> <i>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.</i><p>Advocacy and conferences aren't going to move the needle on mainstream adoption; those methods almost by definition are <i>targeting</i> 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.<p>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.
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."<p>ref 1: <a href="https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/06/future-of-synapse-dendrite/" rel="nofollow">https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/06/future-of-synapse-dendrit...</a> , <a href="https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/" rel="nofollow">https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/</a>
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.<p>Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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_.
Anyone have an idea why the matrix.org bridges are so expensive to run?<p>e.g. t2bot.io also runs Matrix bridges and the costs are only about $1.5k/mo [0], not $100k<p>[0]: <a href="https://t2bot.io/donations/" rel="nofollow">https://t2bot.io/donations/</a>
We are ready to donate. Unfortunately, none of the options work: Only credit card or bank wire transfer are accepted.<p>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)<p>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?
I was a huge matrix user, had converted "most" of my family and extended family to join matrix to be able to talk to me and it was generally a fine experience. Not great, just fine.<p>But.... then the government imposed a ban and I continued to use it and last year the police knocked on my door with an Armada thinking me and my family were hosting some "terrorist". My.family forced me to cut ties to matrix then and there.
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 (<a href="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issuecomment-1820037667">https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/571#issueco...</a>). And all that we get are posts like this complainging about not having enough money and threatening to shut things down, repeatedly.<p>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.<p>I really want them to succeed, but this has been going on for years now.
> Without Trust & Safety efforts, bad actors and communities would proliferate on the network and make it unlivable for the rest.<p>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?
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?
Small Rant on this:<p>I am happy to pay for services like element.io, and I in fact <i>did</i> 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.<p>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).<p>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 <i>when I used to pay to support the operating costs</i>.
Lmao, imagine having a project no one gaf about and the best idea you come up with is asking for ransom from the same people that dgaf about it.<p>Developers say the darndest things!
So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0]<p>[0]<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4</a>