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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

#51

Post by kitkat_new »

arghwhat wrote: post #50
antpls wrote: post #45

For anyone wondering how it compares to Signal privacy wise: Signal works with a contact list, for private 1 to 1 and private groups. You need a phone number to use it, and they claim to encrypt almost all metadata, such as message senders. Signal claims they cannot read the content nor the history of users actions (but you have to trust them on that, they claim to use SGX enclave stuff, but can anyone technically ve…

Matrix: Every home server involved in the chat stores the message, and messages on matrix are therefore most considered permanent. As matrix is federated, every user can be on their own homeserver, which will be storing a copy of all messages seen by that user. E2E is more recent and optional. Most rooms are not E2E, and have browsable history. Signal: Only E2E, with clients themselves storing the only copy of messag…

I doubt that most rooms are not E2EE. People usually have more private conversations than public ones. Private rooms are the default and they default to E2EE.

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

#52

Post by jszymborski »

antpls wrote: post #45

For anyone wondering how it compares to Signal privacy wise: Signal works with a contact list, for private 1 to 1 and private groups. You need a phone number to use it, and they claim to encrypt almost all metadata, such as message senders. Signal claims they cannot read the content nor the history of users actions (but you have to trust them on that, they claim to use SGX enclave stuff, but can anyone technically ve…

Would anyone be familiar as to how to regularly purge metadata (or even message history) from homeservers?

I run my own server and don't need my message history to live forever there.

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

#53

Post by johnchristopher »

swsieber wrote: post #29
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see people avoiding using phones even though neo-nazi, criminals, redheads and people with sexual preferences radically different from theirs use them constantly. Matrix is not a platform, it's a protocol and some implementation software developed in the open.

Yeah, I'd see more of an issue it matrix was a platform. It's more akin to email.

You mean in a few years there'll be only 3 or 4 free mail providers with e2e disabled for convenience[0] and data broker objectives (as a mean to pay for the service) and only a selected few can federate (because hey, spam or something) ?

Like Mastodon, Matrix has it built-in in its principles that a federated instance can prevent being contacted from another (this is the whitelist setting). Feel free to correct me, I am not 100% sure.

[0] or available for real money !

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

#54

Post by oehtXRwMkIs »

kitkat_new wrote: post #51
arghwhat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix: Every home server involved in the chat stores the message, and messages on matrix are therefore most considered permanent. As matrix is federated, every user can be on their own homeserver, which will be storing a copy of all messages seen by that user. E2E is more recent and optional. Most rooms are not E2E, and have browsable history. Signal: Only E2E, with clients themselves storing the only copy of messag…

I doubt that most rooms are not E2EE. People usually have more private conversations than public ones. Private rooms are the default and they default to E2EE.

E2EE by default is a recent change so I doubt it.

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

#55

Post by oehtXRwMkIs »

st1x7 wrote: post #28
jhowell wrote: post #25

It was probably a good idea to rebrand from Riot to Element after this week's deadly violence at the US Capitol. It's difficult for me to imagine endeavoring to protect tribal, potential violent rhetoric given recent historical events. It seems short-sighted to sell a water poisoning solution to people who don't mind destroying themselves to attack their perceived opponents.

> It was probably a good idea to rebrand from Riot to Element after this week's deadly violence at the US Capitol. They rebranded in July 2020 - https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/

It's ambiguous, but they might not have been implying it occurred after the Capitol event but rather that the idea itself has proven to be a good one especially after such events.

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

#58

Post by kitkat_new »

generalizations wrote: post #44
johnchristopher wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Far as I can tell, matrix needs to focus harder on the user experience. It was a pain to get set up on.

was? Find it pretty easy nowadays (well - you need to create an account)

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

#59

Post by stryan »

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?

Besides what others said, I believe you can now shard Synapse and scale horizontally (part of why matrix.org has gotten faster recently).

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

#60

Post by profsnuggles »

pkulak wrote: post #49
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 remember I spent about 10 minutes looking into setting up my own Matrix server. Seemed like a good day of work, and then I would still need to figure out how to support media uploads and E2E. The real kicker is that having the data on my own server is certainly nice, but I just don't think it's less likely to be exposed while I'm holding it vs someone else. I remember when everyone had a self-hosted WordPress blog.…

To be fair installing synapse is fairly easy. Media uploads and e2e should "just work". When I recently changed the VPS I was running it on I set up synapse from scratch in about 15 minutes. Of course I have set up synapse many times.
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