Monero’s home is right now on Matrix. I’m disputing that. This is a video follow-up with some of the replies from last time.
If you are new, XMPP and Matrix are two competing federated end-to-end encrypted messengers. XMPP is far better, on server cost decentralization, speed over Tor, degoogled push notifications, multi-identities, and overall privacy. So if Matrix is inferior centralized bloatware, why is it more popular? Especially among XMR techies, who should in theory understand these concepts.
This brand new video gives a quick overview of the technical reasons that XMPP is the gold standard king of federation. And it briefly discusses how Matrix manages to push it’s agenda: https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/xmpp-vs-matrix-why-matrix-sucks/
Some critics will say that “Matrix is a complete package, while XMPP is fragmented”. This is essentially propaganda, because all the XMPP clients interact (Dino, Gajim, conversations, monocles). The only one that doesn’t interact is OTR encryption from pidgin which provides an alternative for hardcore cypherpunks who want to destroy the encryption keys when the conversation is done. So because one single client has an alternative use case, the Matrix cheerleaders want us to fill out Google Captcha spyware to register on Matrix.org because it costs so much to self-host.
Yep, it’s similarly of why I’ve lost enthusiasm of Matrix, especially with my prior focus on XMPP over a decade prior. It was originally marketed as if Matrix was going to have full account portability, and I believe even be able to pop onto chats on remote servers if even your homeserver is down; but instead all we got was just another flashy webchat with a RESTful API and Double Ratchet support that federates. The reference client is a boat anchor of resources, compared to something like Conversations/Gajim in XMPP world. There’s the reference server in Python, which has a Rust rewrite, while the focus of Dendrite was retconned to “ehh, this is more intended for embedded use, not really a full Synapse rewrite”; meanwhile there’s an ecosystem of several highly-performant XMPP independent server implementations.
I jumped onto Matrix back in the days when it was the Vector.im client (before Riot rebranding, and then Element rebranding) and had rode that for some years, but instead I’m back exclusively to XMPP.
and further, it feels like Matrix just progressively becomes more of a mess, like piling on more infrastructure on top existing infrastructure, to sidestep some performance issues.
Essentially “Hey, let’s pile on ANOTHER PostgreSQL database, on top of your existing Synapse installation, to hold state information for your client, so it’s so much faster to sync up your rooms when you log into a new fresh client!”
Whereas, 9 years into the existence of a protocol, and the lead developer has to present at a developer conference as a ‘groundbreaking change’ that you can login and see your conversation history within a couple seconds finally: https://youtu.be/eUPJ9zFV5IE?t=601