siskin.im/ is seriously touted as the best iOS
| client for XMPP, you already lost 50% of the market share in
| the US. And if you don't have any usable app for 50% of your
| users in one of the most important markets, you can not
| really claim "interoperability", can you?
|
| Don't get me wrong, it would be great if more people were
| using XMPP. Now that I am more involved in the Fediverse
| space I'm learning how many wheels are being reinvented and
| XMPP has already solved. If more people learned about
| https://movim.eu I'd be able to shut off Communick and move
| on to do something else to do with my life, but the reality
| is that XMPP failed to achieve critical mass _because_ it
| never had someone to complete control the protocol.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| No, I don't have any problem about claiming
| interoperability in this context as it is completely
| orthogonal. You could also claim that not having animated
| gifs also makes it unusable for 99% of the population (an
| statement I might even agree with) and it would be
| irrelevant to interoperability.
|
| iOS simply sucks here and lowering down your pants to marry
| yourself to the whims of these insane "platforms" if
| anything most likely reduces your interoperability.
|
| You should be realistic and consider that there is no point
| to any "E2EE" messaging solution on iOS as _by
| construction_ all the metadata (at the very least) is going
| to be leaked to Apple (and they in turn will leak that to
| the authorities, as was pointed in HN quite recently),
| precisely by the push notifications crap you'd be forced to
| adopt as part of the pants lowering requiered to support
| iOS.
| rglullis wrote:
| > iOS simply sucks here and lowering down your pants to
| marry yourself to the whims of these insane "platforms"
|
| We can be here grandstanding and dismissing other
| people's choices or we can be pragmatic and find ways to
| grow the alternative networks to the point where the
| "mainstream" can no longer ignore it.
|
| If you want to continue using XMPP, great. But those that
| are on Apple are not going to drop their beloved iDevices
| just because we are telling them how cool XMPP is. Your
| inflexibility will do nothing but keep you isolated and
| able to talk with a handful of other people that are
| stubborn as you. However, if you let yourself accept that
| encouraging other people to adopt Matrix will at the same
| time (a) bring progress to those on iOS and (b) increase
| the utility of your own XMPP server, as now there will be
| more people being able to reach you through a bridge.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > We can be here grandstanding and dismissing other
| people's choices or we can be pragmatic and find ways to
| grow the alternative networks to the point where the
| "mainstream" can no longer ignore it.
|
| I have been trying the pragmatic way for over 30 years
| and it. simply. doesn't. work. The mainstream will drop
| privacy, federation, and anything in a heartbeat just
| because the new network comes with a client which can do
| animated GIFs. There's simply no way to continuously try
| to match the race of ever-diminishing-usefulness features
| and if you even try to point that then someone calls you
| "dismissive and grandstanding".
|
| The only (possible) way forward is legislation. Carrots
| do not work.
| rglullis wrote:
| > The mainstream will drop privacy, federation, and
| anything in a heartbeat just because the new network
| comes with a client which can do animated GIFs.
|
| ICQ had animated gifs. MSN had animated gifs. Viber has
| animated gifs. Telegram has animated gifs.
|
| Why shouldn't people expect animated gifs from any decent
| messenger? Who are we to police what people should prefer
| for such a crucial piece of technology?
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| > When https://siskin.im/ is seriously touted as the best
| iOS client for XMPP, you already lost 50% of the market
| share in the US
|
| Could you elaborate? From screenshots it looks like any
| other chat app and branding isn't offensive.
| rglullis wrote:
| At best it can be described as a "hacker's idea of a
| functional mobile app". The UI is crude, antiquated and
| not at all following the Apple guidelines.
|
| I'm not saying that I can do better, but I can bet that
| if you show it to 100 iphone users, 98% would not be
| interested in having it as their main messenger app.
| upofadown wrote:
| The big usability issue with Signal is that it has a dark
| pattern that leads to most users using it without verifying
| that they are actually talking to who they think they are
| talking to. If you _do_ verify a particular contact 's identity
| it involves comparing a 60 digit decimal number. The 7 emojis
| seen in the linked article are arguably better but a short
| decimal number would have been good too and would have
| eliminated the issue that the emojis don't look the same.
|
| Neither seems to provide any sort of conceptual framework to
| allow the user to react in a reasonable way when something goes
| wrong with the identity stuff...
|
| OMEMO running over XMPP is pretty terrible for identity stuff,
| at least for the clients I have encountered.
| hiq wrote:
| > If you do verify a particular contact's identity it
| involves comparing a 60 digit decimal number.
|
| Why wouldn't you scan the QR code instead of doing that?
| upofadown wrote:
| You can if both devices are phones and you are physically
| in the same location. Otherwise, the user is expected to be
| able to do that.
|
| In any case, the user won't have the faintest idea of why
| they have to do that, so they won't, which in a sense makes
| this moot.
| hiq wrote:
| > Otherwise, the user is expected to be able to do that.
|
| If you're not in the same location, you can long press
| the code in Signal and "compare to clipboard".
|
| > In any case, the user won't have the faintest idea of
| why they have to do that, so they won't, which in a sense
| makes this moot.
|
| I think that's a generic remark about this though, that
| applies to all messengers AFAIK. Whether that's a 4-digit
| code and 60.
| upofadown wrote:
| I am not sure how you would get the 60 digits from the
| other person in your clipboard.
|
| My point is that users should have the chance to know
| what they are doing. There seems to be a tendency to
| deliberately keep them in the dark. A 4 digit code is
| objectively more usable than a 60 digit code.
| hiq wrote:
| If verifying these digits make any sense, that means you
| already have a trusted channel you rely on to communicate
| these digits. You would use that trusted channel to
| transfer these digits. How do you want to communicate
| them?
|
| > A 4 digit code is objectively more usable than a 60
| digit code.
|
| It's more usable, but that would assume synchronicity
| (like a TOTP) or something else to be secure, while the
| 60 digits do not AFAICT. So there's a usability tradeoff.
| You can't truncate a hash function and assume it's just
| as safe. They could add more options on top of the
| current one though.
|
| Overall I think the intersection of pairs of users who:
|
| * want to verify their safety numbers
|
| * have very infrequent physical contacts
|
| * would struggle to use another trusted channel to
| communicate their safety numbers
|
| is small enough for this not to be a priority for Signal.
| upofadown wrote:
| Typically people would compare identity numbers over a
| voice channel. A sort of biometrics. It's been suggested
| that Signal add a voice channel feature for that
| purpose[1].
|
| If a system is using a 4 digit number for identity
| verification, chances are it is something like a PAKE[2].
| See OTR's (Off The Record) simplified Socialist
| Millionaire's Protocol for a practical example that
| allows the use of any string based on shared knowledge.
|
| [1] https://sequoia-pgp.org/blog/2021/06/28/202106-hey-
| signal-gr...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password-
| authenticated_key_agr...
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Running an XMPP server is dead simple, just install Prosody and
| make few simple edits to the configuration and you're set. It
| hardly takes any resources (32 MB resident on my server) so it
| can happily live on whatever server you're already using. You
| will want to add some records to your domain to make it all run
| smoothly but this is well-documented and even works fine on
| free DNS providers like Namecheap and Cloudflare. Once you've
| done that you just install Conversations (from F-Droid, of
| course) and something like Gajim or Dino-im on your laptops and
| you'll bask in the glory of evading the surveillance dragnet
| because you're using OMEMO encryption which works end-to-end.
|
| If you happen to have Jitsi Meet installed you'll already have
| an XMPP server up and running to which you can add some
| configuration to make it useable for this purpose.
|
| Source: this is what I've been doing for many years
| rglullis wrote:
| Ok, now go try to convince your 70 year-old father, who is
| using iOS, to join you and to use it as your primary means of
| conversation.
|
| I'm not being facetious. Try that, and then try doing it with
| Matrix/Element. Tell me which one do you end up with.
| MattJ100 wrote:
| Did you try it? What were the pain points?
| rglullis wrote:
| The first time I did this exercise was in 2018 (when I
| first set up an XMPP server and Matrix Synapse for
| Communick) and there simply wasn't any working iOS app.
| Monal was the only app I found and managed to install for
| him. It did chat only and would crash. I do not recall to
| get e2ee working and the fact that it is optional made
| things confusing even for me - e.g, I wasn't able to
| switch between a desktop client and Conversations easily.
|
| Element (then called riot.im) managed to do text, audio
| and video calls. The app had some bugs, but nothing that
| would block me from calling each other. The UX can still
| be confusing and I have occasional conversations where my
| father complains he can not hear me, most of them caused
| by my father not knowing that kept the video call but
| switched to the internal phone speaker instead of the
| external one.
|
| I heard about Siskin some months ago. Honestly, I haven't
| tried it yet. It might be that is fully functional, but
| the UI is so bare that there is no way that I'll be able
| to convince my father to switch to it. He still complains
| that he'd rather use WhatsApp like everyone else, so
| whatever XMPP brings now will be a case of "too little,
| too late".
| the_third_wave wrote:
| The problem here is not XMPP or Conversations but the
| closed nature of iOS which keeps apps like Conversations
| from being ported there. Apple does not like competition
| to iMessage or to its app store revenues so it fights
| tooth and nail to keep its precious as is now clearly on
| view in Europe with their ridiculous 'core technology
| fees' and other shenanigans.
|
| Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is
| what is keeping your experiment from succeeding? We're
| all on Android here, anything from stock Samsung like my
| mother uses to self-built LineageOS like I use and we
| have no problems like you describe. I video-chat daily
| with my mother without problems, we're using Jitsi Meet
| (hosted on the same server) for larger video meetings,
| we've used Nextcloud Talk (also hosted on that server-
| under-the-stairs) as well but now mostly use
| Conversations. Telegram also works well for video chat
| but that is neither self-hosted nor end-to-end encrypted
| so it is not a real comparison to Matrix or XMPP with
| OMEMO.
| rglullis wrote:
| > Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that
| is what is keeping your experiment from succeeding?
|
| That's a non-starter. He already had Android phones
| before, never liked them. O have to pick my battles, and
| getting him to call me Matrix instead of WhatsApp was
| already enough to call it success.
|
| Besides, my point was less about the specific individual
| but the systemic issue. iOS is too large of a market
| segment to ignore, and I can not go around telling
| everyone "hey, why don't you just drop your shit Apple
| device and switch to something more open?"
| yaky wrote:
| Not the person you asked, but here are some pain points
| asking my relatives (30s and 60s) to switch:
|
| "WhatsApp works fine, I talk to you on there already" (in
| reality, via a Matrix-WhatsApp bridge)
|
| "Who am i going to talk to on there?" (Me?)
|
| "I don't want to install another app" (but installing ad-
| laden Viber is fine...)
|
| "I cannot share pictures to Element so I sent it to you
| through [iOS] Messages" (well, Element removed share
| capabilities in iOS due to a rare bug)
|
| Simply ignoring messages (their iMessage and calls rings
| from all connected devices, but Element just notifies
| once)
| rakoo wrote:
| All of this is absolutely valid, but none of this is
| specific to the XMPP/Matrix ecosystems
| the_third_wave wrote:
| My father is dead so I don't think I can reach him through
| XMPP - at least not yet. My 85 yo mother is still alive and
| yes, she is using Conversations on her Samsung A25 which
| connects to prosody on my server through which she
| communicates with all of us. I live in Sweden, she lives in
| the Netherlands, one of my daughters now studies in the
| Netherlands as well. We have a 'family list' (i.e. a
| 'multi-user chat' using the _muc_ extension) where we share
| photos and anecdotes, sometimes we 'talk' one on one.
| Everything encrypted through OMEMO so _Feind hort NICHT
| mitt_.
|
| I have tried Matrix/Element (self-hosted, of course, like
| everything else I use) and found it lacking compared to
| XMPP. It just seems to add needless complexity and does not
| offer anything worthwhile to compensate for it. I tried
| some Matrix bridges as well but found these lacking for my
| purposes.
|
| So the answer to your question is 'I ended up with XMPP'.
| tetraca wrote:
| Having set up and administrated both an XMPP and a Matrix
| server, XMPP is way less a pain in the ass. I've enjoyed
| dealing with prosody much more than either synapse or dendrite.
| XMPP doesn't tank my server every time I try to join a new room
| and it doesn't take forever to start talking in a room after
| you join it. And provided you're running the server, getting
| people onto XMPP has not been hard in my experience. I made a
| basic registration page with simple instructions. I have gotten
| people with low technical know-how to successfully register
| accounts and use it without issue. They just create an account,
| enter their username into a client I recommend, and they're
| ready to go (I've never even had them complain about OMEMO).
| rglullis wrote:
| If you go through your contact list right now, how many
| people are on iOS, and how many of them do you think you
| could successfully convince to use XMPP as the primary method
| to reach you?
|
| With Matrix, _I don 't need to convince them_.
| zaik wrote:
| Monal on iOS has made it quite easy to convince people to
| contact me via XMPP. Right now I have 31 XMPP contacts and
| 1 Matrix contact.
| rglullis wrote:
| Your about page: _Interests: XMPP, OpenStreetMap,
| Wikidata._
|
| Nice, I'd like to be friends with you. But do you realize
| that maybe, _just maybe_ , you are facing a bit of
| availability bias?
| zaik wrote:
| Oh sure, but it's still a counterexample to your
| statement. I can convince people to use XMPP, and almost
| nobody is using Matrix if you don't do the convincing.
| rglullis wrote:
| But you don't _need_ to do the convincing with Matrix,
| because of its bridges.
| rakoo wrote:
| XMPP also has a good set of bridges though.
| rakoo wrote:
| I did it no later than Yesterday:
|
| - Install Conversations on Android - In a prompt, there's a
| "create an account", I create one (it's with conversations.im)
| - I have an account - At this point there's a slight confusion
| between "what discussions are happening" and "what discussions
| do you know about", but I manage to find a room to a discussion
| I'm interested in - Get in, see the messages
|
| The experience is definitely 100x nicer
| rglullis wrote:
| OP was on iOS.
| binarymax wrote:
| They were on both iOS and their Mac
| IanCal wrote:
| This kind of process is extremely valuable and should be done by
| devs more often. Start from the start and _follow whatever your
| application tells you to do_. Note down when it doesn 't tell you
| where to go or what to do. You'd be surprised by just how many
| things you do automatically while working because you _know_ the
| little tricks and things to get by, and that wording doesn 't
| necessarily match what the app requires now.
|
| Side note - this kind of this is why good QA people are
| _awesome_. They 'll show you what users will actually do.
|
| I'll add in something here. Element the app said they were
| logging into matrix.org.
|
| matrix.org has a "try matrix". The first thing is it tells me to
| choose a client (this feels like a loop), then says to choose a
| server but also maybe I don't need to, _then_ has a create
| account button.
|
| The create account button takes me to a docs page. Which _tells
| me to go to the element site_ , and then _create an account with
| matrix_.
|
| So that's matrix -> use element -> element says to use matrix ->
| matrix says to use someone else, ok you can use us -> to use us
| go to element -> element says you're making an account with
| matrix.
|
| edit - oh you can and should also do this with your dev process.
|
| Create an empty folder, check out the repo and follow the readme.
| Do you actually get a running system for local dev? Can you
| successfully run the tests? If you are able to, do this on a
| clean machine (maybe load up a docker image and see if you can
| follow it in a truly clear system). Does it turn out it assumes
| you already have tool X installed because your developers already
| have it from another project? Do you actually need postgres
| running with a specific user with specific login details?
|
| If you're like me you don't like writing docs, so this may
| actually just push you to add scripts that do the setup required.
|
| To not sound sanctimonious about this every time I've done this
| with my own code I've found issues with the documentation.
| INTPenis wrote:
| >This kind of process is extremely valuable and should be done
| by devs more often.
|
| The fact that it's not being done doesn't bode well for their
| perceived engagement to this project.
|
| I remember when it launched and how much they hyped it up to be
| the future of secure messaging. That was how many years ago
| now? It was pre-pandemic.
|
| I'm a lover of all selfhostable federated solutions so I
| actually hosted a Matrix server for a couple of years. My
| conclusion is that it's just not ready for production
| scalability.
|
| And you can't migrate easily between implementations because of
| their unique database design.
| vallode wrote:
| QA is a massively underappreciated position. A QA person that
| knows when to automate, when to manually test, and how to
| report and file issues relevant to the project can save a
| significant proportion of hours on a project overall. I wish
| many more companies included budget for QA, it saves developers
| a lot of time.
|
| A bit of a side-note: this sort of analysis is a great answer
| to "I want to contribute to open source, how?". Some fairly
| simple wins for significantly better user experience, and no
| coding required!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The old wisdom in the US, is that if you have "Quality" in
| your job title, your career is over.
|
| At the Japanese company that I used to work for, it meant
| that you were one of the most powerful people in the
| corporation, and was a sought-after adornment.
|
| Different strokes, and all that...
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I always give the power to my QA team to block any release
| no matter what and to give higher priority to tickets than
| product manager. If CEO wants to override, I cover them and
| take the blame. This is not a guarantee that there will be
| no bugs in production, but it saved us a few times.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The Japanese testers were the best I'd ever seen.
|
| They _never_ reported a "NotABug." They could back up
| every report, and give exact reproduction steps.
|
| They found weird, obscure corner cases, and that was by
| hand (they hated automation tools).
|
| They had 3,000-line Excel spreadsheets. If even _one_ of
| those rows failed, the whole shooting match (like an
| entire product line) could come to a halt (so that meant
| they had to cross their t 's, and dot their i's).
|
| They seldom had "opinion-based" reports, and, when they
| did, the report was presented by the manager, after long
| discussions.
|
| The company I worked for, was renowned as one of the
| highest-Quality optical corporations in the world.
| MR4D wrote:
| I worked with NTT Docomo years ago for a short time.
| First time I ever got to see a CMM Level 5 organization.
| It was insane. No wonder Japanese cars were so much
| better than everyone else for so long.
|
| If you ever get the chance, take it - you will learn way
| more about software quality than you thought existed!
| pixl97 wrote:
| >No wonder Japanese cars were so much better
|
| Heh, this reminds me of an episode of Top Gear I was
| watching years ago about quality of British cars. They
| said something along the lines of "The manufacture sais
| 'eh, good enough' the moment the car is able to move
| under its own power.
| skibbityboop wrote:
| Anyone who has owned a Mini would probably question
| whether their QA even gets that far.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Do you have any insights into why desktop and mobile
| software from these companies is so universally horrible?
| I'm thinking of Canon's remote tethering tools, Fuji's
| instax and remote control apps for iOS, and Epson's
| scanner software.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't want to get into slagging these folks, but I feel
| your pain. In a _big_ way.
|
| Hardware != software.
|
| Hardware companies have a _really_ difficult time,
| understanding this. They insist on running in-house
| software projects as waterfall-based-measure-twice-cut-
| once-never-accept-a-bug-count-greater-than-0.
|
| Anything different is "bad quality cowboy."
|
| It can be difficult. I rapidly learned not to use the
| word "agile," within earshot of many senior types.
|
| This applies to US hardware companies, as well as
| Japanese ones.
|
| Most folks, hereabouts, seem to think of me as an
| unbearable, retentive, snob, but my former managers would
| often think of me as an undisciplined, reckless, slob.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| thanks, I appreciate hearing your perspective!
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Fujifilm software is outdated garbage. UX was developed
| probably during WinXP era and still present. However
| their cameras are excellent.
| brightball wrote:
| Good QA people are hard to find and it's a weird balance to
| strike.
|
| I've seen QA get run over by aggressive developers.
|
| I've seen QA people who were so good, detailed and provided
| clear reproduction steps that developers couldn't wait to see
| them work.
|
| I've seen QA people who were completely unwilling to work on
| efficiency improvements, automation or even testing things in
| parallel so they became a bottleneck to the entire
| organization.
|
| I've seen QA people who just fall into a routine, do exactly
| what is asked of them and never try to improve.
|
| Like with anything, it comes down to the person in the job.
| If you get QA people who are really committed to the work,
| take pride in what they do and are always trying to improve
| it's the dream.
|
| When you don't have that, it's a very mixed bag.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| From manager perspective, no matter what people do you have
| at start of the journey, the team culture can be changed.
| Most people are willing to learn something new and try new
| processes if they see the value. In more than 20 years I
| have seen maybe 2 or 3 pathological cases, where a person
| had to leave the team rather than play by new rules. It is
| not easy, it may take time for the team to adapt, but
| that's a manager's job to unlock the potential of every
| team member and that job is doable.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Good QA people are hard to find
|
| In general, I'd say that's because it's a position that's
| shit on.
|
| You're apt to be paid far less than actual dev positions.
| If you're a QA manager you're always pushed on by upper
| management to outsource and lower costs. There is none of
| the prestige of being a "QA 10xer" that you'd see heaped
| upon a dev in the same position. And I see little
| training/courses pushed out for QA like is typically seen
| for dev.
|
| It seems like QA in most companies is a necessary evil that
| management would take out back and shoot the first moment
| they could.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Developers are artists and QA is critique. Worse, you
| _must_ entertain their complaining, and _pay_ for the
| privilege! The vultures. (This implicit bias would
| explain the treatment disparity. But it 's a baseless
| hypothesis. It just seems like the simplest behavioral
| explanation.)
| specialist wrote:
| > _Good QA people are hard to find_
|
| True.
|
| A good tester is the kind of person who revels in running
| the same lab experiment many, many times and chortles for
| always getting results within the error bars.
|
| A good QA is the kind of person who can think of every way
| something will fail, and then come up with a proactive risk
| mitigation strategy that makes everyone smile with pride.
|
| > _QA get run over by aggressive developers_
|
| True.
|
| Back when we had QA/QC, my "One Weird Trick" was to put the
| QA / Test team in charge of releases. Running the bug
| triages, in charge of acceptance testing, running the
| go/no-go meetings, etc.
|
| Worked f@#$ing great. Almost like magic. Zero drama. Our
| releases were almost anti-climatic.
|
| I miss the '90s.
|
| Well, I miss _my_ '90s QA/Test experience.
|
| Most everyone else was stuck in Kem Caner's world. The
| preeminent "SQA" guru who preached victimhood and
| grievances. Probably did more than any one to pile drive
| the QA Test profession into the Mariana Trench of
| irrelevance.
|
| (Apologies, weak sauce, I know. I usually have a better
| "colorful metaphor" ready to deploy for these types of
| rants.)
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| Hi, I'm the Thib person mention in this article, and I agree
| that QA is super important. I can mostly talk about matrix.org,
| since I have little power over the Element clients. Disclaimer
| though: I'm technically employed by Element (to make paperwork
| simpler since I'm France-based, Element has an entity in
| France, and the Foundation is UK-based), but I'm working for
| the Foundation full time.
|
| This kind of article is super valuable since it gives us the
| perspective of a new user. I opened https://github.com/matrix-
| org/matrix.org/issues/2178 to translate the gripes mentioned in
| the issue into actionable items for us. I took action on the
| most urgent one (updating the Try Matrix page), but want to
| take the time to go beyond the surface symptoms and address the
| root cause of the other gripes.
|
| On the Foundation side, we're a small but mighty team of four.
| The website is currently maintained part time by me and a
| volunteer who is doing an excellent job at it.
|
| As I wrote recently in a blog post "Tracking what works, not
| people" (https://ergaster.org/posts/2024/01/24-tracking-what-
| works/), I would love to have the resources to conduct user
| research and user testing on the website but I unfortunately
| don't. We deployed privacy-preserving analytics to see where
| people drop and what confuses them. It's not nearly as good as
| proper QA and user testing, but that's what we can afford for
| now.
|
| Overall I'm grateful to the author for documenting their
| frustration, and even more grateful for reacting constructively
| to our responses and integrating them in the blog post! One of
| the strengths of open source is to find and address issues
| collectively. I consider this blog post to be a good open
| source contribution.
|
| If people around believe in our mission and want to help us
| with their brainpower, I invite them to join our "Office of the
| Matrix.org Foundation" room: https://matrix.to/#/%23foundation-
| office:matrix.org
|
| For those aligned with our mission and who want to support us
| financially, the https://matrix.org/support/ page should give
| you all the information you need to help us out.
| gowings97 wrote:
| Do you have any thoughts on how you might improve this
| workflow?
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| For the matrix.org website, we landed
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/2179 as a
| quick fix, but we can do better.
|
| I think there are several things we can do improve, and the
| process should be fairly similar with Element:
|
| 1. Refine who the website is for, and what they are coming
| here for. We need to narrow down who our audiences are,
| what they want, what they known and don't know, and how we
| can best serve them.
|
| 2. Conduct user research with a diverse set of people
| representative of who we think our audiences are. We need
| to sit down with them, ask them to create a matrix account
| unguided, and ask them to comment what they are doing and
| how they feel about things.
|
| One of the difficulties of the website is to find the right
| balance between not overwhelming the user with difficult
| decisions (picking a client? picking a server? I just want
| to chat with my friends!!) without being too biased. We
| need to be opinionated to guide newcomers through a
| decently simple process, but we need to leave room for all
| the vendors to thrive.
| gowings97 wrote:
| Well stated! I wish you luck (I just donated a bit as
| well)
| oohffyvfg wrote:
| most of those complaints are talked about weekly on the
| element/elementweb own rooms at matrix.
|
| also, i myself gave up contributing small fixes because you
| don't host source map files and I'm too lazy to setup a dev
| env.
| IanCal wrote:
| Hi, hopefully things came across OK, for clarity I wasn't
| saying "why haven't they done this, they're bad at QA!?!?!"
| but just wanted to say that most of us should be doing the
| same kind of thing with our own products/tools/sites and give
| a shoutout to QA peeps.
|
| Thanks for working on matrix, I'm building some things on
| matrix and it's been pretty interesting.
|
| > For those aligned with our mission and who want to support
| us financially, the https://matrix.org/support/ page should
| give you all the information you need to help us out.
|
| Great highlight, I've donated.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Is there a good reason why the password workflow is so much
| worse on mobile than on desktop for matrix?
| jtbayly wrote:
| Just wanted to add that I signed up recently and wanted my
| wife to sign up too. I managed to figure it out, but the
| article is correct. Even down to trying to figure out whether
| I should use Element or ElementX on iOS. I also realized that
| my wife would never figure it all out.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| If you're trying to make a good onboarding user experience then
| you should do your onboarding testing with people who've never
| seen the product before, not devs or QA. Once people are
| familiar with the product (devs, QA, and anyone who has used it
| before) then they're "tainted". They'll remember the weird way
| that they had to work around an issue, and that'll just end up
| being "the way it is" rather than something to fix.
|
| I've read that a strategy for this is create an ad and pay
| people $50 to come in and try to use your software. Tell them
| to do something in your software and see what they get hung up
| on. The worst UX problems will be hit by nearly every user.
|
| As simple as that is, none of my employers have ever done this.
| The closest was one of the bosses asking his wife to try out
| the software.
| amarant wrote:
| Huh, I've been using element for a while now, and the only
| problem I've encountered is that quite few of my friends use it.
| I've joined a few communities based around common interests, and
| never really had any technical issues with anything.
|
| I don't really recall much about the sign-up process at all,
| which I guess I would've if it was anywhere near as difficult as
| this guy claims...
|
| I'm on android tho, while he uses iPhone, maybe that's the issue?
| gtirloni wrote:
| These user reports are invaluable. They contain so much
| information that us devs miss because we're so used to working
| with our software.
| onli wrote:
| Note though that this is not a regular user, but an old school
| blogger with deep database experience and afaik programming
| skills, at the very least someone highly technical (and known
| in Germany). He is just able to put his user hat on -> regular
| devs can do that too.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Yeah, that's a good point. When I put my user hat on, I try
| to force myself to not know things (conciously ignore them if
| I can), but I think it's not a "natural" experience like an
| end user report. Still, better than automatically doing what
| will work.
| vdaea wrote:
| Developers could also do these processes. And they probably do,
| often. But they usually have their heads so far up their asses
| that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding process is
| even for very technical users.
|
| It's like when you use one of those Linux phones and your
| reaction all along is "ew". Do developers not notice how bad this
| is? No, they don't. Some of them haven't used a good UI ever.
| They can't fathom _it could be better._ They really think they
| are doing a good job.
|
| Why did Discord win? Oh, it must be dark patterns, regulatory
| capture, moat, etc. It can't possibly be because the UI makes
| sense!
| rapsey wrote:
| The state of the project is completely typical of open source
| trying to do end user applications.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Why did Discord win? Oh, it must be dark patterns, regulatory
| capture, moat, etc. It can't possibly be because the UI makes
| sense!
|
| I don't know but the Discord UI doesn't makes much sense to me,
| this is a huge mess.
|
| Signing up might be better though with the caveat that I never
| had any problem signing up with Element (not Element X for
| which I have 0 experience).
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Nowadays companies win because of better marketing and then
| network effect. The quality of the product does normally not
| play a big role for capturing a market
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Bullshit. Discord absolutely gained traction among gamers
| (and then other communities) due to being a good product that
| Just Worked.
| mpldr wrote:
| > Developers could also do these processes. And they probably
| do, often. But they usually have their heads so far up their
| asses that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding
| process is even for very technical users.
|
| I would argue that as the one developing a system (frontend or
| backend) you can not perform something like that. The reason
| being that you already know all the small little bits, tricks,
| and band-aids. The only way to get proper feedback, is by
| putting someone completely fresh in front of the system.
| dschuetz wrote:
| Can we please stop submitting click-baity titles?
| bowsamic wrote:
| Changing the title is against the rules, isn't it?
| hannob wrote:
| I feel the "clickbait" accusation has a tendency to be
| overused.
|
| I mean, when I hear "clickbait", I think "the headline makes me
| think there's something interesting that isn't really backed up
| by the content". But here? The headline says "Matrix
| Trashfire", the content delivers exactly that.
| Steltek wrote:
| "Trashfire" is absolutely clickbait. The article lays out
| some poor onboarding documentation for a hypothetical 100%
| naive user. Matrix, Element, etc work and they work pretty
| well. The onboarding workflow for most Federated services
| don't suffer fools. There's nothing exceptional here.
| influencer3000 wrote:
| While it's never fun to receive negative feedback, it'll only
| help to improve the product.
|
| Still, I run Matrix servers since inception of the project (10
| years now \o/), and for an experienced system administrator this
| is not something difficult to do.
|
| If you think running a Matrix server is difficult, you are
| probably not the intended audience: running an IRC server, an
| email server, or some other server, is mostly similarly
| difficult.
|
| Matrix is a communication protocol, and it is not intended to be
| touched by end-users. If your goal is to just communicate on the
| matrix network as an enduser, stay away from matrix. I haven't
| seen an email enduser who browsers to https://www.rfc-
| editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html, to figure out how to sign up for
| hotmail.....
|
| Element on the other hand, IS intended to be userfriendly, and
| there is obviously a lot of room for improvement. But through the
| years I experienced that users who want to use Element to stay in
| touch with their loved once, have no problem with that.
|
| Lastly I think comparing an open source project like
| Matrix/Element to Publicly traded corporations like Slack or
| Meta, is not fair. They operate with totally different business
| models. If you'd compare the quality of Matrix/Element to Slack
| in relation to annual budget, Slacks ROI would be depressing.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > Lastly I think comparing an open source project like
| Matrix/Element to Publicly traded corporations like Slack or
| Meta, is not fair.
|
| If we want to "win" (reach similar/higher adoption), we need to
| at least come close. It's not easy work, but not doing it and
| leaving the product that so much good work has ready gone into
| unusable for a vast number of people would be a bummer.
| influencer3000 wrote:
| Not sure we want to "win". If endusers want apps "to just
| work" without "paying up", then I would recommend them to
| stay with Whatsapp.
|
| That kind of users aren't worth the hassle if they have no
| money.
|
| I personally have better relationships with people that enjoy
| learning something new, and coming up with solutions for
| issues themselves, eventually contributing to the ecosystem.
| IanCal wrote:
| > I personally have better relationships with people that
| enjoy learning something new, and coming up with solutions
| for issues themselves, eventually contributing to the
| ecosystem.
|
| Then we should add deliberate errors in the signup process
| and encourage the community not to talk about them so
| there's a definite right of passage.
|
| > I personally have better relationships with people that
| enjoy learning something new,
|
| Here's another perspective. I love learning new things. But
| this is making me learn the internal product releases of a
| chat app rather than, say, what the different lions
| represent in the dance I watched on Chinese new year.
|
| Or worse, you're making me learn what the split is between
| matrix the spec, matrix the hosted server, the matrix
| foundation, element the business, element the hosted
| service, element the app and the other element the app -
| rather than pretend to be an imaginary creature called a
| meep with my daughter.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I'm very sympathetic to this line of thought in general,
| being in a similar position with our own project.
|
| But it's still important not to make people waste their
| time. End users should be sent to an end-user friendly
| place, and developers should be quickly sent off to usable
| development documentation.
|
| It doesn't help anyone to confuse people and have them
| figure out the details of the internal organization and
| convoluted relationships between various pieces before they
| can even start doing work.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| Oh wow, since when there is an option to "pay up" into the
| Matrix ecosystem and get a solution that just works? Could
| you point to it?
| nottorp wrote:
| > Matrix is a communication protocol, and it is not intended to
| be touched by end-users.
|
| So what is "intended to be touched by end users"? I can't
| figure that out either from the article or the comments here.
|
| Assume I can (and actually have) run an irc server, but I
| haven't set up Matrix for the last 10 years.
| raziel2p wrote:
| The end user is meant to use 1) A client (e.g. Element), and
| 2) an account created on some server - with the client
| connecting to that server.
| nottorp wrote:
| Yep, that's in all caps on the landing page of matrix.org
| :)
|
| Oh wait, they say "An open network for secure,
| decentralised communication" instead.
| juped wrote:
| It's heartening that some Matrix people responded positively to
| this free QA work; that's something we almost never see.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Maybe because it was mostly feedback for the Element people, so
| the Matrix people can sit back
| maelito wrote:
| I'm talking daily with friends on Element. Most of them don't
| work in tech, but are quite comfortable with computers.
|
| It's ok. Most bugs concern threads. But it's one of the only chat
| apps that enable threads, so I'm ok with that, threads are
| absolutely needed in my opinion. Signal conversations can become
| such a mess because of that.
|
| ElementX lacks threads, but apart from that is refreshing. Looks
| more like a chat app than an enterprise messaging app.
|
| Still your article is very important. The UX should be improved.
| hiq wrote:
| > Signal conversations can become such a mess because of that.
|
| The workaround is to create new groups, even if that's with the
| same set of people. I even have groups with just another person
| and myself, e.g. for specific projects. In my experience that
| works well enough, also because if something is longer-lived,
| I'll put it in a shared doc instead.
| maelito wrote:
| But I won't create a new group to for example talk about a
| video.
|
| That's what I just did with a friend : share 10 messages
| about a video.
|
| We're 4 in the group. 2 of them might never be interested by
| the talk about that video. It's completely unpractical to
| create a new group to just talk about that.
|
| Then you need to either close or leave the group. No problems
| with threads, it's created with a click and finishes by lack
| of new messages.
|
| It's just what happens in real life : people move around 2
| meters when they want to talk about something in particular,
| and other people can either ignore, either join the ephemeral
| group.
| hiq wrote:
| In practice I just skim through these 10 messages in such
| small groups. There's the opposite problem with threads,
| with which it's easy to miss messages you care about, and
| harder to have a single topic at a given time. Being able
| to reply to individual messages also makes the transition
| from one topic to another smoother.
|
| I can definitely see the problem if you try to use Signal
| like you use IRC, with big channels with 100+ people and
| very different topics, not all of them relevant and with
| people you care about, and I still use Matrix / forums for
| that.
|
| > It's just what happens in real life : people move around
| 2 meters when they want to talk about something in
| particular, and other people can either ignore, either join
| the ephemeral group.
|
| It really depends on the setting, that's only if you're
| standing and even then, if you're having a meal sitting at
| a table, I'd be surprised to see this.
| jesprenj wrote:
| I really don't like the forced end to end encryption of chats. I
| do not care that much about the security of my chats to justify
| the complications of end to end encryption -- verifying devices,
| constant "reset" prompts that I don't even know what they do, but
| they seem like they are very destructive.
|
| I trust my homeserver, since I host it myself. I do not need end
| to end encryption. I understand this is an issue of the client,
| not the protocol. But there aren't many clients. Prebuilt element
| for android from fDroid will connect to matrix.org, vector.im and
| other network hosts and I don't want that at all, although this
| tracking can't easily be disabled. It feels very centralised.
|
| I run my own homeserver and want to chat with my friend that runs
| his own server. It is unacceptable to me that clients connect to
| anything other than those two homeservers (apart from CRL and
| OCSP, which should also be disabled by default, as I consider
| those protocols great spyware). Not to mention the fact that
| homeserver software itself is known to make connections to the
| servers of the developers by default, without ever talking to
| someone on matrix.org. This is also unacceptable. My homeserver
| should only connect to other homeservers.
|
| 3PID is a failed attempt, as it centralises identities and works
| by utilising a single point that gathers a lot of personat
| information at one place. I don't want it.
|
| XMPP does not have those issues. Set up prosody and use dino or
| Conversations and they won't make any connections to non-
| essential servers. Furthermore, the end to end encryption is way
| easier to use in XMPP (OMEMO), and it's easy to turn it off if
| you don't need it.
| lxgr wrote:
| It sounds like you're happy with XMPP - are you missing
| anything from Matrix in terms of functionality? If not, why not
| just stick with XMPP?
| jesprenj wrote:
| I think matrix has group voice calls. But maybe I'm wrong and
| they're just using Jitsi.
|
| I like that Matrix puts an emphasis on message history, but
| on XMPP that seems like an afterthought. For example on XMPP
| multi user chats, messages history retention relies on the
| server that hosts the chatroom and this is sometimes very
| limited, sometimes even disabled. And if that's the case, you
| only get messages when you have a _client_ online, as your
| server won't store messages when you don't have a client
| connected. Or something like that.
|
| And AFAIK, multiple clients with a MUC room opened will
| appear as multiple users sometimes. I'm not sure how it all
| works really, so take my words with a grain of salt.
|
| XMPP seems more like a pubsub system for system messages,
| like MQTT (:
| dijit wrote:
| tbh the best thing about Matrix is that you have a hope in hell
| of actually federating it.
|
| XMPP had that promise but due the XEP situation it quickly
| became difficult to actually federate as most XEPs are optional
| or not supported on your federation partners.
|
| Everything you said is true; if you can tolerate centralisation
| then just stick to XMPP, it's pretty good.
| upofadown wrote:
| What XEP interoperability issues prevent federation?
| dijit wrote:
| There are more than 370 XEPs.
|
| Here's the _first_ one I found that causes server <->server
| incompatibility:
| https://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/xep-0369-0.7.1.html
|
| What was always missing was a golden set of standards.
| Maybe XMPP "2" is XMPP and a set of XEPs and so on.
|
| Otherwise all you have is a bunch of half-working XMPP
| implementations.
|
| Very famous ones of course include voice/video. The UX on
| that is atrocious.
| wiktor-k wrote:
| > Here's the first one I found that causes
| server<->server incompatibility:
| https://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/xe
|
| What kind of incompatibilities does it cause? It's an
| unfinished spec for group chats, which, to my knowledge
| is barely implemented anywhere.
|
| Just for the record I'm using both XMPP and Matrix daily
| and both have issues :/
| zaik wrote:
| > difficult to actually federate as most XEPs are optional or
| not supported on your federation partners
|
| This is false.
| dijit wrote:
| Voice/Video is an optional XEP and if it's not supported
| what happens to the client exactly?
|
| "this is false" is a terribly glib statement with literally
| no backing and can only be said if a person has either
| _zero_ knowledge of what they 're talking about or they've
| tied themselves to a single implementation of XMPP
| everywhere, which is essentially standardising a bunch of
| XEPs.
| zaik wrote:
| In Conversations if A/V is not supported, you do not get
| a button to call them. The people I text most use
| Conversations, Monal or Gajim which are all independent
| implementations.
| jesprenj wrote:
| Well if you use a matrix client that does not support
| video calls (Syphon), you also can't be called.
|
| Camera and microphone are not a mandatory feature of
| Matrix either (;
| jesprenj wrote:
| Why centralization? XMPP users are identified with their JID
| in format username@server.example, similar to email
| addresses. And server to server communication is very well
| documented and major XMPP servers for instant messaging
| (ejabberd and prosody) both allow server to server message
| exchange. I don't see any benefits for Matrix when it comes
| to federation and I wouldn't agree with you that by using
| XMPP you tolerare centralisation at all.
|
| It's level of centralisation is comparable to that of email
| (and email is very well federated in my opinion).
|
| MUCs like the XEP you mentioned are handled by a different
| XEP.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Fantastic writeup. I'm a little confused by the screenshot with
| the caption "Servers marked as vulnerable, unavailable and with
| profanity in their name." In the screenshot, three things are
| highlighted: labels for "Vulnerable", "Unavailable", and the
| server name "cyberfurz.chat". Is "cyberfurz" supposed to be
| profanity?
| LeonB wrote:
| I had a hunch ... so I opened a German to English translator
| and put in the words
|
| Cyber furz
|
| In English:
|
| Cyber fart
|
| Every day is a school day!
| dale_glass wrote:
| It's not German, it's a furry instance with some 90s flavor.
| LeonB wrote:
| Fair enough. But the author of the original article is
| German, and I'm explaining why he described the instance
| name as he did.
| tdullien wrote:
| People call this "QA", but isn't this just good product
| management?
| nottorp wrote:
| Interesting how most comments come from people inside the bubble
| that have an intuitive understanding of the system now and assume
| everyone else does.
| Yanael wrote:
| A friend wanted me to switch to Matrix for our 1:1 conversations
| and group chat of 3 people. The onboarding and user experience
| have been very poor on Element for years. I'm left with the
| feeling it is not made to replace a 1:1 messaging app. The
| protocol covers a broader use case, and the end-user apps are
| buggy and have a confusing user experience.
|
| There is some complexity in educating due to its distributed
| nature, but a top notch UX is much needed to overcome it.
| noirscape wrote:
| Honestly, the matrix documentation is a total mess in general.
|
| The protocol is from what I can tell pretty cleverly
| designed/usable as a casual chat app (even if it leans _heavily_
| towards IRC esque design), but actually figuring out how to use
| it is somewhere between "wisdom of the ancients" and actually
| impossible. A lot of very relevant information is stored in old
| documentation that is currently marked as outdated on the site
| but has no updated equivalent.
|
| The bad apps and onboarding only hamper it further.
|
| It's still baffling to me that the best way to actually
| _administer_ a selfhosted matrix homeserver (specifically,
| synapse, the reference homeserver) is to do a database hack to
| promote a user to an admin and then use an external PWA hosted on
| GitHub[0] so you can actually do basic moderation actions without
| having to resort to using curl.
|
| [0]: https://awesome-technologies.github.io/synapse-admin/
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| Indeed the documentation generally needs much more love. In an
| ideal world, every single page of the documentation would have
| a person in charge of keeping it up to date.
|
| We're a rather small team on the Foundation side and lack the
| personpower to do so.
|
| We're in the process of listing what documentation we need and
| what we need to update. This will be the foundational work to
| apply to Google Summer of Docs and for individual tech writers
| to apply to grants like NLNet (who doesn't usually fund "large"
| organisations like us) to help us out.
|
| I'm also adding instructions on how people can step in and
| contribute to the docs if they have the time and desire to do
| so: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/2155
|
| We're doing our best with our limited resources, but I'm
| confident we can improve the situation eventually!
| phyzome wrote:
| There are a lot of sharp corners, but going for the beta option
| was not a wise move.
| c0wb0yc0d3r wrote:
| Unless I read it wrong, the author chose element x because it
| was available on all platforms. It looked like element wasn't
| available in the Mac app store
| LukaD wrote:
| I have been using matrix from time to time to chat with some
| folks who prefer matrix over other chat systems for reasons
| unknown. Matrix is an absolute trash fire indeed. Every once in a
| while a chat session with someone just craps itself and my client
| is unable to decrypt received messages (both element and element
| x). The issue then usually fixes itself within a couple of days.
| The bad UX aside, a chat system should at let me reliably send
| and receive messages. The other issues I had were related to the
| device verification. The last time I wanted to verify a new phone
| the verification request simply did not arrive on my other
| devices. At that point I gave up on matrix.
| 1attice wrote:
| This feels like a mis-aimed article -- I use Matrix a lot, and
| Element, while annoying, is only one of many options.
|
| Compare "The IRC trashfire" (an article about the infelicities of
| Mirc)
| nusl wrote:
| Pretty poor post. It highlights some issues, sure, though the
| author obviously never tried to actually try. Also, they say
| there's profanity but I don't see any; apparently the word
| "cyberfurz" is profanity? The author's prejudice is showing.
| zaik wrote:
| Furz means fart in German.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| It's nice to hear I'm not alone. I use Matrix/Element to chat
| with Rust embedded devs; I have heard about it in other contexts;
| generally favorably. In my experience, it is awful, and has been
| for years. Highlights:
|
| - The verification is a mess (in the article; By the way: Once
| your account is set up, the verification failures don't go away).
| It has frequent verification popups and overlays; when I attempt
| to follow them, various errors occur, and it fails. So, the
| client nags you to verify, but the verification process is
| broken.
|
| - The read notification system is broken; most chat groups will
| show as having unread messages, when there are none. This is
| possibly related to the thread system, but my results here are
| inconclusive in regards to the exact nature of the problem, nor
| the solution.
|
| - Message posting and syncing is unreliable, especially after
| edits. Some messages will show on the PC program, but not the
| mobile, and vice versa. Sometimes edits I or someone makes will
| show up on one client, but not the other.
| stevenicr wrote:
| Really glad to see these discussions happening.
|
| I started creating a similar post for matrix/element/server
| installs - a while back,
|
| Screenshots and saving putty sessions.. (wondering if I should
| find a tool that records ssh input/output or just use the save
| sessions built in)..
|
| I've succeeded with a matrix server install 2 out of 6 tries.
|
| I am about to try again with a new install since I don't have
| faith in succeeding a multi-version upgrade.
|
| I wish there was an easy way to export user names and email addys
| to port to a new install, as I worry that making a new install
| could allow for some nefarious people to come in and create
| accounts with another old user's name.
|
| I love matrix and element and other clients, it's the best for
| what many need - although there are many rough spots in using it
| both server side and as an end user.
|
| Moderation usability is a major issue for us, maybe with a new
| install I will jump into that rabbit hole of how to set things up
| for that and see if it's easier these days.
|
| I hope the vucuum DB and such is better with the newer versions.
|
| Looking forward to scouring the web for tutorials on all the
| basic things debian and perhaps logging the journey, maybe just
| screenshots will be fine, we'll see.
| joshsimmons wrote:
| Likewise, glad for these discussions. Even if it's a bit
| uncomfortable to be on the receiving end, this kind of feedback
| is a gift. Please do share more about your experiences, we're
| all ears and looking to learn and improve!
|
| BTW, on the moderation front: Draupnir is the most actively
| maintained tool in that space and I recommend checking it out.
| Separately, the Foundation is currently investing in developing
| better tooling to complement moderation bots like Draupnir. We
| don't have a planned release date, but what we're making will
| be FOSS and available to all to use.
|
| We're also looking to involve more technical writers to help us
| better support new users and homeserver admins - for sure, it's
| a rough road right now.
|
| Josh, Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Never used Element on iOS however on Android its... Ok. Not
| great, not terrible. Recently it's slower in loading chats in
| rooms and overall responsiveness is sometimes laggy. Desktop
| experience is without any issues.
| worik wrote:
| Me too
|
| I tried to get Matrix working to have a conversation. Many worthy
| people I know use it
|
| But I failed in a similar way
|
| Do many people actually use it?
|
| When it is so easy to use Signal or (Dog help us, WhatsApp)
| joshsimmons wrote:
| We definitely have work to do on the onboarding experience, but
| I'm pleased to say that there are 115M addressable users on the
| open federation - so many people are having great success once
| they get past the initial friction. Aside from all the FOSS
| projects that use Matrix, it's also used by the German
| healthcare agency, French civil servants, NATO, a number of
| universities including MIT and TU Dresden, Moodle, and many
| others.
|
| We're moving quickly to address the feedback in the blog post
| and will be investing more in docs and UX to address the
| friction.
|
| Please don't hesitate to share your own experiences if you run
| into trouble! Stuff like that is a real gift. We're always
| looking to learn and improve.
|
| Josh, Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation
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