Could someone smarter than me explain Matrix to me? In particular,
- What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
- What advantage would it give me over other services?
- Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that’s still fully in development?
- How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?
Could someone smarter than me explain Matrix to me?
I wouldn’t assume that I’m smarter, but I do have more than a little experience here, so I’ll try to answer your questions. :)
It’s a real-time messaging platform. The most common use for it is text chat, both in groups (like Discord or IRC) and person-to-person (like mobile phone text/SMS). It supports other uses as well, like voice chat, video conference, and screen sharing, although much of that is newer and gradually showing up in clients.
What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
Compared to Signal:
- Matrix doesn’t require a phone number, or even an email address (although some public homeservers want an email address these days, as a recovery method in case you forget your password).
- Matrix has a variety of clients, so it’s more likely that an app fitting your needs exists.
- Matrix clients typically don’t require Google services at all; neither to get the software nor to receive notifications.
- Matrix cannot be monitored at any single location, so it’s more resistant to meta-data tracking at the network level.
- Matrix cannot be shut down by any single organization, so it’s more resistant to censorship and denial-of-service attacks. If a homeserver is ever forced offline, only the accounts on that homeserver go away; all your other contacts remain intact. Same thing if a service operator changes its policies or goes out of business.
- Matrix (last time I checked) had better support for using multiple devices on the same account. Phone, laptop, and office computer, for example.
- Matrix homeservers can be self-hosted by anyone, and still participate in the global network.
- Signal’s encryption covers more meta-data at the application level than Matrix currently does. This might be important if you’re a whistleblower or journalist whose safety depends on hiding your contacts from well-positioned adversaries.
Compared to email:
- Matrix has end-to-end encryption, with forward secrecy, built in. It’s generally better for privacy than bolting PGP onto email, and it’s far easier.
- Matrix is well suited to instant messaging.
- Matrix supports features that people have come to expect from modern chat platforms, like reaction emoji and editing after sending.
- Email has a greater variety of servers and clients.
- Email apps often have more composition features to support long-form writing.
What advantage would it give me over other services?
We already covered Signal, and there are too many other services to compare every difference in all of them, but here are some more common advantages:
- Matrix is a completely open protocol, developed through a public and open process, with open-source servers and client apps. This is important to people who care about privacy because it can be scrutinized by anyone to verify that it operates as it claims to, and can be improved by anyone with a good idea and motivation to participate. It’s important to people who care about longevity because nobody can take it away.
- Matrix has multiple clients for every major platform: desktop, mobile, and web.
- Matrix handles groups of practically any size (including just one or two people).
- Matrix messages are delivered even when you’re offline.
Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that’s still fully in development?
Until recently: Ever since cross-signing and encryption-by-default arrived a couple years ago, it has been somewhere between “still rough” and “pretty good”, depending on one’s needs and habits. I have been using it with friends and small groups for about five years, and although encrypted chats have sometimes been temperamental, they have worked pretty well most of the time. When frustrating glitches have turned up, we sorted them out and continued to use it. This has been worthwhile because Matrix offers a combination of features that is important to us and doesn’t exist anywhere else. I haven’t recommended it to extended family members yet, because not everyone cares as much about privacy or has the patience for troubleshooting in order to get it. However…
Recently: The frequency of glitches has dropped dramatically. Most of the encryption errors have disappeared, and the remaining ones look likely to be solved by the “Invisible Encryption” measures in Matrix 2.0. Likewise with things like sign-in lag and client set-up.
If you’re considering whether it’s time to try it, I suggest waiting until Matrix 2.0 features are formally released in the clients and servers you want to use, which should be very soon for the official ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if I could confidently recommend it to family members in the coming year.
How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?
If you just want to chat, not very. Even one or two of my friends who can barely use email got up and running pretty quickly with a little guidance. Someone who can get started using Lemmy by themselves can probably handle it on their own.
If you want to host your own server, moderately tech savvy.
I’ve used Matrix since the app was called Riot.im and there was no encryption
I didn’t realize once encryption was added, that there were still metadata leaks as compared to Signal
Could you give me some information on what metadata is unencrypted, or point me towards documentation about that?
Room membership and various other room state events are not currently end-to-end encrypted, which means a nosy admin on a participating homeserver could peek at them. (They’re still not visible on the wire, though, nor on homeservers whose users haven’t been invited.)
I don’t know if Signal is actually much better, since I haven’t looked at their protocol. They hyped their Sealed Sender feature as a solution to some of this, but it can’t really protect from nosy server admins who are able to alter the code, and they fundamentally cannot hide network-level meta-data like who is talking with whom. There’s a brief and pretty accessible description of why in the video accompanying this paper.
I don’t have a list of Matrix events that remain unencrypted in encrypted rooms. You could read the spec to find them if you’re motivated enough to slog through it, but be warned that network protocol specs tend to be long and boring. :) Unfortunately, the few easy-to-digest blog posts about it that I’ve encountered have been both alarmist and inaccurate on important points (one widely circulated one was so bad that the author even retracted it), so not very useful for getting an objective view of the issue.
However, the maintainers have publicly acknowledged the issue as something they want to fix, both in online forums and in bug reports like this one:
What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
Matrix is more like discord, no phone numbers, just email, and you can make big groups with different channels within. More meant for communities then something like Signal, that’s mostly for 1:1 conversation or small groups
What advantage would it give me over other services? Keeping the discord example i said above, no tracking, possibility to have end to end encryption, and open source code, along with the ability of having different instances that can communicate to each other, just like here on lemmy, so if you don’t trust anyone else you can run your own instance
Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that’s still fully in development?
It’s mostly good already, but as with many other privacy focused services it lacks a wide adoption, so most of the communities there are about privacy, Linux and that type of stuff.
How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?
The most used client, Element, is IMO very easy to use, you can directly register through there, and you get the choice of choosing between the official matrix.org instance (which on certain occasions is laggy due to the many people using it), or other instances
What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
Your organization can’t host a federated Signal server, and email isn’t private.
Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that’s still fully in development?
My previous organization has used it for over 4 years without issues, however mostly limited to text.
How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?
Simply using? Not very much, basically like Lemmy.
matrix is for chat rooms full of strangers. signal is for talking to your friends
- What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?
None? Use signal, as long as it works. If the Signal server goes down tho, you could selfhost Matrix.
Its slack but it can be more secure (e2ee DMs).
Its good already and used as a public channel for most popular Foss projects’ chats
Hopefully the clients get much better. I convinced a few friends to get on Matrix last year… and… boy… it was a terrible experience. Everyone ended up going back to Discord and they probably won’t trust another recommendation from me.
Yes I’m waiting until it’s ready for the average user before I recommend it to anyone.
I’ve been very mindful not to recommend Matrix until the clients and protocol become much more stable. When you’re recommending platforms to average users you really need to jump in and try it yourself. If too many problems come up just don’t recommend. Or alternatively do recommend if you want them to leave you alone :3
UX is very difficult, unfortunately, especially for open-source projects where the contributors are usually programmers and not so much UX/product managers.
Yeah, but repeated “This message cannot be decrypted” breaks its primary function as a chat app.
It’s getting harder and harder to disable their broken end to end encryption by default too.
Look at the telegram client, which is open source and has the best UX for a messenger I know
Isn’t telegram a for-profit company?
The telegram apps are open source
Epic timing, I want to dive in and see if I can mirror setting up Discord communities in the most painless way possible. This seems to be a great step in the right direction. Imagine a place… where you get the best of both worlds and we can leave Discord behind.
Will regular Element support it soon? Or am I expected to install a new app?
It will, no need to install anything new
If the Matrix Foundation can deliver on all the points of this blog post then Matrix will take off as a platform. The problem I have is that in the past they’ve been poor at handling issues in any sort of reasonable time frame, or at all.
Hoping they’ll eventually turn over a new leaf.
What is an MSC?
Matrix Spec Change. It’s how the Matrix protocol evolves, similar to the RFCs (requests for comments) used by Internet Engineering Task Force protocols.
Matrix spec change
Think RFC
It’s been here since 2003
I laughed a bit. Thanks.
i’m guessing they’ll actually be done in 6 months or so
Is it an improvement over xmpp ?
But I haven’t even escaped the original matrix. Or the matrix reloaded.
You’re not the chosen one.
That’s what she said.
great project getting better all the time!
Encryption is a mess with Matrix. Randomly doesn‘t decrypt messages. Most non-techies don‘t get the process of saving key files or creating secure passphrases.
Looks like someone didn’t read the article. See part 4: Invisible Encryption. (Also note the Conclusion paragraph that explains the new functionality is only just starting to appear in clients.)
I did. I referred to the current version and the comment that is has always been a great project.
So you were aware that this announcement includes fixes for the encryption issues, yet you decided to post a comment complaining about them anyway, ignoring the point of this post and giving readers the false impression that the issues are unaddressed.
And you did it just to contradict someone who finds the project useful.
That’s not helpful to anyone. Quite the opposite, I’d say.
Too much in the open source community is people saying this is great! Always has been. You shouldn’t crap on people being honest about the problems that have existed, because track record is important
You shouldn’t crap on people being honest about the problems that have existed,
I haven’t “crapped on” anyone. I just pointed out that a comment, which was an absolute declaration in present tense, is misleading, poorly informed, and needlessly quarrelsome. Because it is. And the author then tried to justify it by putting words (“has always been”) in someone else’s mouth. None of that is honest. It was arguing in bad faith, and it’s important to call that sort of thing out, because letting it go is how misinformation spreads.
If they had instead just presented their view as historical experience to help inform about track record, I wouldn’t have taken issue with it.
Too much in the open source community is people saying this is great!
Perhaps, although that’s common around proprietary software as well.
Great is subjective. Matrix has struggled with some problems that rightly frustrated people, but it also has accomplished some things that no other messaging platform has. By that measure, it is a great project. And the announcement we’re all discussing here demonstrates that it is getting better. Just as barkingspiders said.
I replied to an answer here. Not to the blog post.
By that, I referred to the quality of this answer concerning the past, to be more precise to the last three years, we‘ve been using Matrix at work, struggeling with these shortcomings.
Your personal shortcomings concerning either the use of Lemmy and/or discussions in general are sad, but not my problem.
Honestly in my experience all issues with decryption have been solved for more than a year. No matter if im using android, web or desktop. Idk about apple shit but thats just not a priority probably.
Todays desktop release finally enables the new voice/video calls/rooms feature which was the last serious complaint i had.
Awful to self-host (resources, administration) and rolling their own crypto
On the UX-Side it’s too complicated to explain to my parents.
I’d love for it to succeed, but for now I’ll just stick woth Signal
rolling their own crypto
No, it uses well-known, well-proven, standard crypto.
It also uses double-ratchet key management, much like what Signal does.
The reference server is a bit heavy if you’re federating with large public rooms, but lighter alternative servers are available.
they do have a special crypto usage which they have sensibly rewritten in Matrix 2.0
I tried running a matrix server last year. I guess I will try again and see if a normie like me can make it somewhat usable.
With docker it’s quite easy (assuming you are familiar with docker)
But docker / containerization is a skill that becomes really really helpful to learn if you are interested in this type of thing.
i guess they’ll actually be done Summer next year
I need to give Matrix another try
I interviewed with them and wanted to work for them. They said I wanted too much money :(
How much did you ask for?
I asked for an American tech worker salary, and they’re British so they thought it was preposterous
Oh
I would like to enter the Matrix.
