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.

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.

The issue is that due to the way Matrix is structured, it essentially copies ALL of your serber’s metadata to every instance, including the main Matrix server.

This is false. Data is only copied to instances participating in the relevant rooms.

You’d have to be extremely cautious who you federate with to avoid that, or not federate at all,

Or just don’t invite users into your private rooms if they come from servers that you want to exclude.

Agh, you’re quite right. Thanks for correction. I crossed my wires and misremembered how it worked after reading this article about it a while back. Edited my previous comment to reflect that.

I suppose in theory that shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem, though in Matrix’s case it’s a big roadblock, as the main Matrix server hosted by Matrix themselves has unfortunately become the defacto main server that most people use, which means not federating with it massively reduces the ability for someone to just be able to seamlessly hop onto your server unless they too are on one of the smaller, less popular servers.

In the example given in the video, it would likely be a bit of a deal breaker if you met someone in an online game somewhere, and then invited them to your self-hosted Matrix server, only to discover they are on the main potentially israeli intelligence-tied Matrix instance, meaning you’d have to explain they need to create an account elsewhere to be able to join your instance. It would be pretty awful UX.

in Matrix’s case it’s a big roadblock, as the main Matrix server hosted by Matrix themselves has unfortunately become the defacto main server that most people use, which means not federating with it massively reduces the ability for someone to just be able to seamlessly hop onto your server unless they too are on one of the smaller, less popular servers.

Maybe. But on the other hand, Matrix is only just beginning to become known among gamers, and there are a lot of us. Seems like a good time for people to stand up a new servers and invite the gaming masses.

it would likely be a bit of a deal breaker if you met someone in an online game somewhere, and then invited them to your self-hosted Matrix server, only to discover they are on the main potentially israeli intelligence-tied Matrix instance,

I’ve seen occasional claims of that for a few years now, yet not once have I seen any credible evidence of it. Not in their own weekly reports. Not from journalists. Not in spec drafts or issue trackers or organizational structure. Nowhere. This particular legend smells more like fearmongering to me. At the most, it looks more like the distant connection that the internet has to the US military: Sure, part of its origin story might have been there, but it’s not relevant any more.

(Also, if your goal is to avoid Israeli intelligence-tied people seeing your room meta-data, you probably shouldn’t be inviting strangers to join. After all, there’s no way to know who they really are, regardless of what homeserver they use or what chat platform you’re on.)

For what it’s worth, account portability (giving people a way to switch homeservers) is on the Matrix roadmap.

Seems like a good time for people to stand up a new servers and invite the gaming masses.

Personally I don’t think it’s ready as a Discord replacement, based on the troubles displayed in the video, such as not being able to get things like video calls or screenshare working easily when self-hosting.

I’ve seen occasional claims of that for a few years now, yet not once have I seen any credible evidence of it.

I’m assuming you haven’t seen the GN video in the OP yet, but they go into that connection, which they personally feel is bad enough to not use it. The issue is that Matrix was created and funded by Amdocs, an Israeli company with possible connections to Israeli intelligence.

The matrix foundation themselves admit to being funded by Amdocs, such as here on their blog:

As unpopular as VC funding is in some circles, the Matrix community owes a huge debt of thanks to Element’s investors (Status, Notion, firstminute, Dawn, Automattic, Protocol Labs and Metaplanet) and Amdocs for funding over $50M of work on both Matrix and Element since 2017.

and here in their FAQ:

How is Matrix[.]org funded? For the first three years of Matrix’s development (2014-2017), most of the core contributors worked for Amdocs, who paid for them to work fulltime on Matrix. In July 2017, Amdocs considered the project to be sufficiently successful that it could now self-support and so stopped funding.

They also specifically attempt to offer their chat services to law enforcement, such as the time they bought a booth at a law enforcement convention, which caused this controversy.

I don’t have a problem with the org offering services to law enforcement, governments, businesses, etc. Funding like this is how they are able to pay the bills without turning to venture capital or user exploitation.

I did see the GN video. They explicitly stated that they didn’t find a hard link. And, as you pointed out, Amdocs stopped funding almost a decade ago.

You seem to have made up your mind, though. I won’t try to change it.

Amdocs stopped funding it, but Martix and the company developing Element are both still made up of ex-Amdocs people. If they are connected to Israeli intelligence, it’s not as though they suddenly aren’t potential agents just because they stopped being officially funded by Amdocs.

I find it irritating that element’s website promotes their origins as the creators of matrix but doesnt anywhere actually give names that could be researched. Yes i could get the directors details from Companies House but frankly its just easier for me to move on and not use their software.