- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
We estimate that by 2025, Signal will require approximately $50 million dollars a year to operate—and this is very lean compared to other popular messaging apps that don’t respect your privacy.
Ten years ago sure, the days I’d suggest matrix instead.
I assessed XMPP vs Matrix about 8 years ago, and strikingly, the basis on which it didn’t make the cut still applies today. Here’s what I responded to a sibling post: https://programming.dev/comment/5408356
In short, Matrix dug themselves into a complexity pit with an inadequate protocol, survived for a while on venture capital money (upscaling servers and marketing at all cost), all of it dried up, and now they are in financial trouble. Matrix won’t disappear overnight, but is definitely losing the means to run the managed instances and the client/server ecosystem.
Isn’t that why they built matrix 2? Or am I thinking of element 2?
Edit: it’s matrix
https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/
If you read between the lines, Matrix 2 is practically about handing the client state over to the server (what they refer to as “sliding sync”). Realistically, this is an admission that the protocol is too complex to be handled efficiently on the user’s devices. I’m not saying there are not clear benefits (and new trade-offs) to the approach, just that in the grand scheme of things the complexity is shifted elsewhere (and admins foot a larger bill).
They’re supporting development of MLS for managing encryption for groups
Yup, like pretty much everyone else :) https://nlnet.nl/project/XMPP-MLS/
Is Matrix’s problem just the large scale? I thought it worked relatively well if you’re just using it for personal needs like smaller servers and personal bridges.
Matrix problems become unmanageable at scale, but the effects of the underlying complexity can be felt long before: https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07