Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (something the people behind Matrix actually admit in some of their internal talks) Actually, we've been quite clear publicly that Matrix's initial incarnation didn't try to deal with metadata privacy, e.g. this presentation taken from a 2015 talk at the Jardin Entropique cryptography conference in Rennes: https://matrix.org/~matthew/2016-12-22%20Matrix%20Balancing%... The fun thing is these days we've got to the p…
> It feels like we (as Matrix) should do a formal response please do!
The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]
91–93 of 93 posts
Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because decentralization doesn't _automatically and inherently_ solve hard problems _merely due to the technology being decentralized_, we should not waste time working on decentralized systems and instead work on and support centralized ones (one would imagine, particularly his) That is an extraordinary mischaracterization of his talk. What he actually says is that decentralization makes many desirable characteris…
The talk can be taken in two ways. 1) It's a reasonable comparison of centralised and decentralised systems. 2) It's a way to discredit decentralised systems so people move to Signal because Moxie is a corporate / government shill or want to be the personal Jesus or something. Which explanation looks more likely to someone, is mostly based on how they personally trust Moxie. And a lot of people in the community don't…
3) Sharing his belief that centralized trumps decentralized for a bunch of practical reasons and of course Signal is going to be a centralized system based on this belief.
(I don't necessarily agree with Moxie but I saw his talk as neither of your 2 points.)
Re: The Ecosystem Is Moving [video]
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ludicrously popular chat systems, such as Kik, that were largely popular because they did not use phone numbers at all Wait? When was Kik ludicrously popular? Usernames clearly wasn't a feature that kept users coming back as the service almost shutdown in October before being sold off. There are certainly some people that would prefer a username or other identifier, but avoiding yet another invitation fest by using…
Usernames were used by Skype (I don't remember if it requires a phone number now) and are used by email. Email is probably still the most ubiquitous messaging platform. I don't agree that phone numbers are good for onboarding: sending the first message to somebody on whatsapp requires asking for the phone number. Sending the first email requires asking for the email. Sending the first Skype message requires asking fo…
> I don't agree that phone numbers are good for onboarding: sending the first message to somebody on whatsapp requires asking for the phone number. Sending the first email requires asking for the email. Sending the first Skype message requires asking for the username. Not much different.
The argument for phone numbers is that you probably already have the phone numbers for your contacts, and not their Skype username if you've never contacted them on Skype before. It allows easy transition of contacts from the unencrypted phone network to encrypted messaging.
But it's still not clear what the issue is with at least having the option to use an email address instead of a phone number, which you also might already have in your contacts before the first time you communicate with them using a new messaging app.