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I self-host a federated Matrix server and got my family and close friends using it. They actually took to it pretty easy, and although the initial setup was a bit of a headache it's been running smoothly for years now.
I don't really get most of the criticisms of it. I love it.
How do you compare that to Discord? my friendgroup moved to Steam Chat, and thats... not great.
I was leaning more towards Stoat
Steam's astonishingly less easy to configure but once it's done it works for basic group chats when playing. It would be amazing if they hadn't bugged screen sharing on Steam Chat, as it still works well when opened from the main Steam window.
I usually prefer chatting through Steam for anything gaming related and jumping to Matrix or even Jitsi on web for video conferencing and other matters. I'm also open to using other things such as XMPP, Delta Chat, SimpleX and so on, but Steam as a common space for PC users and Matrix for private conversations with all the useful features just hits the right balance between accesibility, reliability and privacy for me.
i really hate the lack of emotes, limited emojis, and things like posting links and photos doesn't work for us nearly as well as discord, with the links often not loading, or the images coming in rotated.
it works, but it feels like an afterthought, which i guess it is.
Lack of emotes/emojis, broken links and rotated pictures? I have never experienced anything remotely similar on Steam or Matrix. Is it a .gif search bar or stickers what you might be missing?
On steam, not matrix.
I just don't see any emojis or gifs via steam chat, other than their own ones you need to buy from their store.
Yeah. I've got more than enough of those on Steam for free, but that's mostly because of interacting with it's community events or playing games there. You should still be able to use regular emojis from your keyboard too (using hotkeys or copying and pasting them from elsewhere).
fair enough, i could search for them... just feels a lot more akward then most other ways, when they are integrated into the keyboard or chat. even here on Lemmy, there is an emoji button!
Fluxer is the most promising one so far. It doesn't have easy self-hosting yet, but it's in development. What exists so far is pretty good though.
It's roadmap is amazing, I'm hoping it will go far
Weird how they are good at digging up the past relationship between the matrix team prior donators with the mosad. but failed to mention not even once that matrix's biggest advantage is its federated nature.
So imagine you have a selfhosted matrix server and you want to invite a friend over for a chat but this friend already has an account at his other friend's server. in Matrix he doesn't have to make an account on every server their interlocutor is in, he just sends his messages, like its done over email, or here on lemmy (fediverse). this is an advantage other software like fluxer of stoat don't have. and I doubt they will able to add it anytime soon, as the work needed is probably huge and would need years of work to make a proper secure e2e federate messaging solution.
Guy literally told people the criteria he was using, one of which was searching for things like that because that's the reason for the video in the first place, the Discord exodus due to deep state ties. He admits his knowledge is limited. Weird how hard it is for some people to see things from someone else's point of view.
EDIT: changed to more accurately represent how Matrix operates.
The issue is that due to the way Matrix is structured, it essentially spreads copies of unencrypted metadata to every instance participating in those rooms, So it's federated, but difficult to actually keep metadata from being spread around ~~even if you don't federate with the main Matrix server, if any server you do federate with dies, it'll get spread there~~. You'd have to be extremely cautious who you federate with to avoid that, or not federate at all, which defeats the purpose.
As an alternative, Movim, which uses XMPP and is also federated, does not spread meta data around like that.
I've had matrix and element set up on my personal domain for a while, but I've only used them for evaluation so far. The system and network resources used are HUGE...
I've been setting up movim and a seperate xmpp server for a little while, and I have some initial opinions:
Either way, I am gonna deploy both and let my friends/discord channel users decide what works best.
I'm rooting for xmpp at the moment, but I will be happy with anything that is self hosted, encrypted and federated.
Hopefully I don't end up having to maintain both protocols with a bridge!
XMPP is a shitshow of its own, very fragmented architecture. different incomplete implementations. each server can chose which features (extensions) to turn on and which not) so you can't be sure that the person you are trying to talk to on the other server can have access to the same features, like threads or voip.
I have previously read that omemo 2 implementation is insecure. my previous experience with it 4 years ago made me give up after encrypted messages were getting lost when messaging between different clients
there is no one flagship app for XMPP that works cross platefrom and has all features implemented. heck I can't even find a windows that support voip. and their will be none. cause xmpp has lost all traction.
As for Movim, I hate using web apps. bad user experience in general. add to that I don't remember it ever having been audited
The fact that we went from Teamspeak to Skype to Discord and back to Teamspeak again is wild.
In my experience, Matrix has a lot of misleading functionalities that drive people into enough of a false sense of security to out themselves.
Yeeah.. Noble effort, really. Except people don't give enough of a shit to actually move.
I've arranged for a Matrix space and Teamspeak server to be used for my friend Discord of about 100 people. 10 registered and 0 actually use the Matrix.
The bridged Matrix channel is only used for lighthearted spam from the Discord side.
The Teamspeak got like 6 registrations and 0 active users.
Most people won't budge until they see the ID verification screen, and some not even then.
I don't think making these other programs optional is going to work to migrate a community. You can't say to your football team that you're gonna start playing basketball and be disappointed when they don't come with you.
If the discord and matrix server was fully bridge then maybe you'd are a bit more success as the community would be less fractured. If you're friends don't want to move from discord, and you really don't want to be in discord, that's a tough situation for you be in.
Ok everyone. Hear me out. Let’s just all get in the same room and play the same game.
wish it was that easy,
My closests friendgroup dispersed around the province, one in kelowna, one in enderby, and im out on the Coast now. Discord (and now steam chat) kept us close
Stoat seems to be the one my friend group is most interested in, currently I'm waiting to see which one is better in the next couple of months or so.
Good. Discord just sucks as an app and as a company.
Currently hosting a couple of zulip instances for communities that had been on discord. I really like the way it handles topics/threading and they make hosting a breeze. I reported in an upgrade recently and it was < 30 minutes between me reporting it and getting code to solve my issue pushed to the repos. Wild.
10/10 recommend if voice/video are not a focus.
Some of my friends have registered on Flux but still use discord. It's sort of just there until discord makes it unbearable for them to use but discord will never do that. They'll just slowly tighten the noose until you get comfortable.
They pay for nitro, which to me is bonkers.
It isn't a great discord replacement but it's a metadata blackhole with PQC and Tor support that's surprisingly stable.
Downside is that the founder is apparently a die-hard trump supporter. Which doesn't mean the app is bad, but still would leave me wondering if one should contribute to its' success via network effect, or perhaps ignore it.
