[HN Gopher] Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't...
___________________________________________________________________
Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K
Author : thibaultamartin
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-02-20 15:55 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (matrix.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (matrix.org)
| superkuh wrote:
| Another way of saying this is, "Riot.im/Element.io corporation
| has taken over the reference protocol development from the matrix
| foundation (now defunct in that aspect, *1) . Now that matrix is
| controlled by Element.io corporation the remaining Matrix
| foundation does not have the resources to continue bridges. And
| Element.io decided that early bridges to bootstrap/steal users
| from other messenging networks are no longer needed and so will
| not help the matrix foundation with them or spend any resources
| to maintain them themselves."
|
| ref 1: https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/06/future-of-synapse-
| dendrit... , https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/
| dartos wrote:
| It seems that neither user interest nor commercial interests
| are enough to keep protocol development going.
|
| It's kind of sad.
| mattl wrote:
| I've found Matrix (clients, I guess) really hard to use...
| but I'm in IRC channels where lots of people are using
| Matrix. What are people using?
| daef wrote:
| iamb [1] tickles my vim fetish :)
|
| [1] https://iamb.chat/
|
| edit: added link
| dartos wrote:
| Using matrix isn't enough to support the foundation, sadly.
| mattl wrote:
| Sure. I can't be the only person who doesn't fully
| understand the Matrix ecosystem.
| joshsimmons wrote:
| Might be worth revisiting, we've seen great improvement in
| the last year :) I use Element X as my mobile daily driver,
| and use Element Web on my laptops. Feel free to ping me if
| you have any questions!
|
| (meta: I need to create a new account here... but engaging
| here with this one since it'd be suspicious to have a new
| account with zero karma weighing in.)
| joshsimmons wrote:
| This couldn't be further from the truth. The Matrix.org
| Foundation is expanding open governance, with a Governing Board
| that has representatives from all across the ecosystem:
| https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/election-results/
|
| And the protocol remains under the auspices of the Foundation,
| maintained by the volunteer Spec Core Team.
|
| Element may be where Matrix was incubated, but it spun up the
| Foundation as a nonprofit and assigned the copyrights and
| governance of the protocol to that nonprofit. People can
| fearmonger all they want, but to Element's credit they've done
| a whole helluva lot more to preserve the integrity of open
| source - unlike Elastic, Redis, MongoDB, and dozens of other
| companies.
| asah wrote:
| I'd think Google might benefit from Matrix bridges... ?
| zenethian wrote:
| I still don't understand why Matrix exists. It feels like a
| solution looking for a problem to solve. I must be missing
| something? Can someone explain the gap it closes?
| hwbehrens wrote:
| From my perspective, the biggest differentiator is that Matrix
| allows users to remove the centralized coordinator from their
| chat provider. That is, I can run my own Matrix server, where
| my users can chat with each other, without any interaction with
| Element.io or other operator. All other major providers
| (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc) all rely on a single operator
| to coordinate the system.
|
| Of course, it's still useful to be able to chat with people
| without accounts on your private server, which is why the
| federation is still important. You can link up with broader
| networks, but you're not reliant on them.
|
| Why this might matter is because if e.g. the UK government
| compels WhatsApp to implement a backdoor, as an end user I
| would never know. But, as someone operating entirely outside of
| the UK, they have no standing to compel me as a private person
| to implement a backdoor in my own deployment (or at the worst,
| at least I would know if it occurred).
|
| Think of it as the chat analog to running your own mail server.
| Does everyone need to run your own mailserver? No. But if we'd
| started with a siloed system in email, we'd probably still be
| sending emails only to people with our same TLDs to this day.
| astro1 wrote:
| We've had this with XMPP already.
| bjoli wrote:
| Oh, but people don't like XML.
|
| XML means xmpp is awful apparently. I feel pretty alone in
| having a bad experience with matrix, but a good one with
| xmpp+omemo.
| vr46 wrote:
| I found XMPP an absolute delight to work with and built
| all kinds of command-and-control messaging utils with it
| that allowed me the flexibility to use it as a chat
| service and RPC broker all at the same time, with bots as
| APIs. It was nuts but brilliant. Bring it back, I say.
| amatecha wrote:
| Coincidentally I just got an XMPP server going and have a
| bunch of people happily chatting on it. Yeah it has its
| issues, but it's an open, well-defined protocol evolved
| over a long period of time. It won't disappear if its
| singular maintainer disappears (referring to both Signal
| and Matrix here).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| whoa I totally did not get the memo on omemo this sounds
| great
| jcranmer wrote:
| AIUI (from talking to people who had to implement XMPP),
| the problem isn't that "XMPP is XML", the problem is that
| XMPP is XML done badly. An XMPP connection is essentially
| a giant XML document that's never closed, which most XML
| libraries tend to handle very poorly, so you often end up
| writing your own XML library to handle XMPP. With all of
| the pain that entails.
| dingnuts wrote:
| yes and XMPP is actually a messaging protocol. Matrix is an
| eventually consistent database with a crappy messaging app
| implemented on top, and because of the insane architecture
| they are justifying decisions like message ordering that is
| non-deterministic[0] -- for multi user chat!
|
| What could possibly go wrong if users in a multi user chat
| see messages in different orders? This decision is a
| perfect example of how smart systems engineers can be so
| completely divorced from the real problem (human
| communication) that they make completely asinine choices
| justified by implementation details no user cares about.
|
| Matrix needs to die so it can stop sucking the air out of
| this space. The funding problems are also completely
| predictable but that's an opinion for another time.
|
| 0 https://artificialworlds.net/blog/2024/12/04/message-
| order-i...
| Arnavion wrote:
| Even the E2EE implementation is garbage. To this day
| fifty percent of the conversation in every E2EE group
| chat I'm in is "Hey XYZ I can't see your messages because
| they fail to decrypt" because they still have bugs in how
| clients distribute their keys to other clients. Imagine
| the state of a chat platform literally failing at chat.
|
| Or look at how until a few months ago, the media store of
| every homeserver served media on the internet without any
| authentication. Someone just had to post CP in a popular
| room and they'd get hundreds of servers rehosting it for
| free. (Recently they finally added the ability to require
| authentication for the media store, although they didn't
| add support for it to their web client, only their new
| Android one.)
| Evidlo wrote:
| The property of federated control over the network, which is
| what the rest of the internet (including the protocol you're
| using right now, and all the proprietary chat apps) depend on.
| neiljohnson wrote:
| Matrix Con 2024 had a public sector track where various
| organisations such as NATO, the French Government and the
| German Healthcare industry outlined the problems they are
| solving with Matrix.
|
| Though in short, as a large public institution, being able to
| self-host a secure and decentralised communications network is
| highly preferable to needing to rely on a centralised service
| administered by a company in a foreign jurisdiction.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl5dnxRMP1hX5u7TZ1FNa...
| zenethian wrote:
| I don't understand why my question got reported. I didn't say
| that Matrix is bad or shouldn't be funded. Even if it's just to
| compete with other protocols, that alone would make it worth
| funding. I just can't find enough information to actually
| understand it's angle. Thanks for those who replied to help
| explain it. :)
| dang wrote:
| It didn't get reported - it just got downvoted. Downvotes are
| often unfathomable.
|
| The best way to respond is to look over your comment to see
| if it broke the site guidelines in any way
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If you
| notice something, you can correct it in future comments; if
| you don't, chalk it up to the internet being weird; and
| either way, don't sweat the downvotes.
|
| Also, if the downvote was weird, someone else will usually
| come along and add a corrective upvote (https://hn.algolia.co
| m/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
| zenethian wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying and the resources!
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| It seems to be the only currently existing open, e2e encrypted,
| chat application that reasonably supports both multi-device and
| large group chats. Essentially Slack or Discord without the
| centralization.
|
| The nearest competitor is Signal but that's neither really open
| (it's source-available, maybe technically open source but it's
| clear that you aren't supposed to try to interop with the
| official network with non-offical clients) nor does it really
| seem to be made to support large group chats and a desktop-
| first experience.
| hwbehrens wrote:
| > _Without advocacy, conferences, documentation and tutorials,
| Matrix would become a niche protocol used by a few enthusiasts
| for side projects, whilst big proprietary and siloed networks
| continue to hold the world's communications._
|
| Advocacy and conferences aren't going to move the needle on
| mainstream adoption; those methods almost by definition are
| _targeting_ the enthusiast crowd. In my view, the only factor
| that matters to attracting users is UI /UX. Streamlining the
| user's experience will do more for user adoption than any number
| of bridges.
|
| It's possible that growing the community is the primary goal of
| Element.io rather than the Matrix Foundation, but in that case,
| it seems that there is a tension between the goals of the
| foundation vs Element. I'd like to understand the breakdown
| between the responsibilities of the foundation vs Element more
| clearly.
| neiljohnson wrote:
| The Matrix Foundation's goals and structure are described here
| (https://matrix.org/foundation/about/)
|
| Element is a for-profit company, originally set up to hire the
| Matrix Core team and is the primary driver for many projects in
| the Matrix eco-system. Element cannot be successful without a
| thriving Matrix eco-system.
|
| In the early days the line between Element and Matrix was
| rather blurred, which is why we set up the Foundation as a
| separate entity in 2018 to ensure that whatever happened to
| Element, Matrix could continue as an independent entity.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I entirely agree. The advocacy they _should_ be doing is making
| it as attractive as possible to develop new clients (with good
| UX) so that finally one with a good UX will come out.
| Sincere6066 wrote:
| I mean, I've tried to use Matrix many times overy many years. I
| do care about more than JUST the UX but it has been SO
| consistently bad that I just can't. Something has gotta change,
| preferably before Discord completely implodes.
| Arathorn wrote:
| the thing that changed is that Element rewrote the mobile
| apps and made them not suck. Web will follow shortly:
| https://element.io/blog/we-have-lift-off-element-x-call-
| and-... etc
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I love the concept behind the Matrix protocol, but I have zero
| faith in the Matrix Foundations ability to execute. Folks have
| been asking for financial tranparency for years now
| (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| spec/issues/571#issueco...). And all that we get are posts like
| this complainging about not having enough money and threatening
| to shut things down, repeatedly.
|
| Maybe if they were more open and transparent, folks could help
| get them on the right track, either by making recomendations to
| improve, volunteering to help with things, or contributeing
| financially.
|
| I really want them to succeed, but this has been going on for
| years now.
| neiljohnson wrote:
| The intention is very much to offer greater financial
| transparency, in fact doing so is a prerequisite for multiple
| funding sources.
|
| The Matrix Foundation Governing Board now has a dedicated
| finance committee, I don't have concrete timelines for
| publishing, though I would expect this to happen within a small
| number of months.
|
| https://matrix.org/blog/2024/12/governing-board-first-report...
| dvdkon wrote:
| I've never run a non-profit, but what's stopping the
| Foundation from releasing a raw dump of expenses?
|
| Where I live, all government contracts/invoices need to be
| published before they come into effect. This obviously
| required some setup, but presumably you already have similar
| data as a source for the planned report, why not release it?
| joshsimmons wrote:
| Because a raw dump of expenses obscures many important
| details, and sets people up for misunderstanding things and
| reporting them out of context.
|
| I'd love to get to a point of radical and automatic
| transparency as you describe, but that takes a great deal
| of effort to do well - and the Matrix.org Foundation is
| still in its infancy. Gotta learn to walk before we can
| run!
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| Per
| https://matrix.to/#/!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn:matrix.org/$xga3TYyV...
|
| > T&S staffing alone is about $360k/yr, and server and SRE
| costs about $240k/yr
|
| And per
| https://matrix.to/#/!sWpnrYUMmaBrlqfRdn:matrix.org/$pupglsTX...
|
| > There's a rough cost breakdown available to the Governing
| Board right now in Discourse, which we'll be polishing and
| publishing after our first Finance and Fundraising Committee
| meeting
|
| So the financial report is finally coming together.
|
| We have quite a handful of volunteers and a strong community
| that is helping us a lot already. But some things cannot be
| offloaded to volunteers (typically T&S and the SRE team running
| the matrix.org homeserver).
|
| Can you expand on your doubts for the ability to execute? The
| Foundation has a narrow set of programs on purpose, and it's
| not implementing any server or client for example. Most of the
| budget is going to matrix.org and keeping it safe (which is a
| lot of invisible and thankless work).
| jisnsm wrote:
| Well, good luck finding it - it's always in the last place you
| look!
| Evidlo wrote:
| Anyone have an idea why the matrix.org bridges are so expensive
| to run?
|
| e.g. t2bot.io also runs Matrix bridges and the costs are only
| about $1.5k/mo [0], not $100k
|
| [0]: https://t2bot.io/donations/
| snailmailstare wrote:
| It looks like the site you are referring to quotes pure ISP
| costs while the matrix foundation bridge costs include
| maintaining bridge related software they would otherwise
| archive.
| Arathorn wrote:
| the $100k is to fund folks to maintain the bridge software, as
| well as the hardware costs of running them.
| aine wrote:
| Matrix.org is the hugest public Matrix server, plus $100k is
| not just infrastructure costs, but development and maintenance
| of the bridges as well. As an etke.cc developer, I can assure
| you that development, maintenance, and operations even a small
| bridge is no joke.
|
| t2bot's costs look like infrastructure and operation costs, not
| development and maintenance.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm Aine of etke.cc, we offer managed Matrix
| servers with numerous different components, including bridges.
| Some of the components (like Postmoogle - email bridge) are
| developed and maintained by our team.
| merb wrote:
| why are there two irc briges?
| edhelas wrote:
| Why are there several Linux distros ?
| Macha wrote:
| To two different IRC servers. There used to be a third, but
| Libera asked them to shut it down.
| merb wrote:
| Ah I tough the bridge can send to all irc servers.
| kop316 wrote:
| Small Rant on this:
|
| I am happy to pay for services like element.io, and I in fact
| _did_ pay for their hosting services. I am no stranger to self-
| hosting, and EMS was more expensive then other hosting services.
| But....I figured it would be nice to help pay for development.
|
| EMS then decided to say that if you didn't have a minimum of 50
| users (at 5$/user), we wouldn't support you. So I had to migrate
| my instance, where I pay less for more service (etke.cc doesn't
| make you pay per user).
|
| I mean....it's EMS' call that they don't think supporting a
| single user instance is worth the hassle, and I get it,
| supporting what they do is expensive, but it rubs me the wrong
| way to see posts like this that they are complaining about
| operating costs _when I used to pay to support the operating
| costs_.
| babymode wrote:
| Might just be worth clarifying here that Element is a private
| company and Matrix.org (the organisation in question here) is a
| not-for-profit
| kop316 wrote:
| While that's fair, My understanding is Element does fund
| matrix.org (They even state that in the article and it can be
| seen here: https://matrix.org/support/). So I would think
| that money they get from those services would help.
| aine wrote:
| at the same time, they (Element) focus on bigger customers,
| where they can make bigger money and then fund the
| Foundation.
|
| On the contrary, etke.cc focuses on small, independent
| Matrix servers that could work as a single-user server, and
| as a small company/community internal server, and even a
| public server. Our focus is to be sustainable and to
| provide a way to own your communications in a hassle-free
| (or, at least, less painful) way.
|
| So, our goals are just different.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm Aine, one of the etke.cc developers
| kop316 wrote:
| Hi Aine! I actually migrated to etke.cc when that
| happened, and have been really happy with your services.
|
| I do get that the goals are different, and to be honest,
| I'm still not sure whether my post/annoyance is
| justified. EMS is within their rights to do what they
| want, and sure, single users/small instances like me may
| not be worth their time. I would just think that if they
| are still struggling to fund large public servers, I
| wouldn't turn own even smaller instances until I am
| financially solvent.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| If I type "matrix" into the Play store:
| https://play.google.com/store/search?q=matrix&c=apps I get
| "element" as the first result.
|
| That means that regardless of what anyone wants,
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app
| is the Matrix app, and either it works, or "Matrix" is
| broken, trash, and to be avoided.
|
| Yes, I understand the differences between them. Normal users
| will not understand, and I will pretend to not understand,
| because I'm not willing to deal with such distinctions.
| Either a thing works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, I'm
| not willing to try which combination of homeservers and apps
| may make it work, because normal people won't be willing to
| do that and the people who are willing to do that will only
| want to talk to me about debugging their new chat app rather
| than actually interesting topics.
| Jnr wrote:
| I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat
| clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it
| could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago.
|
| Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die
| altogether so something better can replace it.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| Matrix feels like it's in a strange place. I briefly tried it
| only to find vast quantities of porn and spam. Even the
| "programming" channel. I mentioned this in a thread on HN and
| got blasted by some Matrix maintainer, as if it was
| preposterous that I found this to not be a good thing.
|
| Apparently they are unable or unwilling to moderate and prevent
| spam, even on arguably probably the first channel a large part
| of their potential users would join first.
|
| That evaporated any remaining interest I had in it.
| Arathorn wrote:
| It's probably worth reading
| https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for
| more context on that. (PS sorry for blasting you, if it was
| me :)
| vr46 wrote:
| I agree, I've tried every possible setup I could to get things
| running reliably for a client and ultimately just held up my
| hands and went, "exactly why are you not using a combination of
| Signal/Keybase/GPG" for your use case?
|
| Even PGP was easier to adopt en-masse than this.
| Arathorn wrote:
| The irony is that I suspect we have fixed it - eg Element X and
| Matrix 2.0 is a massive step change forwards;
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU etc.
|
| But I can see why bad experiences in the past would stick.
| pzmarzly wrote:
| Only for mobile, no? Element X for desktop is still in
| development, last time I checked, and the old client is as
| bad as ever.
|
| Element is the only piece of software where logging in and
| out (I don't want to be permanently logged in) proved to be
| too much of a challenge - I was regularly losing encryption
| keys on different devices.
| zenexer wrote:
| I disagree--it doesn't feel resolved. I've been trying to use
| Matrix for so long now, and just recently gave another shot
| at helping my partner get up and running with Element X on
| her M4 iPad.
|
| It's still so clunky and so difficult to get off the ground.
| To start, E2E key verification just wouldn't work on Element
| X; she had to install Element, verify my key there, and go
| back to Element X.
|
| That would be easy to overlook if the UI felt responsive and
| snappy, but it doesn't. It feels far from native. I don't
| know if it's Electron under the hood--I haven't checked--but
| it sure _feels_ like it. It feels unresponsive in the same
| way as a stereotypical bank app, like walking through Jello.
| Maybe it 's a protocol issue; I'm not sure.
|
| I've got a nice, powerful homeserver running, waiting for
| love, but it will continue waiting until such time as there's
| a responsive client. Every month or two, I upgrade it and
| give it another shot, but I always end up back on a mix of
| Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord. None of my work or
| social circles are willing to make the switch when it feels
| so slow.
| saint_yossarian wrote:
| So what exactly is the status of Element X? I was under the
| impression it's still in development, lacking some features
| of the old app, and will fully replace it when it's ready.
|
| If I search for Element on app stores I still get the old app
| first (with millions of installs, vs. tens of thousands with
| Element X), and https://matrix.org/try-matrix also still
| points people to the old app. So I'm confused what "past"
| you're talking about :)
|
| Similar situation with Dendrite BTW, it's been in beta
| forever, and the only private Matrix community I ever was a
| part of ditched it because Synapse was too much of a resource
| hog, and there's no clear migration path.
| edhelas wrote:
| Like... XMPP ?
|
| IETF standard, massivelly used (video-games
| https://xmpp.org/uses/gaming/, IM
| https://xmpp.org/uses/instant-messaging/, social...), modern
| features, managed by a fundation with a good ecosystem and
| plenty of alive projects: https://xmpp.org/software/ .
|
| Yes its not perfect, yes there's still things to improve, but
| the clients are there, working, on many platforms. The server-S
| (yes several of them!) as well, they can scale, they can adapt
| to many use cases.
|
| Matrix did a few things better than XMPP (the Spaces/Servers
| things, that XMPP is still figuring out), but for most of the
| rest... well.
|
| Oh and there's also many bridges on XMPP, maintained by
| different projects, and they don't need 100K$ to stay alive :)
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| XMPP had its run and is dead, replaced by Matrix. Every
| single contact I've had on XMPP has migrated away from it.
|
| Anyone telling me "actually nvm, I'm switching from Matrix to
| XMPP again" won't get me to replace the chat app that I keep
| just for this one person plus 2-3 others with another
| experimental, broken, soon to be replaced chat app, they'll
| get a link to Signal and an invite to send me a letter if
| they don't want to use that.
|
| Matrix seems reasonably usable for 1:1 channels at least, and
| I've also successfully used it for groups, including ones
| bridged to discord and IRC.
| amatecha wrote:
| XMPP isn't dead, but think what you like. More and more
| people have been adopting it. "experimental, broken",
| that's not really how I describe software that's been in
| use since 2004 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gajim /
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software) ), 2014 (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversations_(software) )
| etc. If you want to describe something as experimental or
| broken just take a look at Element, which has never once
| been what I would describe as "polished".
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| As I said - every single of my chat-app-militant contacts
| has migrated from XMPP (which they pushed early and
| aggressively) to Matrix, which includes groups like
| hacker spaces etc. (at least the ones that didn't just
| give up and migrate to closed solutions).
|
| I literally have no single person to talk to on XMPP. The
| software names you mention all trigger flashbacks of
| horrible experiences, with my last experience even worse
| than my recent experience with Element, and unless they
| have been rewritten from scratch, I wouldn't be willing
| to install them again. At least I can run Element in a
| browser tab where it can't pwn my system...
|
| There seem to be _three_ incompatible standards for e2ee
| on XMPP, the latest being
| https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0384.html which is marked
| "experimental". I've never seen OpenPGP used, OTR was a
| compatibility nightmare, and I think by the time OMEMO
| started to be a thing XMPP started to stop being a thing.
| amatecha wrote:
| OMEMO is the only E2EE standard to use now (I mean,
| barring occasional outliers, but OMEMO is the norm).
| That's cool, I'm talking to people on XMPP every day with
| people who have zero intention of moving unless something
| better (by their definition) comes along. XMPP seems to
| be gaining popularity as one of the last possible options
| for a genuinely decentralized encrypted chat protocol
| that isn't beholden to a singular closed org/corp. I just
| personally onboarded like five people and they're all
| like "this is awesome" and.... wait, did you just say "at
| least I can run this in a browser tab where it can't pwn
| my system"? Please search "browser exploit rce" on your
| favorite search engine. Here's one from two weeks ago:
| https://windowsforum.com/threads/cve-2025-21279-remote-
| code-...
|
| I used to have a couple 1:1 Matrix chats with friends
| where I was trying to bridge the whole "different OS"
| issue for E2EE chat. Neither of them use Matrix anymore,
| and we were all having issues with Signal (my account is
| still b0rked). It was just too much hassle. So I mean,
| the anecdotes go both ways here.
| danielspace23 wrote:
| XMPP in its current state is a mess. The bare protocol is
| minimal, the things which actually make the thing usable are
| just a bunch of extensions, barely glued onto the thing,
| which means that there are clients that implement different
| features, and you never know if whatever you send will be
| supported by the receiver (including encryption).
|
| There are a gazillion clients for Android, mostly forks of
| Conversations implementing slightly different extensions, but
| like the upstream they fail at being enjoyable to use. I have
| not found a decent desktop client as of my last attempt.
|
| I seriously think that XMPP is one of the best examples of
| why the "write protocols, not apps" approach has failed.
| Without an actual, complete and cohesive reference
| implementation, that others follow with theirs, there will
| always be a fragmentation like this, which will always ruin
| any attempt at mainstream adoption.
| dzaima wrote:
| Matrix isn't particularly better though; its main spec does
| "have" a bunch of things, sure, but they're still very
| bodged together (threads are replies but with a tag of "no,
| this is actually a thread"; and for backwards-compatibility
| clients are "supposed to" understand a non-marked-as-thread
| reply as being in the thread, but the spec doesn't
| facilitate any way to consistently reason about such
| replies (i.e. they're not included when paging through the
| threads messages); all formatting-ful messages contain both
| a HTML and plain-text version of the message; edit events
| contain both "* "-prepended versions of the body for
| clients who don't support edits, and a "proper" copy for
| those that do, so that's 4 copies of the body in an edit
| event).
|
| And there's plenty of inconsistencies across matrix clients
| too: some don't support displaying spoilers and so get
| spoiled (incl. Element X android); most (incl. Element)
| don't have a way to send spoilers outside of whole-message
| spoilers or manually writing out the HTML. Thread support
| is flakey. Some clients insert a newline every 70-or-
| whatever chars, which is supposed to be ignored by proper
| HTML parsing, but some things don't. Off the top of my
| head.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Concur. Element is embarrassingly buggy.
| Arathorn wrote:
| the old Element apps were; have you tried Element X?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| No; will give it a shot; ty!
| bronson wrote:
| Yes ... my matrix.org account is still many times slower
| than my other chat apps and there's spam everywhere. It's
| not a great experience. I'm really hoping to see Matrix go
| big but it feels like there's still a long way to go.
|
| That said, ElementX's video and audio calls work really
| well. If you added the ability to ring people's phones, so
| I don't have to first negotiate people into the chat using
| text messages or a phone call, I could see using it instead
| of FaceTime.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Matrix works fine for many people. If there's something similar
| but better, it's free to compete.
| cytocync wrote:
| I'm shocked that Matrix Foundation is considering shutting down
| if they don't raise $100K - what's going on behind the scenes
| here?
|
| Matrix has been a staple in the community, hosting Matrix.org, so
| this news comes as a blow to many of us who rely on their
| services.
|
| Here are some key points to consider
|
| * They're struggling to maintain the server costs * They've tried
| fundraising but haven't reached their goal * They might shut down
| servers and discontinue some projects if they don't get more
| funding
|
| It's hard not to wonder how this could have been avoided - were
| there any warning signs or mismanagement that led to this point?
|
| Can someone explain what's going on with Matrix Foundation's
| financials - are they overspending or is this just a case of
| underfunding?
|
| What does this mean for the future of decentralized communication
| platforms like Matrix?
| Arathorn wrote:
| > I'm shocked that Matrix Foundation is considering shutting
| down if they don't raise $100K - what's going on behind the
| scenes here?
|
| That's not what's happening. The point is that running and
| maintaining bridges requires $, and without $ that won't
| happen.
|
| The problem on financials is underfunding.
|
| edit: If you're interested in how we've ended up there:
| https://fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-2025-6274-...
| amatecha wrote:
| It's a spam account, look at their profile, karma and other
| comments.
| Arathorn wrote:
| guess that explains the weird unicode middots. wonder if
| it's random or targeted; anti-matrix/element spam seems to
| be a thing since certain govts started relying on it.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| I really want to like Matrix, and just last weekend I re-
| downloaded a matrix client and tried to give it another shot.
| Maybe I'm holding it wrong, but from what I can tell it's
| suffering from the same problem that all of the fediverse
| services seem to suffer from: The only thing to talk about is the
| fediverse itself.
|
| Back in the heyday of IRC I spent a lot of time in technical
| channels on networks that were mostly technically focused, but I
| started using IRC in the first place because of the social
| channels where you could join games, talk about music, or find
| people with other shared interests.
|
| Then there was a moment in time where community slack groups
| popped up, and again I mostly joined tech focused slack groups,
| but it still felt social and there were channels to talk about
| movies or games in addition to talk about careers or particular
| programming languages. Slack killed those kind of communities but
| they moved to discord. I left discord when they introduced ads.
|
| Open up a Matrix client and look at the public rooms on any large
| server and you'll find places to talk about... the matrix
| protocol. and matrix servers. and matrix clients. If it's a
| really popular server you might also be able to talk about
| mastadon clients and servers too.
|
| Even as someone who is enthusiastic about the idea of federation
| who might actually be interested in talking about the Matrix
| protocol or implementing particular servers, I still want to also
| talk about math or programming languages or movies. Without
| anything like that Matrix as a whole just gives off this general
| vibe of being kind of unwelcoming and not _fun_.
| amatecha wrote:
| There are giant, active channels for specific topics. I've been
| in the OpenBSD channel(s) for years and there is always
| relevant deep discussion there. Same for other technical topics
| like that.
| Arathorn wrote:
| This is probably because we literally just deleted everything
| but Matrix-related rooms on the matrix.org room directory to
| deal with abuse: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/curated-room-
| directories/
| baobun wrote:
| We are ready to donate. Unfortunately, none of the options work:
| Only credit card or bank wire transfer are accepted.
|
| Arathorn, neiljohnson, thibaultmartin: Could you please provide
| an option for private and anonymous donations? Throw up a BTC
| address at least. (For even better exposure while keeping
| volatility, risk, and overhead at bay, I guess also USDT on
| SOL+ETH alongside XMR as stretch would be fancy. That USDT would
| get you access to memecoin gains without having to touch them
| even with a stick)
|
| Or if you're really feeling prevented from accepting anonymous
| donations: add a fourth payment integration with a provider who
| can accept and convert it for you without requiring non-zk KYC on
| the donor side?
| Arathorn wrote:
| https://matrix.org/docs/older/faq/ has our BTC and ETH
| addresses:
|
| Bitcoin (address: 1LxowEgsquZ3UPZ68wHf8v2MDZw82dVmAE) Ethereum
| (address: 0xA5f9a4f9E024F6D727f7afdA9257e22329A97485)
|
| Thank you for being up for supporting - it is very much
| appreciated!
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0]
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4
| Arathorn wrote:
| making progress actually:
| https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| I'm happy to see that! To be fair > 14.02.2025 That's pretty
| recently
| joshsimmons wrote:
| Yeah the post is new but we've been steadily ramping up
| investment in Trust & Safety the whole time I've been
| leading the Foundation :) Having added a couple moderators
| to the team late last year, our T&S team now has a little
| breathing room to do more proactive, strategic work to
| improve the situation. Previously, they were almost
| constantly on their back foot trying to keep up incident
| management.
| baobun wrote:
| IDK, have you? Has Apple, Google, Linux? Have we really solved
| it as a society until we have reached the end-game of Zero
| Trust Architecture; locked down all bootloaders to only run
| trusted firmware; locked down firmware to only boot trusted os;
| enforce attestation at service auth so only genuine devices
| with client-side "safety" rootkits are accepted?
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| If you actually watched the linked video you would see that
| random matrix servers were co-opted to spread CSAM on a
| massive scale due to what is essentially a design flaw and
| there was until very very recently not much done to make it
| possible for server admins to fight that. It's not as black
| and white as your comment makes it seem.
| like_any_other wrote:
| The act as police and spy on their users "problem"? I don't
| know - have apartment buildings solved the domestic violence
| problem, that happens within them, shielded by their opaque
| walls?
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| See my other reply, watch the linked video it's not as black
| and white as you make it sound like and public non-encrypted
| rooms hosting tons of CSAM being replicated to any matrix
| server where any user joined them is a problem.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > public non-encrypted rooms hosting tons of CSAM
|
| That's the opposite of a problem, isn't it? Have cops
| request the IPs and arrest those sharing the material -
| you've just caught a lot of criminals for almost zero
| effort.
|
| Unless the "problem" isn't catching criminals, and you
| don't really care about CSAM, just maintaining matrix's
| reputation from mercenary journalists willing to conflate a
| protocol with its users for some clickbait title, or to
| give a government ammo to ban encryption.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| You could watch the video to actually understand the
| issue instead of making wild assumptions about me.
|
| Until very recently and still to a degree today, you
| couldn't host a matrix server that has public
| registration without someone registering, joining a CSAM
| room and having all that material replicate to your
| server.
|
| This would be LESS of a problem if the content was
| actually encrypted and you as an Admin couldn't access
| it. But sure, it's not an issue just some bad journalism
| that's why Matrix just recently actually addressed it
| (thanks Arathorn for replying):
| https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/
|
| But if you don't think it's a problem, i'm sure you are
| willing to link to your publicly open server and let
| people register, i'll write an e-mail to your local law
| enforcement to let them know you are knowingly hosting
| childporn on your server, i'm sure the courts will agree
| with your opionion
| Macha wrote:
| They don't have to break the point of end to end encryption
| to deal with attackers spamming CSAM into public unencrypted
| channels which has been happening in the last year and a big
| part of why I've stopped recommending Matrix. It's not like
| it's something that only happens on rooms for bunch of rival
| 4chan edgelords, it's something that has happened in places
| like the official rooms for NixOS or the selfhosted
| subreddit.
| davidandgoliath wrote:
| They should consider asking Automattic & some of the other
| companies building on Matrix to contribute 8% of their revenue
| first.
| joshsimmons wrote:
| You can trust that if there's anything obvious we should be
| doing, we are already doing it :) And I'm pleased to report
| that Automattic is one of our biggest sponsors.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Without Trust & Safety efforts, bad actors and communities
| would proliferate on the network and make it unlivable for the
| rest.
|
| What exactly does this mean? How is, say, my friend group chat
| affected by unconnected "bad communities"? Why do we care if
| those communities use matrix, or http, or xmpp, or skype?
| Arathorn wrote:
| because if your friends start roaming around the public Matrix
| network and find public chatrooms full of abusive content, then
| they will indeed be affected. see
| https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for
| more.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I do hope they get what they need. If nothing else, I think
| they've chosen a solid and well-founded strategy to manage the
| situation - the focus areas they mentioned are more important
| than bridging. Maintaining bridges has always struck me as
| something hugely resource intensive. I applaud their stewardship.
|
| My story with moving to Matrix is similar to many others. I was
| enthusiastic about it, managed to persuade my groups to try it
| out, but then everyone was "unable to decrypt message", lost
| confidence in Matrix and left. The frequency with which the
| Matrix folks have to repeat "this is fixed in Element X and
| Matrix 2.0" is worrying. They keep repeating it everywhere,
| constantly. This indicates to me that an extremely large
| percentage of people have dismissed Matrix and not looked at it
| since their initial bad impression. This is a tough challenge to
| overcome, so I see why they are prioritizing evangalizing the
| protocol over bridges. Reputation is valuable and they need to
| get it back, they're definitely trying. I hope they succeed.
| joshsimmons wrote:
| Thank you! I am optimistic that we'll pull through.
|
| And yes, I think you're right to be a bit worried about how
| frequently we need to ask people if they've tried Matrix
| recently. First impressions matter a lot, and a lot of early
| adopters had bad first impressions. At some point we need a
| more concerted communication and outreach strategy to address
| that issue.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-20 23:01 UTC)