this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2021
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This is a moot idea, when Element is not usable for people who can barely type a message and need an app for everything.
The registration process with more than "enter the code you got via SMS" is way too hard. People not literate with computers, of which there are about 95% compared to "us" literates¹, may understand the notion of "apps" and "services".
The concepts of "accounts" and "registration" got watered down by popular apps that the law of familiarity of UX hinders adoption of nerd messengers like Matrix/Element or even the much simpler Matrix/Fluffychat. No matter how much we try to explain stuff to people, nerd tech is always way too hard to use.
The amount of time you spend into trying to convince people to use tech which is way too hard to use for them could be used to make the transition to that tech easier instead.
[1] discussed on lemmy here
There are several other concerns than ease of use. For example:
That's mostly true in a social circle kind of way, but not in general. Millions of people use it. But there are actually dozens of us. Dozens! ;)
Please elaborate.
Not enough or too many?
Yes, that's basically part of my point, too :)
But if they're not your friends, it doesn't matter.
Many people still use low end phones with limited storage and installing an extra app just to talk to you (see point 1) is wasting it.
I mean the individual has too many accounts (for many services), not the network. Creating yet another account just to talk to you (see point 1) is not worth the struggle.