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The Matrix Trashfire

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Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#111

Post by mpldr »

vdaea wrote: post #27

Developers could also do these processes. And they probably do, often. But they usually have their heads so far up their asses that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding process is even for very technical users. It's like when you use one of those Linux phones and your reaction all along is "ew". Do developers not notice how bad this is? No, they don't. Some of them haven't used a good UI ever. They can't fa…

> Developers could also do these processes. And they probably do, often. But they usually have their heads so far up their asses that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding process is even for very technical users.

I would argue that as the one developing a system (frontend or backend) you can not perform something like that. The reason being that you already know all the small little bits, tricks, and band-aids. The only way to get proper feedback, is by putting someone completely fresh in front of the system.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#112

Post by hiq »

maelito wrote: post #100
hiq wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Signal conversations can become such a mess because of that. The workaround is to create new groups, even if that's with the same set of people. I even have groups with just another person and myself, e.g. for specific projects. In my experience that works well enough, also because if something is longer-lived, I'll put it in a shared doc instead.

But I won't create a new group to for example talk about a video. That's what I just did with a friend : share 10 messages about a video. We're 4 in the group. 2 of them might never be interested by the talk about that video. It's completely unpractical to create a new group to just talk about that. Then you need to either close or leave the group. No problems with threads, it's created with a click and finishes by l…

In practice I just skim through these 10 messages in such small groups. There's the opposite problem with threads, with which it's easy to miss messages you care about, and harder to have a single topic at a given time. Being able to reply to individual messages also makes the transition from one topic to another smoother.

I can definitely see the problem if you try to use Signal like you use IRC, with big channels with 100+ people and very different topics, not all of them relevant and with people you care about, and I still use Matrix / forums for that.

> It's just what happens in real life : people move around 2 meters when they want to talk about something in particular, and other people can either ignore, either join the ephemeral group.

It really depends on the setting, that's only if you're standing and even then, if you're having a meal sitting at a table, I'd be surprised to see this.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#113

Post by danpalmer »

raziel2p wrote: post #92
danpalmer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Matrix isn't a product. There are companies building products on it, such as Element and Beeper, and as far as I can see the latter are doing a perfectly good job of selling themselves.

That may be technically correct, but reality is if Matrix wants to catch on (large scale) as a concept, it needs to act as a product in some way. Even if that just means having a good landing page guiding users on how to sign up on a server, install a client, and connect the two - and making sure that this always works.

I think that's one approach, but many other federated systems don't do this. ActivityPub does not do this really, instead Mastodon, a product using ActivityPub, markets itself. Arguably you could look at HTTP and say that HTTP doesn't have a fancy landing page pitching itself to users, browsers have landing pages pitching their experiences to users.

Matrix could have a fancy landing page pitching itself to implementers who implement homeservers, bridges, or clients, and they could market to end users.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#114

Post by the_third_wave »

rglullis wrote: post #87
MattJ100 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try it? What were the pain points?

The first time I did this exercise was in 2018 (when I first set up an XMPP server and Matrix Synapse for Communick) and there simply wasn't any working iOS app. Monal was the only app I found and managed to install for him. It did chat only and would crash. I do not recall to get e2ee working and the fact that it is optional made things confusing even for me - e.g, I wasn't able to switch between a desktop client an…

The problem here is not XMPP or Conversations but the closed nature of iOS which keeps apps like Conversations from being ported there. Apple does not like competition to iMessage or to its app store revenues so it fights tooth and nail to keep its precious as is now clearly on view in Europe with their ridiculous 'core technology fees' and other shenanigans.

Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is what is keeping your experiment from succeeding? We're all on Android here, anything from stock Samsung like my mother uses to self-built LineageOS like I use and we have no problems like you describe. I video-chat daily with my mother without problems, we're using Jitsi Meet (hosted on the same server) for larger video meetings, we've used Nextcloud Talk (also hosted on that server-under-the-stairs) as well but now mostly use Conversations. Telegram also works well for video chat but that is neither self-hosted nor end-to-end encrypted so it is not a real comparison to Matrix or XMPP with OMEMO.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#115

Post by AshamedCaptain »

rglullis wrote: post #71
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that XMPP interoperability (terrible as it is) is still just miles ahead of Matrix. For all intents and purposes Element controls the protocol and despite that I almost constantly find friction communicating the client for Android and the desktop Electron-based client. With 3rd party clients it is a nightmare.

When https://siskin.im/ is seriously touted as the best iOS client for XMPP, you already lost 50% of the market share in the US. And if you don't have any usable app for 50% of your users in one of the most important markets, you can not really claim "interoperability", can you? Don't get me wrong, it would be great if more people were using XMPP. Now that I am more involved in the Fediverse space I'm learning how ma…

No, I don't have any problem about claiming interoperability in this context as it is completely orthogonal. You could also claim that not having animated gifs also makes it unusable for 99% of the population (an statement I might even agree with) and it would be irrelevant to interoperability.

iOS simply sucks here and lowering down your pants to marry yourself to the whims of these insane "platforms" if anything most likely reduces your interoperability.

You should be realistic and consider that there is no point to any "E2EE" messaging solution on iOS as _by construction_ all the metadata (at the very least) is going to be leaked to Apple (and they in turn will leak that to the authorities, as was pointed in HN quite recently), precisely by the push notifications crap you'd be forced to adopt as part of the pants lowering requiered to support iOS.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#116

Post by rglullis »

the_third_wave wrote: post #114
rglullis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I did this exercise was in 2018 (when I first set up an XMPP server and Matrix Synapse for Communick) and there simply wasn't any working iOS app. Monal was the only app I found and managed to install for him. It did chat only and would crash. I do not recall to get e2ee working and the fact that it is optional made things confusing even for me - e.g, I wasn't able to switch between a desktop client an…

The problem here is not XMPP or Conversations but the closed nature of iOS which keeps apps like Conversations from being ported there. Apple does not like competition to iMessage or to its app store revenues so it fights tooth and nail to keep its precious as is now clearly on view in Europe with their ridiculous 'core technology fees' and other shenanigans. Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is…

> Maybe you can give your father a non-iOS phone if that is what is keeping your experiment from succeeding?

That's a non-starter. He already had Android phones before, never liked them. O have to pick my battles, and getting him to call me Matrix instead of WhatsApp was already enough to call it success.

Besides, my point was less about the specific individual but the systemic issue. iOS is too large of a market segment to ignore, and I can not go around telling everyone "hey, why don't you just drop your shit Apple device and switch to something more open?"

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#117

Post by yaky »

MattJ100 wrote: post #78
rglullis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, now go try to convince your 70 year-old father, who is using iOS, to join you and to use it as your primary means of conversation. I'm not being facetious. Try that, and then try doing it with Matrix/Element. Tell me which one do you end up with.

Did you try it? What were the pain points?

Not the person you asked, but here are some pain points asking my relatives (30s and 60s) to switch:

"WhatsApp works fine, I talk to you on there already" (in reality, via a Matrix-WhatsApp bridge)

"Who am i going to talk to on there?" (Me?)

"I don't want to install another app" (but installing ad-laden Viber is fine...)

"I cannot share pictures to Element so I sent it to you through [iOS] Messages" (well, Element removed share capabilities in iOS due to a rare bug)

Simply ignoring messages (their iMessage and calls rings from all connected devices, but Element just notifies once)

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#118

Post by dzaima »

jeroenhd wrote: post #106
croes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think non IT people would do?

They wouldn't even know Matrix existed, most likely. They certainly wouldn't have found "Element" on their own. If they did manage to find Element at all, I would guess that would be through the "try matrix" button on matrix.org, which has an "install Element" button, which then leads to a "download for macOS" button. More realistically, people would be typing "Matrix" into GPlay or the app store on their phones. The…

If one knows about Matrix/Element, it'll of course be from hearing/reading about it somewhere. And thus if they were just told "discussion is at #foo:example.org on Element" or whatever they'll clearly go for Element (and I've seen "Element" be used for "Matrix" a couple times). Though then at least maybe they wouldn't manage to pass the blame on Matrix for what is an Element problem.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#119

Post by apetresc »

jeroenhd wrote: post #110
apetresc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do indeed: https://element.io/pricing

Matrix and Element are no longer the same entity. Element (New Vector Ltd) is the core behind the Matrix protocol, but they're distinct from the organisation that manages the protocol. If Matrix does ever take off, this will be an extremely valuable distinction to have.

I understand that completely, I even considered including a "Before anyone jumps in with 'akshually that's Element', [..]" disclaimer but decided nobody would be that pedantic.

Element is the same team as the Matrix.org foundation, with the same objectives. I understand why they maintain a separation of concerns at the institutional level, but for someone to say "Matrix offers hosted servers" and to act confused like "What do you mean, who's 'they'? Matrix doesn't do that! Only Element, the organization run by the exact same people, who's only goal is to further the adoption of the Matrix.org spec. I can't possibly fathom what you think the connection is." is the very definition of being disingenuous.

Re: The Matrix Trashfire

#120

Post by rglullis »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #115
rglullis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When https://siskin.im/ is seriously touted as the best iOS client for XMPP, you already lost 50% of the market share in the US. And if you don't have any usable app for 50% of your users in one of the most important markets, you can not really claim "interoperability", can you? Don't get me wrong, it would be great if more people were using XMPP. Now that I am more involved in the Fediverse space I'm learning how ma…

No, I don't have any problem about claiming interoperability in this context as it is completely orthogonal. You could also claim that not having animated gifs also makes it unusable for 99% of the population (an statement I might even agree with) and it would be irrelevant to interoperability. iOS simply sucks here and lowering down your pants to marry yourself to the whims of these insane "platforms" if anything mo…

> iOS simply sucks here and lowering down your pants to marry yourself to the whims of these insane "platforms"

We can be here grandstanding and dismissing other people's choices or we can be pragmatic and find ways to grow the alternative networks to the point where the "mainstream" can no longer ignore it.

If you want to continue using XMPP, great. But those that are on Apple are not going to drop their beloved iDevices just because we are telling them how cool XMPP is. Your inflexibility will do nothing but keep you isolated and able to talk with a handful of other people that are stubborn as you. However, if you let yourself accept that encouraging other people to adopt Matrix will at the same time (a) bring progress to those on iOS and (b) increase the utility of your own XMPP server, as now there will be more people being able to reach you through a bridge.

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