The Matrix.org network has great potential, but after years of dealing with glitches, slow performance, poor UX, and one too many failures, I’m done with it.
  • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish
    392·
    6 days ago

    We really need to stop abandoning existing foss projects and thinking a whole new thing needs to be invented. Free and open-source software is not a product, it doesn’t abide by the same rules and relationships that proprietary tech does.

    It’s more organic. It’s also a commons that we can continue to draw on, and reshape. If I recall correctly, there were something like three different vector graphic editors from the same codebase before Inkscape managed to be the one that gained traction.

    Matrix isn’t perfect, but abandoning it just to reinvent it all over again just because some people really need a thing that works like Discord, even though Discord is absolute hot garbage; is just going to re-create all the same problems. Matrix today is better than it was two years ago. And Matrix in a year will be better from now.

      • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        Sure, go for it. Though XMPP has so many features at this point, it might already have Matrix, irc, Discord, and email for all we know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • Tattorack@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      6 days ago

      Can’t agree on Discord being hot garbage, unless you’re specifically talking about how monetisation has creeped its way into it.

      However, with Vencord I don’t have to see any of that shit, while also having a far more functional and feature rich client.

      Of course, a FOSS, potentially federated alternative would be greatly preferred, but it must have at least the basic functions of Discord.

      • poloqualle@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        None of the popular/successful apps are bad.

        They usually have great ui/ux and are being actively developed or at least maintained. Think google maps, apple wallet, or of course discord. What is hot garbage, however, is having to accept massive privacy violations if you use them. Vencord unfortunately does not mitigate that. :(

      • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        A large part of it is the obnoxious monetization and general enshittification and privacy violations, but that’s not all. There are a number of usability annoyances. If I’ve been away from Discord for a little while and try to continue where I left off in a thread on a server, it never properly preserves where I last stopped reading. There are often times when I get notifications but it won’t actually take me to the relevant message, and that can even result in situations where the ping just gets lost entirely.

        Then there’s things inherent in Discord’s design and how people use it. It’s become a tool that people have decided is a convenient replacement for chats, wikis, and forums - but it’s a shittier version of all of those things. Pinned messages are such a tucked away and half-baked feature. The fact that people are using Discord both to organize and discuss projects - as well as using that same space to host documentation or other critical knowledge-bases has made information significantly less accessible. I don’t want to join someone’s niche club just to “learn more.” If I want to read something I would rather just go to a wiki on the actual open web.

        Discord is hot garbage ultimately for the same reasons as Facebook. It’s trying to be everything to everyone, and dropping a black box on the open web by doing so. It’s just another example of people trading convenience for actually using the appropriate tools for the kind of job they’re trying to do.

    • Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      I agree with you, my main issue with Matrix is that it is a pain to self-host at the moment.

    • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Often, the problem is that projects get to a point where they’re happy and the maintainer doesn’t want to add any new features. So people then are forced to build a new project to get those features.

      • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        Sometimes, but my point is you don’t have to start from scratch. It’s free software. You are allowed to make extensions or even fork it.

    • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      It’s gonna be like 100 years before Matrix and the clients are in a good place at this rate. It only seems to be getting worse right now with more fragmented clients and servers with more and more spam issues, and the performance just keeps getting worse too.

      Even their very own Element app is being retired and replaced by Element X which is missing a ton of features.

      They still don’t have any of the features people coming from Discord/TS/Mumble are expecting like voice chat rooms, push to talk, or streaming to a room. They don’t have the features Telegram users are expecting like stickers, threads inside groups, read only channels, and so on…

      The vast majority of users have no reason to switch since it’s nothing like the apps they are used to. And it’s buggy and slow on top of that.

    • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      What I don’t like about Matrix is that it’s most visible homeserver and client implementations feel like they are being developed as a product by New Vector Ltd., not a community project.

        • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          New Vector forked the matrix foundation owned projects for synapse, dendrite, and element, and pulled all their devs, changing the license and bringing them under closer control. The foundation repos are now archived, and only the new vector owned ones are being actively developed. They sell an enterprise license for their element server suite that, at least according to their copy, seems more performant, and also offers admin tools that the free version lacks.

          If you want to run a public instance that allows registration, you pretty much need some kind of external admin tool for moderation.

          It’s of course still better than pretty much all proprietary options, but also quite some room for improvement.

  • edent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    641·
    7 days ago

    I agree with all this. The thing which caused me to uninstall was suddenly being pushed lots of abusive message with disturbing contents.

    When I complained about it, Matrix told me that my public complaints were hurting the ecosystem and I should be quiet.

    • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.spaceEnglish
      201·
      7 days ago

      I had a wild ride with matrix, originally wanting to run a node on my server. That did not turn out well, because I was a bit stupid and just assumed there would be more admin/mod tools out of the box. As it turned out, I had inadvertently allowed spam/abuse accounts on my node without even noticing, because naive as I was, I assumed my admin-level account would get informed of stuff like user registrations and abuse reports in the standard Element frontend. As a bonus, when I checked what was supposedly the official matrix support channel, it was repeatedly getting spammed with CSAM and gore at the time. That was when I realised, that it definitely was not the ecosystem for me, and running a node without experience had been a pretty stupid idea on my end.

      • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        Yeah. I an hosting a homeserver for my ttrpg groups, but it doesn’t have any federation enwbled at all, and sign ups are invite-only.

        The amount of work needed to moderate a public instance, especially with the lacking tools available, seems crazy. Also, I don’t love it that New Vector has an implementation for an admin console, that seems to be available exclusively for paying subscribers to the enterprise version of their element server suite.

        • AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.spaceEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          Not impossible, although, sadly - any system where anonymity is the prime focus will also invite fucked up shit in addition to legitimate use, without any complicated motives behind it. There’s just a relevant fraction of humanity who are, sometimes essentially, sometimes temporarily, messed up fucks. Which is why I think providing ways to combat abuse has to be a high priority for the underlying development of any project like it, unless it explicitly doesn’t aim for mainstream adoption.

    • brunoqc@piefed.caEnglish
      10·
      7 days ago

      When I complained about it, Matrix told me that my public complaints were hurting the ecosystem and I should be quiet.

      Weird. I think they did some improvement to prevent those abusive messages but it took a while and it was embarrassing. Maybe it’s hard to prevent them with a federated network but still, the abusive messages where basically a copy paste.

  • 2910000@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    7 days ago

    I just want a self-hostable open-source alternative to the shitty closed-source IM systems I’m forced to use

    I’m sticking with Matrix for now, hopefully some of the issues I’ve had will get ironed out

  • Sean Tilley@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    6 days ago

    I always liked the concept of Matrix, and still actively use it, but there’s some serious jank. Synapse is generally bloated and not fun to run an instance, Dendrite is perpetually in Beta, and the clients themselves range from adequate to awful. The default Element client on Android is so broken for me that I’m forced to use Element X, because I can’t even log in with Element.

    It’s disappointing, but there’s a ton of issues that aren’t so easy to resolve. New Vector and the Element Foundation are basically two separate entities that have some kind of hard split between them, neither of which seems to have the money necessary to support comprehensive development. The protocol is said to be bloated and overtly complex, and trying to develop a client or a server implementation is something of a nightmare.

    I want to see Matrix succeed, I think a lot of people see the potential of what it could be. I’m not sure it’ll ever get there.

    • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.comEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      I always liked the concept of Matrix, and still actively use it, but there’s some serious jank.

      I use Element as well as Beeper, which is at its core an Element client based on network bridging. I’m a big fan of Matrix, but it isn’t as approachable as other messaging services and requires some technical know-how to use effectively.

      It seems like the Linux of messaging services.

  • sunth1ef@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    19·
    6 days ago

    From an outsiders perspective, element has never worked for me and never been stable enough to get anywhere close to discord. Joining servers is buggy AF and Element X is severely hobbied on mobile.

    I’ve been refusing to use discord for about 6-8 months and am often invites to join various discords by IRL friends and online communities. I wish Matrix / Element was a viable alternative but I’ve never been able to get it working for anythung other than DMs, and I’m already happy with Signal for that honestly.

    As a non developer I want to be sensitive to the amount of work involves, and the number of cooks in the kitchen, but the fact that we don’t have a FOSS- federated slack / discord killer app is leaving so much interaction on the table.

    I’ve heard of Revolt but it doesn’t seem to be there with encryption

    • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      You got PeerSuite as a newcomer, and a pretty promising one with the concept of not having any servers tied to it at all, at that.

  • mat@linux.communityEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    I did not enjoy finding out only at the end that the images in this blog post are generated/made using AI.

    • anon5621@lemmy.mlEnglish
      201·
      7 days ago

      But they both closed source protocols locked down to specific corp

          • brunoqc@piefed.caEnglish
            2·
            7 days ago

            I wish xmpp was p2p. I can self-host but it could be way simpler if people didn’t have to.

            • muppeth@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
              1·
              6 days ago

              I think they are OK. When switching to it couple of years ago ifeared there will be no-one but was please tly suprised. For sure you do t have situation where most of the participants in the room are ghost accounts because presence actually works. So might look smaller but you are sure it’s real users.

      • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        But locked in a way where nice third party clients could still interact with them. I never used official clients after a time.

        That seems to have gone away.

        • rivalary@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          Who was 400 years old from Krynn? Sylvara? It’s been a long time since I’ve read those books.

          • katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            3·
            7 days ago

            it’s been a while so i just picked random names for the bit but now i kinda wanna go back and read the dragons o autumn twilight series (mostly to get to time of the twins)

    • naht@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      XMPP works, but there are no video calls. Matrix has those, and they are very good. But since it is not possible there to see the online state of my friends (turned off everywhere due to horrible performance), it defeats the purpose. I want to see if they are at their computer, not if they own a mobile phone. 😉

      • matlag@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        I do 1:1 videocalls on XMPP. Quite some clients implement that now. But there were no videoconferences until very recently. That’s changing, though. See Movim right now, for example.

        Main 2 issues with XMPP are inconsistent clients (in terms of GUI but also features wise) and the incredibly, astonishingly, ridiculously sloooooooooooooooow evolution of the protocol through the XSF. Nothing can get in there until it’s “perfect”. Clients devs are reluctant to implement things until the extension is stable. And the best part is this approach hardly work: the best way to figure if something works is to deploy it in larger and larger scales and improve it on the way as you identify corner cases you didn’t think about. Not to review the description for months/year until it qualifies as literature…

  • shiroininja@lemmy.worldEnglish
    122·
    6 days ago

    I don’t know why people don’t use irc, I’m in it daily and it’s busier than Matrix, and even busier than some Discord servers I’m in. And there’s mobile clients. There’s even way less bots and spam

      • shiroininja@lemmy.worldEnglish
        103·
        6 days ago

        I don’t really worry about that. I treat it like natural conversation, or traditional chat rooms. I mean I don’t need a recap when I show up at a party. I just jump in. I’ve never heard of a bouncer, but I think it would turn it into more of a feed than a conversation, which is the opposite of what I want.

        I’m tired of feeds and timelines. AOL chat rooms were my formative internet years, and I liked that. I think the old style of internet communication is better than the feed silos we have now. Besides, I hardly ever go back and look at older convos in other spaces. I usually hit mark all as read when I open the app.

        • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          3·
          5 days ago

          Problem is then you miss important info, for example if friends are talking about a game server they’re running and post the connection details, or if they plan an event with a location and time to meet, if you don’t have a bouncer and were offline then you can’t see those messages.

        • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          3·
          5 days ago

          The bouncer is just the name for the technology that maintains your connection when your client disconnects.

          I’m kind of socially awkward, so I really value being able to “read the room” and see what people were talking about before I joined. I have IRC set up so that when I open it up, I see the previous 40 lines or so of dialog from before I connected. (This is a setting you can adjust on the bouncer).

          I could achieve something similar by joining a room and then waiting a few minutes, but sometimes the room is very slow and no one posts, etc., it’s nice to just always be able to look at the scroll back when you log on.

      • mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        21·
        6 days ago

        Yeah this is exactly what turned me off from it when I looked into it. I kind of like that it would lend a more physical-space quality to it, but ultimately I’m hardly ever online, so it would just be me being totally out of the loop all the time without a bouncer. I know I could figure out how to do it, but it’s a lot of effort for something where I’m not even sure I’ll like what it gives me.

    • rozodru@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      yup I went back to IRC. got tired of discord and matrix just wasn’t for me. IRC is where it’s add. still remember all the stuff from the 90s so it was just like riding a bike. plus I can have it in my Terminal which is a plus.

    • blobchoice@feddit.ukEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      I think IRC wins by being around the longest, but also being dead simple to set up and use.

      I tried using Matrix and it just honestly frazzled my head a little. I know it’s just a few extra steps to get registered, but it honestly feels like a few extra bits of friction to what amounts to trying to join a big social circle.

    • Yaky@slrpnk.netEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      I’ve been hosting a server without much problems for several years now.

      Synapse and Riot.im (now Element) became much better around 2019 or 2020. But not too long ago, I also found out that Synapse also bloats the DB with state_groups_state table. There are a handful of commands that come with synapse, but no built-in admin tool or panel, so I wrote my own. Moving server to another host has been seamless for my (few) users. TURN/STUN for calls seems to work okay (I don’t really use it though).

      I appreciate Element being uniform across platforms (which I cannot say about XMPP clients), but the sign-in is pretty tedious, and registration with a token is still impossible last time I checked (which is either a hassle for the user to use another client and then their smart device, or a security issue if you open registration to anyone). Most normal people probably don’t care and don’t want to deal with keys, cross-verification, and all that jazz.

    • kevincox@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Yeah, I finally pulled the trigger and moved to my own domain from matrix.org. Man, it is just so much faster. Which is sad, because the performance is pretty bad. (Element Web seems to do some per-room request as part of the initial loading screen which is obviously not scalable) but getting off of matrix.org is a huge performance improvement.

      That being said there is nothing really wrong with matrix.org. The problem is really public rooms. People will join and spam. It is true of any protocol (have you heard about email?) but Matrix definitely needs to (and they are slowly working on) make it more expensive for spammers.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    I’ve used matrix for a year now and it works, but it seems slow.

    Lots of people tried to self-host it and reported it uses too much RAM for what it does. (It allegedly uses 1GB or more of ram even if it only has 1-2 users)

    Efficient software is a must. Software must not waste resources simply because “they are there”. That’s my biggest gripe with matrix.

    Disclaimer: i’ve not tried to host matrix myself, so i could be wrong here.

    • mesa@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      7·
      6 days ago

      Its running about 1GB for me and my server setup. It spikes a bit if there is a lot going on, but it can get low than that when its just idling. Its not terrible, but given irc and other clients which take MB for RAM…its a bit of a hog-ish.

      • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        IRC is dead simple. You cant compare something like matrix to it in terms of resource usage thats not fair. 1GB of ram usage if fine for a server application that does messaging, pictures and video.

        • szymon@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          So we need to bring back IRC, if someone doesn’t know how it works - well, I don’t want to talk with such person. Bring back gatekeeping

          • Auth@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            IRC doesnt fit the requirements though. I cant send pictures or videos, I cant make little icons to react, I cant quote reply, I dont get push notifications when pinged. You may think these arent nessesary but to majority of users they are and I dont think IRC is going to adapt to include them.

        • mesa@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Im running the equivalent to a pi 5 so yeah it can run with a slight delay. You may have some issues with the spikes, definitely if its more than a couple of people. 4GB in total, you will probably have to figure out if its worth it.

          Also updates sometimes borks the server. Ive stopped updating until I have time to really sit down and understand what changed.

    • auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Matrix 2.0 is much faster, but seems like they’ve been building it for a decade.

      The app is out, but still no Spaces support; which is what makes it a competitor to Discord.

    • cmhe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      7 days ago

      That is what the author said they switch to, but TBH XMPP also has issues with MFA and messages frequently not being decrypted (using OMEMO) and ‘unencrypted metadata’.

      I wouldn’t say that it works better than Matrix, it just has some different strengths and weaknesses.

      • yessikg@fedia.io
        3·
        7 days ago

        I haven’t had any issues with it, but it all depends of the client and server

  • Shape4985@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    Iv tried matrix a couple times. I wanted to like it but couldnt get on with it.

    Signal and simplex are still my prefrence

      • Shape4985@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Iv used session before, its not for me Not sure how i feel about the onion routing using the loki and oxen network.

        Signal has that “whatsapp” feel friends and family find easy and simplex has no identifiers some other cool features but can be a little complicated for some users

  • Mio@feddit.nuEnglish
    9·
    7 days ago

    I am glad someone can admit it failed and we have to learn from this. I am just wondering what it takes to succeed.

    • Turret3857@infosec.pubEnglish
      142·
      6 days ago

      start with a discord clone

      make it e2ee

      make it federated

      i feel like it shouldnt be this hard, but I’m not the one developing matrix, nor XMPP, nor the 3rd smaller option you the reader is wanting me to list that I am unaware of

      • Threeme2189@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        115·
        6 days ago

        Don’t fucking clone the godaweful mess that is Discord. Please, for the love of God start with something else.

        • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          51·
          6 days ago

          Discord is what people like and are used to though. If you want the average user to switch it needs to be somewhat familiar.

        • Turret3857@infosec.pubEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Discord is where people are at. You start with something else you’re asking for another Matrix or XMPP because people will not understand a new interface

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Suppose for text messages, sharing files, contacts and such we have solutions, and with a set of libraries solving the hard parts, that can be done relatively easily. Encryption is hard, but suppose we are not even doing E2EE yet, that we are fine with TLS till the server, mutual TLS between servers, and additional something like OTR or PGP for 1-on-1 conversations.

        Voice/video calls, and especially group voice/video calls, are a different matter entirely. You have to think, solve latency problems, congestion problems, so that those were usable at all.

        Discord UI is not very nice.

        • Turret3857@infosec.pubEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          I agree that the UI for discord sucks shit, however my thinking is aligned with what another commenter said, its what people already know and are used to. Trying to make anything new will turn users off. I’m very open to being proven wrong about that assumption though. I’d love for a foss project to have better UI/UX than discord.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            The UI is not that important. Something a bit similar to Discord in appearance and experience is doable in plenty of available UI toolkits and libraries and frameworks and whatever.

            The system itself is important, so that it would be functional with federation, yet not as prone to fragmentation as XMPP, yet efficient.

  • Trihilis@ani.socialEnglish
    2112·
    7 days ago

    The thing is… What alternatives are there? Signal can’t be trusted (on the very same website there is an article about it). I’m not using closed source alternatives, Simplex is kinda shady too tbh and I’m not even sure I could get anyone to use it.

    I don’t like Matrix/Element either but sadly its the best open source chat solution we have.

        • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          24·
          6 days ago

          I started reading the article but didn’t finish. This guy is a fool. He’s bitching about vendor lock in? The data isn’t supposed to be portable. That’s the point.

      • philpo@feddit.orgEnglish
        7·
        6 days ago

        Signal itself is solid. For now. The issue is that signal is a centralized infrastructure service that is based in the US.

        While it’s rather unlikely that something shady is going on and the current administration manages to pressure someone into installing back doors without anyone noticing, there is a growing chance that at some point the Orange Hitler or his cronies aim at Signal - and simply shut the whole thing down in a single sweep.

        Which would mean the whole thing is lost - in theory they of course could rebuild a foundation outside the US, but that would also mean they need people not residing in the US (not like Proton which claims to operate from Switzerland and in reality are US based) and find funding there - enough funding to cover the costs and that is not impeded by US pressure.

        This is the scenario that makes Signal a problematic candidate - and sadly the foundation is doing nothing against it.

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      Counterpoint: this is just some random blogger and you don’t need to follow any of their advice.

        • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.deEnglish
          12·
          7 days ago

          XMPP is significantly less decentralized, allowing them to “”“cut corners”“” compared to Matrix protocol implementation, and scale significantly better. (In heavy quotes, as XMPP isn’t really cutting corners, but true decentralization requires more work to achieve seemingly “the same result”)

          An XMPP or IRC channel with a few thousand users is no problem, wheras Matrix can have problems with that. On the other hand, any one Matrix homeserver going down does not impact users that aren’t specifically on that homeserver, whereas XMPP is centralized enough that it can take down a whole channel.

          Meanwhile IRC is a 90s protocol that doesn’t make any sense in the modern world of mainly mobile devices.

          XMPP also doesn’t change much, the last proper addition to the protocol (from what I can tell, on the website) was 2024-08-30 https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0004.html

          • psycotica0@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            6 days ago

            XMPP doesn’t change very very often, but there’s actually tons of XEPs that are in common use and are considered functionally essential for a modern client, and with much higher numbers than XEP-0004

            The good news, though, is that mostly you as the user don’t need to care about those! Most of the modern clients agree on the core set and thus interoperate fine for most normal things. And most XEPs have a fallback in case the receiver doesn’t support the same XEPs.

            I’m general XMPP as a protocol is a lightweight core that supports an interesting soup of modules (in the form of XEPs) to make it a real messenger in the modern sense. And I think that’s neat! But you can’t really judge the core to say how often things change.

            • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              Most of the modern clients agree on the core set and thus interoperate fine for most normal things.

              So you think it is a sane solution to mark essential features as optional extensions and then have a wink-wink, nudge-nudge agreement of which of these “optional” extensions are actually mandatory? Instead of having essential features be part of the core protocol?

              But more importantly, XMPP sucks because it does not have one back-end implementation like Vodozemac for Matrix. So let alone being unable to have security audits, you are forcing client developers to roll their own implementation of the e2ee, with likely little to no experience with cyber-security, and just hoping they will make no mistakes. You know, implementing encryption that even experts have hard time getting right.

              • psycotica0@lemmy.caEnglish
                1·
                2 hours ago

                Honestly, I struggle with this myself. On the one hand I like the diversity of clients; it feels like a sign of strength of the community and protocol that there are many options that have different values. But the cost of this diversity is that it makes things more complicated to coordinate, and different people with different values have different opinions on what a chat client should even want for features.

                Something like Slack or Discord can roll out a server feature and client feature to all their clients all at the same time and have a unified experience. But the whole benefit of FLOSS is that anyone can fork the client to make changes, and the whole point of an open protocol is that multiple independent clients can interoperate, and so there’s a kind of irony in me wanting those things, but those things producing a fractured output.

                So I think XMPP, as a protocol, does the best compromise. These differences between clients and servers aren’t just random changes in behaviour or undocumented features, they’re named, numbered, alterations that live somewhere and are advertised in the built-in “discovery” protocols. The protocol format itself is extensible, so unexpected content can be passed alongside known content in a message or a server response and the clients all know to ignore anything they don’t understand, and virtually all of the XEPs are designed with some kind of backwards compatibility in mind for how this feature might degrade when sent to a non-supported client.

                It isn’t perfect, but I think perfection is impossible here. A single server and client that everyone uses and keeps up to date religiously with forced upgrades is best for cohesiveness, but worst for “freedom”, and a free-for-all where people just make random individual changes and everything is always broken isn’t really a community, and XMPP sits in the middle and has a menu of documented deviations for clients to advertise and choose.

                As for security, that can be mostly solved with libraries, independent of the rest of the client or server implementation. Like, most clients used libsignal for their crypto, so that could in theory be audited and bug-fixed and all clients would benefit. Again, not perfect, there’s always room at the interface between the client code and the library code that’s unique, but it’s not as bad as rolling your own crypto.

          • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            IRC makes sense in a world where people register to bouncers, which allow people to connect to any IRC network they please.