[HN Gopher] Matrix-Libera IRC Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retro...
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Matrix-Libera IRC Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospective (2023)
Author : walterbell
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-10-01 02:02 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (libera.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (libera.chat)
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I think libera has enough problems with moderation as it is. And
| most of the regulars (including most mods) in all the biggest
| channels seem to have cosmically inflated god complexes and are
| regularly and demonstrably abusive to their users with no
| recourse available (if you try to report it they just ban you).
| tomrod wrote:
| You described my experience learning C and mistakenly asking
| for input from the channel in IRC
| BostonFern wrote:
| It's a Libera-wide thing?
|
| I once dared ask for Javascript advice on solving a front-end
| problem without Node.js. That particular detail was taken as
| a personal insult. I've never experienced anything like it.
| tovej wrote:
| I'd say it's more of an IRC thing. IRC has always had a
| less than professional culture of communication and this is
| just regular behaviour on an open IRC network. Personally I
| think that, on one hand, the more relaxed standards make
| communication more direct, but on the other hand, there's
| definitely a tendency to escalate disputes and pile on if
| someone disagrees with a regular in a channel.
| toenail wrote:
| If things were so terrible the communities would just move on
| or open their own channels. Maybe the problem is you.
| majorchord wrote:
| This sounds exactly like what one of those moderators would
| say...
|
| I have observed a lot of the behavior of what OP is referring
| to, and I really have to agree with them although apparently
| some people are taking issue with it.
|
| I think there are a lot of factors that play into why those
| communities are not replaced and/or people don't move, such
| as: - most users who are not regulars are
| transient help-seeking users that never stay long, often just
| leaving after being abused by the regulars for daring to ask
| a question - most regulars simply don't care
| enough or are enabling/participating in the same abuse to do
| anything about it - it's not something that
| happens constantly all day, so nobody feels it's worth trying
| to start up a whole new community over it, plus they don't
| want that burden - it could be argued that libera
| as a whole would also not be the right place for a new
| community due to the attitude of their network operators
| PokestarFan wrote:
| This seems to be a constant in a lot of programmer spaces.
| Stack Overflow was notorious for toxicity a while back.
| Even some of the programming subreddits have power-tripping
| mods and whatnot.
| 7bit wrote:
| > We have been reluctant to go into detail before now because the
| last thing we wanted was to put our communities through another
| public dispute with a for-profit company. However we believe you,
| our users, deserve to know the circumstances of our decision, so
| this post is an attempt to satisfy your expectation of
| transparency from us as an organisation.
|
| The idea of transparency being a "burden" is ridiculous. It
| implies that sharing information is a problem, which seems like
| an excuse to avoid accountability.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I am assuming it is due to their own moderators not acting
| appropriately because they seem to have a big problem with
| that.
| gertop wrote:
| Sounds to me like they wanted to avoid publicly shaming a
| company, I see nothing ridiculous in that? How would users have
| benefited from knowing the specific details of EMS'
| incompetence/deception?
|
| Free speech absolutism has its place, but so has diplomacy.
| 7bit wrote:
| They don't say anything like that and I wonder how that
| sounds like that to you. You are interpreting things into it,
| that they didn't say.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Are you aware of what happened to freenode?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Putting aside all the other problems this post talks about, for
| me the biggest issue was the bridge itself appeared to be run by
| a single person. When the bridge crashed and he was asleep or on
| vacation just got stuck waiting hours/days for it to come back.
| Made for a terrible user experience.
|
| Since then I just run 1-to-1 heisenbridge connections with my
| homeserver. It's not as fancy but it works reliably.
| j3s wrote:
| great post from the libera staff, respecting the matrix folks
| while dealing with all of that must have felt disheartening.
|
| matrix has other driving forces and incentives. there's only so
| much time they can spend on things like individual bridges.
|
| meanwhile, they devote developers to writing two different
| homeserver implementations in parallel. or writing an
| experimental p2p homeserver - or the three guys working on
| thirdroom. ugh
|
| i just hope they realize what's important. people just want to
| chat on a distributed platform that isn't irc - make it as simple
| and fun as possible. that is your entire mission.
|
| no metaverse, no experimental backend shit, no securitygasm
| cryptography - nobody is buying drugs on matrix. this isn't
| signal or whatsapp, this is discord for tech dorks.
|
| just focus on making GROUP chatting good, simple, and fun. the ux
| just utterly sucks right now.
|
| it's the difference between scrolling through a menu on an ipod
| versus a self checkout kiosk - the kiosk just FEELS bad, simple
| human revulsion. the element interface offers the same
| experience.
|
| and we _still_ don't have custom emojis or selfserve moderation,
| even though matth himself promised them to us 2 YEARS ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33014245
|
| element is _the product_, and it hasn't moved a single inch in
| years from my point of view.
| fisian wrote:
| I'm not that active on matrix (mostly just passively listening
| on a few topics that interest me).
|
| However, regarding your last point there seems to be an active
| focus on improving element and their recent post about elementX
| [1].
|
| I agree with your other points though, there are a lot of
| experiments that often lead to nowhere (e.g. P2P is basically
| abandoned AFAIK).
|
| [1]: https://element.io/blog/element-x-ignition/
| mgrandl wrote:
| ElementX on iOS feels really good these days. On the desktop
| though, I feel nothing really scratches the Discord itch.
| SSLy wrote:
| well, Slack is best UX but welp.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's still has a bit of a work-in-progress feeling, but for
| desktop usage Cinny has proven to be quite a good Discord-
| like interface for Matrix.
|
| I'm not using it right now because I switched my server to
| authenticated media and Cinny doesn't seem to have that
| implemented (yet), but that's mostly because I'm ahead of
| the curve on that change.
| eredengrin wrote:
| I wouldn't go so far as to say the ux utterly sucks but it's
| certainly not something I've been able to recommend to most
| family and friends yet (I can't be too hard on matrix since I
| have to use Teams sometimes which is simply worse in pretty
| much every category I can think of, which is sad since the
| microsoft product teams replaced, skype for business, was
| itself light years behind teams).
|
| It's a bit unfortunate to see matrix still not there yet, but
| on the other hand I'm still hopeful for the future. I think
| ElementX is the result of realizing that an excellent chat
| experience is what is needed. I also think the matrix
| foundation governing board elections [0] show that the
| community agrees that a rock solid chat experience is what is
| needed. At least for the individual members category, none of
| the candidates who were elected had a platform statement
| advocating for more work on the experimental matrix features.
| Sumner (who I think had the highest support by a good margin,
| although I can't find the exact numbers right now) specifically
| stated that experimental matrix features should not receive
| further investment until the baseline features are acceptable.
|
| I realize that getting funding is a beast of its own and that
| is probably why some of the experimental things took focus at
| times so I can't fault that, but I really do want matrix to be
| something I can eventually recommend to all my family and
| friends instead of whatsapp or discord. I think it is slowly
| heading that way..
|
| [0] https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/election-results/
|
| [1] https://matrix.org/foundation/governing-board-
| elections/#nom...
| nunobrito wrote:
| A single guy produced in a single year something more private
| and with a UI that doesn't suck: SimpleX.
|
| This Matrix case in my opinion is either lack of talent or
| intentional. One should never discard the second option when
| considering how governments tend to interfer in such tools
| and Matrix is quite sus on the funding side.
|
| In 5 years we've seen little to no remarkable progress. I'm
| not recommending this platform any further to anyone, other
| options have delivered what this one had been promissing for
| years. Time to move on.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| Absolutely intentional. Various members of the Element
| community had been fighting tooth and nail for better emote
| support, and many implementations have been developed and
| tested, and even for the ones that followed the Matrix-
| backed MSCs and passed the necessary tests every single one
| was outright denied and more recently told that Element
| makes major money off of government interests so why listen
| to the desires of the people, even if they do all the work
| necessary for free anyway?
| Arathorn wrote:
| we've had to prioritise keeping the lights on by building
| stuff we can sell rather than merging custom emoji PRs.
| it's a "please put on your own mask before helping
| others" kind-of thing.
|
| thanks for understanding...
| my2cents372652 wrote:
| As someone who's (sadly) moving away from matrix due to the
| state of clients and running out of patience for Element X
| (it's been... What? Two years?) I have to say SimpleX
| and/or XMPP are where I am looking.
| Arathorn wrote:
| we literally released Element X last week...
| https://element.io/blog/we-have-lift-off-element-x-call-
| and-... :/
| pferde wrote:
| I installed a Matrix homeserver (private, separate and non-
| federating) for our family at the start of the covid
| lockdowns, and we've been happily using it ever since.
|
| "Recommending" anything is pretty much worthless. Stand them
| in front of a done thing that is already set up, that's worth
| a hundred times more.
| lukan wrote:
| How much effort took that process and how many people are
| using it?
|
| I would like to do the same, but with the possibility of
| scaling it up a bit.
| nehal3m wrote:
| I did the same except federated and it's pretty easy if
| you have some experience with Ansible and Docker. This
| repo has a great Ansible playbook that will set up the
| whole thing for you on whatever VM or VPS you point it
| at:
|
| https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-
| deploy/b...
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Where does someone begin with Matrix? The homepage mentions
| servers but how do you choose one? Is it like the ferdiverse
| with its hundreds of mastodon servers?
| fisian wrote:
| Yes, it's like the fediverse. The "main" server by the
| developers is matrix.org (similar to mastodon.social), but
| there are others too. You can also host your own server from
| different providers as described in this post:
| https://matrix.org/ecosystem/hosting/
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Wow, what is this complete garbage? People use this?
|
| https://imgur.com/a/iNj9HH1
| immibis wrote:
| Seems like you joined a spam channel. Congrats. They
| exist on IRC too.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| It was literally in the top five search results for
| "programming" in the "public channels" page. With this
| little care or moderation I will stick to Discord.
| Arathorn wrote:
| you do understand this is a global public network right?
| are you going to stop using the Web because a search
| engine links you to a spammy website?
| em-bee wrote:
| it's a dead channel. those exist everywhere. this has
| nothing to do with matrix
| akikoo wrote:
| https://app.element.io/
|
| (Login with your matrix.org account)
| Arathorn wrote:
| The reason it feels like Element hasn't moved for years is
| because we have been focused on fixing the mobile apps and
| crypto: https://element.io/blog/we-have-lift-off-element-x-
| call-and-...
|
| The web app has been evolving too, but less dramatically - we
| need to enable instant sync there.
|
| In terms of custom emoji and selfserve moderation: both are the
| direct casualties of having to focus exclusively on servicing
| the government customers who actually pay for Element
| development. Since the end of 2022 we have had to completely
| change focus to first generating $ in order to be sustainable,
| and that meant parking everything but Element X, Web, Call and
| Synapse. The Libera mess is also effectively a symptom of that.
|
| P2P, Dendrite, Thirdroom etc have all been shelved for over a
| year. (Weird to see so many year-stale comments on a year-stale
| blog post).
| 3np wrote:
| > P2P, Dendrite, Thirdroom etc have all been shelved for over
| a year. (Weird to see so many year-stale comments on a year-
| stale blog post).
|
| P2P and Thirdrooom aren't really news but Dendrite itself? :/
|
| That's significant and not at all the expectations set by
| current state of docs.
|
| https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite
|
| I thought it was just a slump and have been holding out on
| some pending changes. Sad.
| Arathorn wrote:
| well, hopefully it is just a slump, and as you may have
| seen we've been doing releases on a best effort basis. it
| isn't the first time dendrite has had a hiatus. we did try
| to spell out the situation here:
| https://matrix.org/blog/2023/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-
| update...
| 3np wrote:
| > or writing an experimental p2p homeserver
|
| I wish. I think this hasn't been the case for at least a year
| or two.
| Arathorn wrote:
| i swear people will keep complaining that we tried to do p2p
| and thirdroom decades after the projects were shelved.
| sellmesoap wrote:
| I'm sure the government financial support comes tied to a need
| for that securitygasm after all!
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| >no securitygasm cryptography
|
| I very much disagree. E2EE with FOSS and decentralization is
| THE reason to use it over discord or other "more simple and
| fun" messanger.
| em-bee wrote:
| if it would only work. but it doesn't. occasionally messages
| can not be decrypted. it happens randomly, and there is no
| clue why. had to give up using matrix with one friend because
| it just happened to often. the key management is also way to
| complex. there should be one key that protects everything.
| that can be a key that unlocks other keys, but all this
| complexity should be invisible to the user.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| Messages that can't be decrypted have been a big problem
| however from personal experience and matrix themselves
| saying it should be fixed with recent Element X version
| this should be a thing from the past.
|
| >there should be one key that protects everything
|
| That is more or less the case with the recovery key.
| https://element.io/help#encryption16
| Arathorn wrote:
| we spent all year fixing these and at least in Element X
| and other rust-sdk-crypto based apps like Element Web
| they should now be fixed.
| hhh wrote:
| > nobody is buying drugs on matrix. this isn't signal or
| whatsapp, this is discord for tech dorks.
|
| Yes they are, and they have since the beginning.
| nurumaik wrote:
| >nobody is buying drugs on matrix
|
| That's proper level of security, when people don't even suspect
| someone using messenger to buy drugs
| immibis wrote:
| People don't want "a distributed platform that isn't irc", but
| a platform they like. IRC fails primarily due to requiring a
| persistent TCP connection, and secondarily due to not
| supporting image sharing, and tertiarily, due to not supporting
| emoji reactions.
|
| Requiring a persistent TCP connection is simply a complete
| dealbreaker on the mobile phone platforms which make up, like,
| 90% of computers in existence. Fixing that would go a very long
| way, but it requires a lot more server-side storage since
| messages must be stored on the server until a client
| reconnects.
|
| Data privacy requirements go along with server-side storage. If
| messages are stored for a few minutes that's probably okay, but
| that's too short to implement the feature. If they're stored
| for weeks, and especially if images are stored, then for legal
| reasons there must be a way to moderate them. On another front,
| at least the server only needs to store one copy of the message
| for as long as the slowest client might need it; it might as
| well just store the entire channel history for a fixed time.
| These considerations lead to a design like
| Slack/Discord/Mattermost/etc, and trying to make it
| decentralized leads to a design like Matrix.
|
| You may think of IRC bouncers which don't have these issues,
| but notice the responsibility structure of an IRC bouncer is
| completely different. With a bouncer, the responsibility for
| storing the message lies with the reader, not with the network,
| so completely different considerations apply.
|
| Sharing images and videos is just useful sometimes, even though
| 90% of the time it only serves to increase spam. And I don't
| get why users are extremely horny for emoji reactions, but they
| are. A platform _can_ exist just fine without either of them -
| every social platform develops a unique personality in response
| to the constraints and nudges the platform imposes on users -
| HN doesn 't have images, videos or emojis and that's a good
| thing for HN. It's the persistent connection thing that's the
| real killer, because it means the platform is simply unusable
| 90% of the time.
|
| A version of IRC tailored to slower connections might look
| identical to (the non-binary segment of) Usenet. However, even
| Usenet has light moderation, that differs per server, to avoid
| being clogged with spam and binaries.
| em-bee wrote:
| sharing images and other media is vital in most groups where
| i participate. we don't just socialize. it's not like HN. we
| actually work on stuff. and very often images are needed to
| convey certain information.
|
| though even social channels work better with images. my
| family channel would be very limited without images. most of
| what we talk about is things we see, and can share images
| about.
|
| emoji reactions are another matter. but given that it is
| possible to just use unicode emojis, i think that reactions
| reduce clutter.
| immibis wrote:
| Social media communities adapt to the constraints of their
| platform or don't use it. You seem unaffected by the
| inability to share photos on HN, indicating that's okay for
| sites that want to be patronized the way HN is. It wouldn't
| work if you wanted to create a meme channel, but HN doesn't
| want to be a meme channel and neither does IRC.
| em-bee wrote:
| it's fitness for purpose. HN works perfectly for what it
| is used for. it would be unusable for a family or work
| channel unless that work is programming or something else
| text heavy which doesn't require sharing graphics. same
| goes for IRC.
|
| the point is that usecases where media support is needed
| do exist.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| The cryptography and security aspect is actually one of
| Matrix's good selling points for many companies looking to
| adopt it...
| rapnie wrote:
| Really a pity this. Suddenly all those bridged-to-matrix
| chatrooms were left out in the cold. I am using IRC now to reach
| those, and they lost a lot of folks that were active in their
| channel before.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Within a few months after welcoming the bridge, we were
| routinely dealing with a sizable and often automated abuse load
| from the bridge that made use of easy anonymous registration and
| the protocol's persistent and distributed archiving of files,
| including images, videos, and long messages converted to
| pastebins.
|
| Umm libera itself allows "easy anonymous registration". You don't
| even need to have an account. You just join with a made-up name
| if you want to.
|
| This is in fact one of the things I love about IRC. Nothing wrong
| with it but it feels wrong calling matrix out on that.
|
| The archiving makes kinda sense for matrix' features of
| scrollback on demand. I believe there's an IRCv3 feature for it
| too. The bridge should have a provision to prevent users to see
| any backlog from before the moment they joined.
|
| Ps I really hate those new "single puppet" third party bridges
| they recommend. Because they break nick colouring and also the
| actual nick of the user speaking is in a different place. Having
| each matrix user have their own IRC puppet is much nicer on the
| IRC side. Especially when there's more matrix than irc users.
| progval wrote:
| > Nothing wrong with it but it feels wrong calling matrix out
| on that.
|
| The difference is that Libera relies on blocking anonymous
| connections abusive IP ranges (proxies, gratis VPN providers).
| When abusers connect through Matrix, Libera only had their
| username, which delayed spam mitigation.
|
| > The bridge should have a provision to prevent users to see
| any backlog from before the moment they joined.
|
| That's already how it's supposed to work, though it had some
| issues.
|
| > Ps I really hate those new "single puppet" third party
| bridges they recommend. Because they break nick colouring and
| also the actual nick of the user speaking is in a different
| place.
|
| I think everyone hates them (and I say this as someone who
| maintains a few of them). Some IRC clients have scripts to
| substitute nicks from relayed messages though.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > The difference is that Libera relies on blocking anonymous
| connections abusive IP ranges (proxies, gratis VPN
| providers). When abusers connect through Matrix, Libera only
| had their username, which delayed spam mitigation.
|
| Yeah but that's not Matrix' fault. They just offer the same
| ability as Libera: To create an account with no validation.
|
| Putting pressure on Matrix server providers to stop anonymous
| connections when they themselves provide anonymous
| connections is a bit too hypocritical to me. If they have a
| problem with the practice then just block matrix connections
| (as they have done). But don't complain about the practice.
|
| Personally I love the idea of anonymous connections like on
| IRC and also some Matrix servers. I'm a bit sick of every
| single service needing me to make an 'account' these days and
| needing all kinds of personal info from me.
| blenderob wrote:
| Are there any alternatives to the official bridge that someone
| who is a user of both Libera and Matrix can run for themselves to
| bridge the channels they operate?
| tslocum wrote:
| I use matterbridge to do that. It works well.
|
| https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge
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