1y ago

What are your opinions on Matrix?

I was sold on Matrix as a viable alternative to Discord but recently read this article which made it look not so good.

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92 comments

Matrix is fine, just use end-to-end endcryption which is trivial to set up.
- Theres a lot of metadata that's not encrypted in matrix, some of which goes to matrix.org no matter what server youre using.
  
  If your talking to someone and your both on a server that's not matrix.org no data gets sent to matrix.org
  
  Except that the Element web-client also phones home to matrix/element mothership.
  
  thats one check and just use another client :P and that doesnt send the messages in the room to matrix.org so that doesnt have anything to do with the comment I replied to
  
  Now you're just making excuses for new vector/matrix
  
  all it does is ping to check that your config.md is valid I think its not the end of the world like people make it out to be and its element/new vector not new vector/matrix
  
  Element web-client also phones home
  It doesn't send metadata about your use. There is a version check though.
  
  That is the nature of any federated protocol.
  E2EE works well enough within rooms and that is likely where private data is to be anyway. As long as you Matrix and assume that everyone can see your Matrix ID and room IDs you'll be okay.
  XMPP isn't any better in that regard.
  
  That's why I joined a Swiss server 😀
  
  It doesn't matter what server you use, unless you do not interact with anyone from matrix.org.
  
  It does matter, because it would be a lot harder to get my information. It's called reducing your attack surface. Same reason I use an encrypted Swiss email provider.
  
  What are you talking about? Metadata is information about your messages besides it's encrypted content; i.e. time of send and who the recipient and sender are. Matrix has a large weakness, as most users use matrix.org. This is bad because metadata can reveal a lot about ones communications, and most every message sent on matrix (unless it is in a private message with someone not using matrix.org) is passed through matrix.org. This pools a lot of metadata in one place, and there are other messengers do not have this issue, or if they do, they do not have it as badly. Metadata is not magically hidden because your server is located in Switzerland.
  
  I'm very aware of what metadata is. I'm not sure what's confusing you.
  If my data is not on matrix.org, no one can get my data from Matrix.org.
  If my data is on a Swiss server, the government can't get it, even if they have a warrant.
  If I have some data on matrix.org and some data on a Swiss server, they can only get my data on matrix.org.
  This is called reducing your attack surface.
  
  Yes, but Matrix leaks way more metadata to other servers, negating more of the benefit of using a Swiss server compared to if you used XMPP for example.
  
  Yes, but Matrix leaks way more metadata to other servers
  FUD, Matrix doesn't leak any more data than XMPP in that regard. Admins of either service can know what rooms you're in and information about events such as time they were sent.
  XMPP isn't any better in this regard.
  
  Not FUD, Matrix syncs entire chats to all involved servers, unlike XMPP. This post explains and links to why Matrix does leak more data than XMPP in this regard.
  Also, using the term FUD makes you seem stupid.

92 comments