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.

92 comments

"5 years after the creation of Matrix, and after 5 years of centrally receiving such a scandalous amount of users private data from their «decentralized» software, it was only after the mentioned report was published when the Matrix developers published some «privacy improvements» [13] addressing some of the revealed problems.
We have not read it."
This seems lazy to me. I haven't read the report but i'm also not the one writing an article bashing matrix. If i was I'd want to know whether my concerns are still valid, and as a reader i want to know whether the concerns they brought up still apply without having to read a whole other report
- The rest of the article reads the same. They even said what they were repeating is probably FUD and made zero effort to investigate.
- yeah it seems like they started writing this article by forming an opinion then cherry picking, not looking at the data and then forming an opinion around it

That article is mostly FUD, but there are very good reasons to be sceptical of Matrix, as it is mostly driven by a VC funded for-profit company.
If you are looking for a truly community driven and owned alternative, check out XMPP: https://joinjabber.org
- XMPP has issues such as rooms are not properly decentralised, not all clients support proper replys and you cant edit messages older then 1 message
  the servers are much lighter then matrix servers, conduit is quite light and fast compared to synapse but not as light as XMPP servers
  
  The message editing thing is just a client setting and having a single source of truth for a room is a huge advantage of XMPP that Matrix is now reinventing as they realized their hyped decentralized rooms are just a gimmick feature that causes more problem than it solves.
- Yes the article is FUD and sloppy. This is what Matthew Hodgson (Arathorn) had to say about it:
  Talking of sloppiness, that hackea.org article is a huge steaming pile of FUD about Matrix.
  For what it’s worth, the team who came up with Matrix was originally based in two separate startups: one in the UK doing VoIP, one in France doing mobile dev. Both got acquired by Amdocs in 2010, but we ended up forming an independent “incubated startup” first to build telco apps, and then we came up with the idea of Matrix in ~2013. We then built out Matrix until 2017 when Amdocs killed our funding, having run out of patience for what amounted to generous FOSS philanthropy.
  We then set up New Vector (now Element) as an entirely independent UK/FR startup, and have received zero funding from Amdocs since. To be crystal clear: Amdocs has zero privileged influence or control over Matrix (or Element, for that matter), and has zero access to the Matrix servers we operate as Element. And besides - the whole point of Matrix is that you can and should run your own servers so you can pick who to trust, even if you don’t trust the project itself.

That article is full of fud don't trust it
but I do generally like matrix, its far from perfect but I do think its the best bet for a decentralised chat platform

Matrix is okay but like anything else, it's security is dependent on your server admins. Session has no server so that's what I'd recommend if you have the option.
- there is still servers it goes through to get to whoever your talking to and it doesnt have perfect forward security so that a no go for me
  
  It goes through TOR "nodes" but it can be routed through any of 10k different ones. It doesn't go through any Session servers and doesn't need Session servers.
  Perfect Forward Secrecy is not important and Session details clearly why it works this way..
- Session has no server so that’s what I’d recommend if you have the option.
  Closed rooms in session are limited to 100 people iirc. You can have Matrix rooms with any number of users.

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
  
  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 😀

Meh, I use it. I'll take it over Discord or Telegram any day. But I don't use it for anything that may be sensitive or anything involving IRL people.
It's leaky. If I set my own stuff up, I prefer XMPP, and increasingly Simplex. If some project uses matrix, I have an account and will talk to them there.
Overall I'm not a fan, but I don't outright hate it.
- You don't have to give them your phone number to be searchable, just use your matrix ID
  Files in encrypted rooms are encrypted
  Your not wrong about the metadata but xmpp leaks the same amount it just doesn't goto every server that has a user in the room
  
  No, to be searchable by your friends you have to attach your matrix ID to your phone number and upload it to an identity server, which anyone can run of course but which is useless unless its the new vector identity server. It's a central database of verified matrix IDs.

To me, the biggest problem with Matrix is that Synapse and Dendrite are both really heavy. I use an alternative server called Matrix Conduit that's more like an xmpp server in how light it is. Only problem then is that Conduit doesn't have that many resources so it's always a few steps back from Synapse or Dendrite.
- synapse has gotten lighter, but its still heavy if you join a big room like HQ with a few thousand servers in and a complex state

Its alright, but resource heavy, more complex, and leaks more metadata than XMPP.
- leaks more metadata than XMPP
  XMPP is not a private protocol either. In a lot of cases data is not E2EE, there is no reference clients and there's a mess of standards that very few if any clients fully implement.
  
  The "lot of cases" you're referring is using XMPP without OMEMO enabled, which is a pretty moot point as anyone using XMPP for any sensitive purpose would enable this (and every client I've used clearly warns you your message content is unencrypted if this is disabled). Also, XMPP has better (imo) and more numerous clients than Matrix on every platform except iOS and MacOS (No better XMPP client than Element on these platforms).
  I disagree that XMPP is a "mess of standards". XMPP is one standard, extremely minimal at its core, which is highly extensible. The issue you're talking about is that clients dont always support every XMPP feature, although they all support OMEMO.
  I definitely prefer an extensible protocol to a much heavier, metadata-leaking, less-feasible to self host solution like Matrix.

My main complaint about it is it just seems so resource heavy and complex for what it offers. It's nowhere near a viable alternative for Discord yet unless all you do is text chat.
- Matrix has no resources. It's just a protocol. If you mean Element, and are signed up with matrix.org server, I would recommend choosing another server.
- do you mean servers or clients?

I use Matrix; XMPP; Session; Jami; and am looking into Briar. Some of what the article says is valid but other parts are weird such as when they list Riot as "the Matrix client". Matrix has many clients. I don't use Riot at all. I use Fluffy Chat and Cinny Mainly. A lot of their list of issues don't apply to me. For instance my phone number isn't tied to my Matrix account and while they may get my IP I am usually on a VPN so that limits what they get. They talk of Matrix being centralized but that only really applies if you use the Matrix home server, there are many alternatives.
In the end they have some valid concerns but it really depends on what Matrix is being compared to. Even with these issues is it betetr than Discord for privacy and security ? Yes it is. Discord is clsoed source so nobody knows what it gives up or does in the background. No closed source program can be trusted over a FOSS option. If you want to trust any of the options I mentioned over Matrix then feel free to but don't trust Discord over it.
- For instance my phone number isn’t tied to my Matrix account
  It isn't for anyone using any client unless they optionally decide to provide it.
  They talk of Matrix being centralized but that only really applies if you use the Matrix home server, there are many alternatives
  Indeed: https://joinmatrix.org/servers/ and that's not even getting started on the private ones or unlisted ones.
  is it betetr than Discord for privacy and security ?
  100% Discord has no privacy no encryption, the company sees absolutely everything.
  Discord is clsoed source so nobody knows what it gives up or does in the background
  That doesn't necessarily impact privacy, and we know exactly what it does in the background based on their privacy policy, which in itself is quite ambiguous in parts. They're quite happy there to admit they will tie identities together if you use social media logins and features like that.
  No closed source program can be trusted over a FOSS option
  I would say be careful here, because something is open source doesn't necessarily mean anyone cares about what the code is actually doing. In the case of Matrix it is a very active project with a lot of community engagement and a well thought out specification so that everyone can "get up to speed". That is extremely important. Nobody is going to sift through a tarball of source code "it's open source", if the development is not. It's also totally possible for a patched version to be running in production that doesn't reflect the source code.
  That is why it's very important not to confuse FOSS with privacy.
  
  You can say how FOSS programs don't equate to privacy because people may not catch things or be watching but with closed source options nobody gets to audit the code at all outside the project. How is that better for privacy ? FOSS at least gives us a chance at privacy.

I would prefer session but messages aren't reliable. They can come late or out of order, if the core functionality makes you trouble you can't make convince other people to use it.

92 comments