After a recent *terrible* first attempt at using matrix as communication platform for our rather big measurement campaign in summer, I just tried selfhosting Mattermost, and boy is it a smoother experience. It's as if it was made for team collaboration, funny eh 😅

Also my first time trying out nixos-containers, very nice to encapsulate or group services together independently of your host NixOS.

#Matrix #Mattermost #NixOS #selfhosting

Two good things about #Mattermost

* Pens that I got on FOSDEM years ago and that *make light*!
* It used to be a nice self-hosted tool before they went hardcore on the open-core model and removed essential features from the open source base.

Like so many right now, I'm looking at Discord alternatives once again, and it's extremely creepy how much both Mattermost and RocketChat are catering to people-killing ("defense") customers on their homepages since ca. 2025. 🤮

#Mattermost #RocketChat #Fascism

What the heck is wrong with  #matrix? We're looking for a platform for communication during a larger measurement campaign and from the featureset concluded with either #Mattermost or Matrix (subgroups, archivable, mobile/desktop/web clients, etc.).

But the #ElementX app and #FluffyChat app just won't even list the rooms in our space (on matrix.org, maybe that's the problem...), they just load forever. No problem in element web or #Schildichat. What. the. heck.

WRT #Discord, there's an effectively unsolvable conundrum we can't really face, folks. We'd all like the high moral standards that are found in the #OpenSource community, when done right: nobody screwing each other over for their PII, and other forms of leverage (walled-garden lock-in). Geeks get this, normies don't. (This gulf is very hard to cross, IMHO, without resorting to actual educational curriculum explaining it in schools.)

But then we have conflicting desires: we *also* want the buttery smoothness to a secure messaging ecosystem - total convenience, total functionality, *complete with a level-playing-field, "Net Neutral" infrastructure to run it on*, with no lobbied government or tech-bro interference skewing the traffic rules (QOS Rules). Good luck with that one, without strong gov't control, and solid grassroots lobbying behind it.

Lets be honest: #Signal is so great *because tens of millions of dollars were charitably spent on it*. Moxie didn't do his genius work *for free*. Where are tens of millions of *more* dollars going to come from, to make a Discord alternative? Would that be nowhere? Look, there's no quick and easy answers to Discord enshittifying. I've looked at #XMPP, #Matrix, #Deltachat, #Discourse, #Flarum, #PHPBB, #Zulip, #Mattermost, etc. and *each has its warts*. You'll dislike each of them, for different reasons. Each paints itself into a different corner. *There were no tens of millions of dollars upfront, at an early design phase, overlooked by qualified Computer Scientists, to prevent this, in each and every case.* #IRC doesn't bear mention in this comparison. None is the perfect replacement or answer. *None had those tens of millions of dollars which Signal had.*

Alas, they don't stand a chance to be the all-singing, all-dancing solutions that the techbros can finance, *along with their predictable, rotten lack of a moral compass to accompany the slickness.* Every non-geek teenager will side with the techbros, owing to 1) convenience, and 2) that's where their friends are, *which mean the world to a teenager*.

So in summary, we are doomed by our own psychological limitations, as a demographic. The psychological predators - the techbros - can't help but prey on the normies, and the normies can't help but turn to the predators, who at least offer convenience, if no other thing. And the geeks who have a moral compass stand in the middle, ignored by-and-large, feeling anxious and powerless, not having any tens of millions of dollars behind their altruism.

#infosec

#CassandraSyndrome #actuallyAutistic @autistics