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Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

matrix.org

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Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#71

Post by zenethian »

dang wrote: post #25
zenethian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why my question got reported. I didn't say that Matrix is bad or shouldn't be funded. Even if it's just to compete with other protocols, that alone would make it worth funding. I just can't find enough information to actually understand it's angle. Thanks for those who replied to help explain it. :)

It didn't get reported - it just got downvoted. Downvotes are often unfathomable. The best way to respond is to look over your comment to see if it broke the site guidelines in any way ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). If you notice something, you can correct it in future comments; if you don't, chalk it up to the internet being weird; and either way, don't sweat the downvotes. Also, if the downvo…

Thanks for clarifying and the resources!

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#72

Post by baobun »

IlikeKitties wrote: post #65

So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4

IDK, have you? Has Apple, Google, Linux? Have we really solved it as a society until we have reached the end-game of Zero Trust Architecture; locked down all bootloaders to only run trusted firmware; locked down firmware to only boot trusted os; enforce attestation at service auth so only genuine devices with client-side "safety" rootkits are accepted?

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#73

Post by IlikeKitties »

Arathorn wrote: post #67
IlikeKitties wrote: post #65

So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4

making progress actually: https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/

I'm happy to see that! To be fair > 14.02.2025 That's pretty recently

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#74

Post by like_any_other »

IlikeKitties wrote: post #65

So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4

The act as police and spy on their users "problem"? I don't know - have apartment buildings solved the domestic violence problem, that happens within them, shielded by their opaque walls?

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#75

Post by dzaima »

danielspace23 wrote: post #62
edhelas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like... XMPP ? IETF standard, massivelly used (video-games https://xmpp.org/uses/gaming/ , IM https://xmpp.org/uses/instant-messaging/ , social...), modern features, managed by a fundation with a good ecosystem and plenty of alive projects: https://xmpp.org/software/ . Yes its not perfect, yes there's still things to improve, but the clients are there, working, on many platforms. The server-S (yes several of them!) a…

XMPP in its current state is a mess. The bare protocol is minimal, the things which actually make the thing usable are just a bunch of extensions, barely glued onto the thing, which means that there are clients that implement different features, and you never know if whatever you send will be supported by the receiver (including encryption). There are a gazillion clients for Android, mostly forks of Conversations imp…

Matrix isn't particularly better though; its main spec does "have" a bunch of things, sure, but they're still very bodged together (threads are replies but with a tag of "no, this is actually a thread"; and for backwards-compatibility clients are "supposed to" understand a non-marked-as-thread reply as being in the thread, but the spec doesn't facilitate any way to consistently reason about such replies (i.e. they're not included when paging through the threads messages); all formatting-ful messages contain both a HTML and plain-text version of the message; edit events contain both "* "-prepended versions of the body for clients who don't support edits, and a "proper" copy for those that do, so that's 4 copies of the body in an edit event).

And there's plenty of inconsistencies across matrix clients too: some don't support displaying spoilers and so get spoiled (incl. Element X android); most (incl. Element) don't have a way to send spoilers outside of whole-message spoilers or manually writing out the HTML. Thread support is flakey. Some clients insert a newline every 70-or-whatever chars, which is supposed to be ignored by proper HTML parsing, but some things don't. Off the top of my head.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#76

Post by IlikeKitties »

baobun wrote: post #72
IlikeKitties wrote: post #65

So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4

IDK, have you? Has Apple, Google, Linux? Have we really solved it as a society until we have reached the end-game of Zero Trust Architecture; locked down all bootloaders to only run trusted firmware; locked down firmware to only boot trusted os; enforce attestation at service auth so only genuine devices with client-side "safety" rootkits are accepted?

If you actually watched the linked video you would see that random matrix servers were co-opted to spread CSAM on a massive scale due to what is essentially a design flaw and there was until very very recently not much done to make it possible for server admins to fight that. It's not as black and white as your comment makes it seem.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#77

Post by Arathorn »

amatecha wrote: post #49
Arathorn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm shocked that Matrix Foundation is considering shutting down if they don't raise $100K - what's going on behind the scenes here? That’s not what’s happening. The point is that running and maintaining bridges requires $, and without $ that won’t happen. The problem on financials is underfunding. edit: If you’re interested in how we’ve ended up there: https://fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-2025-6274-...

It's a spam account, look at their profile, karma and other comments.

guess that explains the weird unicode middots. wonder if it’s random or targeted; anti-matrix/element spam seems to be a thing since certain govts started relying on it.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#78

Post by IlikeKitties »

like_any_other wrote: post #74
IlikeKitties wrote: post #65

So, has Matrix solved the CSAM Problem, yet?[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KEuAEYjQ4

The act as police and spy on their users "problem"? I don't know - have apartment buildings solved the domestic violence problem, that happens within them, shielded by their opaque walls?

See my other reply, watch the linked video it's not as black and white as you make it sound like and public non-encrypted rooms hosting tons of CSAM being replicated to any matrix server where any user joined them is a problem.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#79

Post by Arathorn »

like_any_other wrote: post #70

> Without Trust & Safety efforts, bad actors and communities would proliferate on the network and make it unlivable for the rest. What exactly does this mean? How is, say, my friend group chat affected by unconnected "bad communities"? Why do we care if those communities use matrix, or http, or xmpp, or skype?

because if your friends start roaming around the public Matrix network and find public chatrooms full of abusive content, then they will indeed be affected. see https://matrix.org/blog/2025/02/building-a-safer-matrix/ for more.

Re: Matrix Foundation to shut down bridges if it doesn't raise $100K

#80

Post by zenexer »

Arathorn wrote: post #40
Jnr wrote: post #30

I have had only bad experience with its federation and chat clients over many years, I don't think it can improve, if it could, they probably would have fixed it a long time ago. Maybe not a popular opinion, but they should let the Matrix die altogether so something better can replace it.

The irony is that I suspect we have fixed it - eg Element X and Matrix 2.0 is a massive step change forwards; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU etc. But I can see why bad experiences in the past would stick.

I disagree--it doesn't feel resolved. I've been trying to use Matrix for so long now, and just recently gave another shot at helping my partner get up and running with Element X on her M4 iPad.

It's still so clunky and so difficult to get off the ground. To start, E2E key verification just wouldn't work on Element X; she had to install Element, verify my key there, and go back to Element X.

That would be easy to overlook if the UI felt responsive and snappy, but it doesn't. It feels far from native. I don't know if it's Electron under the hood--I haven't checked--but it sure feels like it. It feels unresponsive in the same way as a stereotypical bank app, like walking through Jello. Maybe it's a protocol issue; I'm not sure.

I've got a nice, powerful homeserver running, waiting for love, but it will continue waiting until such time as there's a responsive client. Every month or two, I upgrade it and give it another shot, but I always end up back on a mix of Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord. None of my work or social circles are willing to make the switch when it feels so slow.

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