Is Matrix a good choice?

[Jure Varlec]

“Dr. Trigon” <dr.trigon at surfeu.ch> writes:

> The thing I wonder is; we have a quite good solution XMPP - now why follow the
> hype just to get something that may be very dubious…?

But /is/ XMPP a good solution? Admittedly, it’s been a long time since I last
used it, but it’s been terribly fragmented, and my attempt to get friends and
family to use it were not successful. Heck, I didn’t like it much myself. A
communication tool that only you yourself use is not terribly useful, right?
XMPP might be an appropriate choice for the technical crowd, but probably not
everyone else.

Matrix, now, is a different story. My family and those friends I care about the
most had no issues adopting Element. Especially now that cross-signing works,
having effortless end-to-end encrypted chat with not much technical knowledge
required is a very good thing in my opinion.

The article you linked raises some very worrying issues which I was not aware
of; thank you for pointing them out. But, first, as others noted, it’s been a
few years since the article was posted, so this topic is due a refresh. Second,
I don’t much like the tone it is written in. For example (paraphrasing) “Matrix
developers responded, but we didn’t even read that because we don’t care”.

And third, I don’t think absolutes like “Matrix sends a lot of data” are the
best way to look at this. How does it compare to similar widely-used services
like Signal and Telegram? How does it compare to an XMPP setup with similar
functionality and user experience (I assume that such a thing is possible
nowadays, it wasn’t when I last used it)? I think it would be useful to know
where Matrix stands in the landscape of communication tools, and to see some
path it could take to get to a more privacy-friendly position.

Just my thoughts. I’d love to do some research myself, but I have already
committed all of my free time. If you or someone else can dig up the current
state of things, I would greatly appreciate it.

Best,
Jure
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