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Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

element.io

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Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#31

Post by profsnuggles »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #23
profsnuggles wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably on the front page because of the Prosody post that is on the front page. Matrix is on the front page because it's really the only open protocol that has a chance of gaining non-technical users. I run a matrix server, which has been nothing but a constant pain. My friends that use it can also use my ircv3 server or xmpp server that I run that use no resources and take up none of my time with maintenance.…

I asked this in the other comment, what is your server specs and user base? Constant pain as in moderation or server breaking ?

Well I was running it on a 2GB VPS, I have since November switched to a 4GB VPS, no issues since then but it's still early days. I haven't benchmarked either VPS, the 2GB I had a single dedicated CPU core, some 3.5+ghz xenon. I didn't check what my cpu allotment was on the new VPS, it was a $65 a year black friday thing. Moderation is not an issue, I only have 5 users other than myself.

Here is the last time I complained about matrix. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25100873

I saw your comment and considered posting a facetious comment about how you would need 80TB of ram and at least twice as much disk space.... but that would add nothing to the discussion.

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#32

Post by johnchristopher »

remram wrote: post #10

I'm surprised Matrix is on the front page as much as it is. I mean, it's cool tech, and I use it myself, but it really seems like it's up there every other day. Is there an update that warrants this new post?

People are migrating en masse from WhatsApp to Signal and Telegram. I am pretty sure it's ruffling some feathers considering the vocal people defending and promoting Matrix and federation in every Signal thread and considering this informal poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669864

Telegram 806 points

Zom 3 points

Viber 15 points

Threema 69 points

Signal 1699 points

Discord 102 points

Matrix (added after 25 mins) 374 points

Last I read speculations were that Signal had something like 10 millions users/downloads and Matrix 25 millions users (take that with a boulder of salt).

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#33

Post by feanaro »

Steltek wrote: post #21
remram wrote: post #10

I'm surprised Matrix is on the front page as much as it is. I mean, it's cool tech, and I use it myself, but it really seems like it's up there every other day. Is there an update that warrants this new post?

Probably the gold rush for decentralized, censorship-resistant platforms for the Right to jump to. This is bad for any mainstream ambitions by the Matrix team. If it becomes the next Gab/Parler, normal people will avoid being associated with it. I know this association would absolutely sink my friends exploring the platform further while we're exploring alternatives for when Google Hangouts is decommissioned.

Considering the substantial and increasing government/military usage of Matrix, I don't think this is a realistic scenario, but I guess only time can tell.

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#34

Post by iotku »

Steltek wrote: post #21
remram wrote: post #10

I'm surprised Matrix is on the front page as much as it is. I mean, it's cool tech, and I use it myself, but it really seems like it's up there every other day. Is there an update that warrants this new post?

Probably the gold rush for decentralized, censorship-resistant platforms for the Right to jump to. This is bad for any mainstream ambitions by the Matrix team. If it becomes the next Gab/Parler, normal people will avoid being associated with it. I know this association would absolutely sink my friends exploring the platform further while we're exploring alternatives for when Google Hangouts is decommissioned.

>If it becomes the next Gab/Parler, normal people will avoid being associated with it.

Matrix's policies are pretty well enough to keep them pretty far out of contention for such a comparison https://matrix.org/legal/code-of-conduct#definitions

> I know this association would absolutely sink my friends exploring the platform further while we're exploring alternatives for when Google Hangouts is decommissioned.

Should there be such rooms (that still fall short of being removed for "abuse") you're not forced to join them. No different than you not joining Google Hangouts full of people you'd rather not talk to.

Chat systems like IRC/Element don't force you to join and speak with anyone you don't want to unlike social media sites which try to have literally everyone in the same pool.

If your standard is "people I don't like are able to use this service" you will find no service that will have 0% of said people.

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#35

Post by skinkestek »

RL_Quine wrote: post #20
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #9

So how much of a vps you need to host like 100k users? More users? I tried to look but couldnt find much information.

You would need a serious dedicated server if it was possible at all. Matrix as a protocol is excessively resource hungry, there’s a reason the default matrix.org server runs like treacle.

A dedicated server or two for the communication for 100 000 people seems completely reasonable IMO.

They probably don't need to be expensive either.

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#36

Post by stonesweep »

Iv wrote: post #15
stonesweep wrote: post #12

Browsing f-droid recently, I found 2 other clients (second one based on Element codebase) also being actively developed: https://syphon.org/ https://schildi.chat/

There are a lot of different clients, in various stage of development: https://matrix.org/clients/ Element is kind of the official full feature, basic client implementation but there are lighter clients with different flavors out there.

Syphon and Schildi are not mentioned/linked in the above marketing page, the purpose of my sharing was to raise awareness to their existence.

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#37

Post by kitkat_new »

profsnuggles wrote: post #31
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked this in the other comment, what is your server specs and user base? Constant pain as in moderation or server breaking ?

Well I was running it on a 2GB VPS, I have since November switched to a 4GB VPS, no issues since then but it's still early days. I haven't benchmarked either VPS, the 2GB I had a single dedicated CPU core, some 3.5+ghz xenon. I didn't check what my cpu allotment was on the new VPS, it was a $65 a year black friday thing. Moderation is not an issue, I only have 5 users other than myself. Here is the last time I compla…

I think you definitely should try PostgreSQL

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#38

Post by feanaro »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #24
RL_Quine wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need a serious dedicated server if it was possible at all. Matrix as a protocol is excessively resource hungry, there’s a reason the default matrix.org server runs like treacle.

So whats the idea for matrix to scale? If they want more people to join servers other than matrix.org, how will it happen?

The reference implementation (Synapse) is written in Python. There's a next-gen golang server in development called Dendrite and also Conduit, which is written in Rust. Both of those are expected to have better performance.

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#39

Post by skinkestek »

remram wrote: post #10

I'm surprised Matrix is on the front page as much as it is. I mean, it's cool tech, and I use it myself, but it really seems like it's up there every other day. Is there an update that warrants this new post?

Facebook has announced they now have courage to overstep the agreement with EU even more.

People start getting tired and look for alternatives.

Re: Element – All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations

#40

Post by Uninen »

I tried the iOS client yesterday but could not log in (to a well-known third-party server) and the app just did not work at all. The error stayed on the login screen no matter what I tried, and it did not offer any debug info or help, and I just couldn't get past it.

I've been developing software for 20 years so I know something about buggy software and different stages of completeness so I usually give open source projects more slack but after 30 minutes I just gave up and uninstalled the app.

I really hope these kind of projects get more funding and wind behind them to get a bit more mature so there would be serious alternatives for the likes of Whatsapp.

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