cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/1939350
Hey all, I just wanted to give my personal view, now is the time to start talking about the Fediverse seriously with friends and family. I always have casually, but I’m starting serious talks with them now that the political climate has… shifted.
We are not the only ones who are concerned about our online privacy. Even people I thought didn’t really care are suddenly concerned (or realizing) that their private chats and DMs may not be as private as they thought. I’ve found that many more people are interested than were even just a few months ago.
Fediverse is a bit harder, I’ve found it’s easier to convince family with “It’s a more private space for us to share vacation photos like we used to”. Even my aging relatives know that facebook isn’t safe to upload intimate family photos to, and they’re looking for a solution. Friendica works well for this (and it’s relatively easy to host a family instance).
Matrix has honestly been easier. It works similar to Discord so those users have been easier to transition, and you may be surprised how many of your friends are only in Discord to chat in your small servers anyway. If the majority of the conversation moves, they probably will to.
The biggest takeaway is, although we are techies, don’t talk about the tech. It turns people away. Let it come up naturally. Describe the places as private, away from prying eyes. When asked “Well can I talk to other people?” Say yes, you’ll show them how when it comes time for it. Don’t bother with saying it’s like email, or this, or that. To them, it’s just an app. Send them to the registration page you want them to join at, and let it flow from there.
Good luck!
I tried my hand at running a Matrix server with a couple of friends. Less than successful. Constant bugs and minor irritations that most people (and myself, eventually) don’t want to deal with.
From notification problems, to decryption problems, to audio calls not working if the app isn’t open on the screen for the entire call…
I really like the idea of Matrix, but it needs another few years in the oven before it’s even remotely acceptable to recommend to friends or family. Most people have a hard enough time switching to something like Signal because battery optimization kills notifications, let alone something as convoluted as Matrix/Element.
And when you do, maybe you can also tell them there is this tiny little company who offers Matrix, Mastodon, Lemmy and Funkwhale access for less than $2.50 per month, is not VC backed and pledges 20% of its profits to the Fediverse projects?
does it include netflix?
Can we make Matrix not suck first?
Technologically, very cool, much wow. But UI/UX wise, it’s pretty terrible. I managed to convince 5 friends to move to Matrix from Discord. They lasted like 3 days before going back to Discord. One guy couldn’t even figure out how to post a message and have it be decrypted by everyone in the group. We just kept seeing “Message could not be decrypted” or whatever over and over again. We had to fall back to Discord to reach him.
They probably won’t be taking recommendations from me anymore. :|
(We used Element X clients.)
Technologically, very cool, much wow
I beg to differ, they use Cloudflare, metadata leaks, E2EE chats are not properly encrypted, the servers can see your name and emojis reactions, it has all the problems that come from federation (you can’t control your data beyond your server), their server package synapse is slow as hell even with a good server, specs wise, no plans to support Tor homeservers ( I believe they removed Tor support if I remember correctly )…
yeah…privacy and security wise, it’s almost a disaster… But I’ll still recommend it over things like Slack
Selling Matrix as as discord alternative is not honest, if you ask me. A real alternative would be something like Revolt.chat
Nrver heard of revolt before, cab i get a run down
Basically a discord-like that you can self host. You’d need to create a new account for each new instance/hosted server you want to join
So, not federated/distributed?
Nope, unfortunately. Seems to be very useful for corporations that want to do away with MS Teams and Slack
I agree. Revolt is a good alternative to Discord. Matrix does not feel the same as Discord, but just a WhatsApp alternative that is decentralized and federated.
The Element X client has been much nicer for people I’ve found, and I’ve been “onboarding” users one by one making sure they get in and they can chat. I agree the verification is an annoying step, and all of the checks, I tell people that’s just getting encryption set up, proving that it’s secure. Once I get them going, they’ve been pretty stable on it.
while “Could not decrypt message” is the n1 meme for matrix, i haven’t seen it happen in a long while, maybe a year. synapse and element x are quite good at this point, you should try matrix again
im not an element fan, company is a bit spoiled and sassy, but they stopped adding features and went all in on polishing recently. fair, as they’re trying to sell themselves for national deploys
I saw it just yesterday.
And a week ago.
And a month ago.
And I had it myself 2 months ago, fixed by going to the online element client that just happened to still be “verified” after a while of no use and then I could verify the rest of my clients. I would be SoL if I didn’t have one of my original sessions upon making the account years ago still. Interesting system.
That was in the 1 encrypted chat I am a part of.
99% of rooms aren’t encrypted so are completely and totally insecure anyway. Which I guess is fine for community discussion spaces.
I like fluffychat but it doesn’t have threading. Element is also fine and what I have to use on desktop because neochat fucks up so much, but I can’t use it on my phone because it causes an extra 1%/hour drain on my phone battery in the background which is insane. Uninstalled it a year or two ago.
I think we really should implement matrix as the private messaging for all fediverse services.
I really think we need to stop looking for a single-service solution to everything.
I agree. I love the fediverse but it is public by design, so anyone can listen. I think matrix is the obvious compliment to that. Many walls and closed doors
