Matrix 2.0 Is Here

I used to host a homeserver for myself up until very recently, but during their most recent conference, some folks decided to conduct a harassment campaign where they repeatedly posted CSAM in the Synapse Admins channel. Synapse didn&#x27;t really offer me any built-in tools to preempt that sort of behavior - you can&#x27;t even block domains. I found a third party moderation bot but it didn&#x27;t look quick or easy to set up.<p>Being exposed personally to that sort of thing was bad enough but making sure it wasn&#x27;t persisted in backups and my S3 buckets was way more trouble than it was worth, so I shut the service down and nuked the whole thing. I was mostly hanging out in public channels and using bridges; I only had one small group of IRL friends that I talked to on it and they practically leapt at the opportunity when I suggested moving the group chat to a different platform.<p>I see that &quot;Trust &amp; Safety&quot; is on their list of things to tackle next, so perhaps I&#x27;ll check it out when they announce Matrix 3.0.

Very exciting! I&#x27;m particularly pleased to see the invisible encryption stuff mentioned.<p>One of the biggest pain points I had when setting up a self-hosted Matrix instance and getting all my devices signed in was the crypto stuff. At least in the client I use, Element, I was bombarded with tons of popups with vague &quot;Upgrade your encryption!&quot; prompts upon logging in the first time. The copywriting on the &quot;Security &amp; Privacy&quot; page was less than helpful in illuminating what I was actually &quot;upgrading&quot; or setting up, since specific technical terms (e.g. recovery key&#x2F;security phrase&#x2F;security key) were all used more or less interchangeably. If that kind of confusion can be reduced or swept under the rug for end-users, it&#x27;d be a huge improvement on user experience.

If you want to host a homeserver but feel overwhelmed about the amount of services you&#x27;ll have to host (especially if you want to have bridges to other services), check out matrix-docker-ansible-deploy [1]. It&#x27;s pretty much a set and forget experience with reproducible deployment, and the documentation walks through any decision you need to make.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;spantaleev&#x2F;matrix-docker-ansible-deploy">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;spantaleev&#x2F;matrix-docker-ansible-deploy</a>

Now that I use matrix.org extensively for friends and work, I see invitations to slack, discord and mattermost communities as a strange thing.<p>Why would someone use a walled-garden instead of a protocol ?<p>It&#x27;s a very similar feeling for Bluesky.

I&#x27;ve had Element X installed for a while -- couldn&#x27;t use it for a while after EMS shut down their small instances and I started self-hosting, but it works with my self-hosted Synapse now.<p>The only problem is that it&#x27;s got too many paper cuts. I can live without Spaces, even though I use them on Desktop. But notification channels are a harder sell, and missing avatars on notifications is just annoying. Neither are exactly core features, but notifications are the most common way I interact with Element on mobile and for me, the improvements (and there are many) aren&#x27;t worth the downsides.

Does this change anything for notifications? I&#x27;ve had to pause using Matrix (self-hosted Synapse plus Schidichat for Android after Element had the same issues) to talk to my friends because we routinely get shit like:<p>- Message is sent to the server but nobody else&#x27;s phone gets notified about it for minutes &#x2F; hours<p>- Message just can&#x27;t be sent to the server even though the sending phone has Internet and a desktop web client on the same account works great

Off topic but I love the YouTube player interface. Instead of loading it by default (and adding invasive Google tracking to the page), you get the option to opt in. Very nice.

I just opened Element X, tried to decline some spammy invite - &quot;sorry, unknown error occured&quot;. Tried opening backup section in settings - &quot;sorry, unknown error occured&quot;.<p>I don&#x27;t think it is ready for prime time.

Previously (42 points) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41987113">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41987113</a>

Are there any plan for improving the desktop version of Element? E.g. by porting Element X to the desktop. Or should I look for other Matrix clients? I feel the Element team with their limited resources sadly cannot keep Element Desktop in the shape it needs to be to be a great client.

Congratulations to the Matrix team. I look forward to trying out everything this release offers and seeing how I can implement in the organizations I work with.

Glad to see important updates, and while I hoped for new info on moderating, at least it was mentioned that it&#x27;s in the top to-dos list..<p>We had moderation for a busy multi-room system 20 years ago in RealChat anyone dubbed an admin in the system could ban a person and their ip address (and or a cidr range encompassing it) in any room with a simple right click.<p>I&#x27;d like the same ability<p>and I&#x27;d add a couple of check-boxes<p>1 to make it so all of their posted media is removed from server or removed being seen by non-admin users pending further checking.<p>2 hide all their messages in the room and checkbox to hide them from all rooms from any previous minutes &#x2F; hours &#x2F; days (and another option to delete from DB not just hide after X minutes &#x2F; hours &#x2F; days)<p>Would be great to get the server to pull the owner ip&#x27;s cidr block and hostname and force all users from that parent ip block to a &#x27;this isp has been blocked for an unknown amount of time page&#x27;, you can put an email into this form which will send the super admin your ip addy and a brief message you can add<p>As it stands right now you have to ban on a per room basis and it, or is it still via some command line thing that you have to add separately via ssh and then config and all that?

I&#x27;m a big fan of Matrix, but I&#x27;m embarrassed to recommend it to my friends until Element X supports audio calls... It&#x27;s been months since the leading-edge release, and I don&#x27;t know what to think: there&#x27;s Element Call, however it&#x27;s neither supported by Element X nor real alternative to legacy peer-to-peer audio calls.

I wrote an easy to follow guide for hosting matrix a while back: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hcrypt.net&#x2F;synapse.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hcrypt.net&#x2F;synapse.html</a>

&gt; Could it be the glorious return of P2P Matrix (if it was funded)?<p>I forgot how it works right now, but I certainly would hope so in case of private messages (incl. P2P encrypted audio and video calls).

Is Synapse still the only Matrix server implementation that is not in beta? The matrix.org site seems to suggest as much, but I don&#x27;t know how up to date that is.

Does Matrix still sync all metadata with all connected federated instances?

Their main, and default client, still doesn&#x27;t support multiple accounts. It&#x27;s been years

Related: Matrix 2.0: The Future of Matrix --&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37599510">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37599510</a>

I&#x27;ve been on-and-off hosting for a while and I avoided synapse because it seemed to rely on a lot of different services and python packaging is hell. Seems like dendrite is dying (which I did not know until now), conduit and siblings are very much beta and not close to being stable.<p>If I read this correctly there is just one server worth <i>actually</i> using (synapse) and two client libraries (matrix-rust-sdk and matrix-js-sdk, both maintained by the same org&#x2F;people).<p>At the same time most of the bridges to other protocols (which was one huge selling point of matrix) are either broken, outdated, alpha (and by that I mean really, really alpha) or beta (usually in a stagnant state or alpha-ish).<p>One of the goals (perhaps the primary?) of matrix was to build a protocol that is supported by multiple servers, clients and bridges but that does not seem to have been realized.<p>I just listened to the keynote on matrix 2.0 and...<p>I used to be a huge proponent of matrix, but I really feel like the potential has not been lived up to.

Is it possible with Matrix to run your own server but let Matrix.org handle authentication? I always thought for many that&#x27;s probably best of both worlds.

I&#x27;ve been looking forward for almost a decade now for Matrix (and the client ecosystem) to mature enough that it isn&#x27;t so hard to get people less tech-savvy to give it a honest spin.<p>Here&#x27;s hoping this is a milestone as good as it sounds. I&#x27;m particularly curious about the improvements in encrypted conferences, which is... A pretty darn hard to do. Even more so with Matrix&#x27;s &quot;constrains&quot;.

&gt;Native Matrix Encrypted Multiparty VoIP&#x2F;Video (aka MatrixRTC, MSC4143)<p>Excellent. This is basically my only use for Matrix because encrypted video chats, 1-to-1, and now many-to-many (YES!) are the only thing Matrix does better than IRC. I started using Matrix video chat to talk to family during the early pandemic and sort of got used to it.

A little too late for my team, we switched two weeks ago from Element to Zulip and the difference in communication is night and day. Features such as mentions, notifications and threads (topics in Zulip) are vastly more stable and consistent.

I’m maintaining a Matrix TUI and I haven’t updated it in forever because I keep saying I’m going to wait for the next stable Rust SDK… but I just keep waiting. Anyone know if that is planned, because without a stable release, packaging is a bit of a pain.

Previously, it seemed the sliding sync required a Postgres-backed Synapse installation. Does the Matrix 2.0 version of Synapse provide a seamless upgrade path for those using the default Sqlite installation?

Updated to the new version of Synapse to try Element X, but went back to the regular app due to the lack of features, particularly the image resolution prompt when sending media.

I&#x27;m concerned about the performance for small hosts, which I tried and gave up.<p>it seems both Dendrite (go) and Conduit (rust) are STILL not in a state for prime time.

&gt; Next Generation Auth (aka Native OIDC, MSC3861)<p>Huge for me. I run my own IdP, mailserver and it’s one less self hosted service that I need to manage credentials for

Previously discussed here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41987113">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41987113</a><p>Glad it‘s getting more attention now. It’s quite a step towards Matrix experiences being just as good as traditional proprietary ones (though hopefully by far not the last one).

Does synapse support this at the moment? I can&#x27;t quite tell from the writing here if&#x2F;how you can run things that support this - my guess was no because it mentions improvements to the js SDK are required and there&#x27;s no warning on the synapse repo. Or is that just that these features are opt-in?

Is it already possible to join rooms without revealing your global address like in XMPP?

What&#x27;s the upgrade process and the state of implementations for self-hosted services? The current service is beyond terrible, big hopes for Matrix 2.0.

Does it have serverless P2P like Jami yet? If not, it seems like it&#x27;s not ready yet.<p>Without true P2P every individual user still has single points of failure.<p>It&#x27;s less disruptive if one server bans you, since people have been known to be banned for absolutely nothing, so there&#x27;s some value, but not enough that I&#x27;d actively pursue switching, unlike with Jami and similar, unless I planned on doing things that make bans more likely.<p>They&#x27;re making really good progress though in general!

Have the new security and encryption features received review?

i hope after the transition is done, there will be a focus on multiplatform e2e search, attachment tab improvements (it&#x27;s fine for &lt; 10 attachments in a chat, but not a 1000), optimized notification system so friends stop bug me with it, and of course custom emojis

Does it help with laggy Element?

I can&#x27;t really take anything related to Matrix seriously until they comprehensively address their transparency issues, one example that&#x27;s been ongoing for 5 years is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;matrix-org&#x2F;matrix-spec&#x2F;issues&#x2F;571">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;matrix-org&#x2F;matrix-spec&#x2F;issues&#x2F;571</a>

Still no concepts about P2P file transfers. Disappointing. The RFCs exist and just need to be discussed. People to implement that stuff are there and ready to go.

Disappointed this ain&#x27;t about linear algebra

&gt; now focusing on making Matrix fast, usable and mainstream-ready with Matrix 2.0<p>Feels like all of those things should have been the focus of 1.0, no?