this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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although it's interesting research, I think it's a weak text if you're even tangentially aware of Telegram's bullshit narrative as it focuses on the wrong thing. the main point should be "this dude was caught lying on a number of occasions and throws out smoke-screens and FUD when confronted about super-simple stuff. therefore nothing that comes outta his mouth is to be trusted" which should've prompted a mass exodus from this bullshit platform a long time ago.
the way more important issue is the collective action problem of dumping this crapware - leave it for what?
I run XMPP and Matrix servers and use various clients, along with Signal. all of those things are fucking dogshit software, there isn't one that can come close to Telegram's UX. if you fell into a coma in 2014 and woke up now to Element of Fluffy or whatever, you'd think someone's pulling your leg. this is what a decade of development looks like?!
A decade of voluntary, part-time, crowdfunded development maybe
Unfortunately, that's the cost of products made by and for the people - rough but private and mostly noninvasive.
No; in the case of Matrix it's because the spec is insanely bloated. Nobody wants to work on that, especially for free.
You have no idea how funny that is because I called it on a whim half a decade ago.
The Matrix foundation didn't embrace and extend anything, as they were always in control of the spec.
EEE applies to when corporations (notably Microsoft) embraces projects that aren't theirs and takes them under their wing, expands on functionality which attracts all the users and makes them the sole developer of that functionality, which kills the old, open forks. Microsoft then kills their version of it, and the whole thing dies.
Firefox is in the same situation. Bloated umbrella org (Mozilla) that has dubious funding sources builds subpar products. Look at how much support implementing JPEG XL had, and how they just didn't care and completely shut the conversation down when Google said no.
can you expand on this? never heard it before.
i thought dendrite was the new hotness?
dendrite seems to be written in go nowadays, which i did not expect.
also, what spurred this political tirade? i just sat down!
Yeah, it really sucks that the closest feature parity and ui/ux parity in messengers is proprietary services.
Even signal isn't there. Mind you, they can't offer all the same options by virtue of prioritizing encryption as the default, not afaik, with things like the easier syncing of messages.
I like matrix and it's various apps fine overall, but they are definitely behind in polish and usability features. They just aren't great as a primary messaging option. That's ignoring the difficulty of onboarding people, which is tangential to this, but still relevant since it doesn't matter how great a messenger is if you can't use it with anyone. Since the lack of features and ui/ux issues prevent onboarding, it's a real problem.
IMO getting Matrix's UI to work like apps people are familiar with is an order of magnitude less effort than any other option, and possibly an order of magnitude better than other options in terms of meeting the design goal of private messaging.
OTOH I don't make UI's 🤪
I've heard that from some code minded folks before though, so I don't think you're wrong. ElementX is better than regular element in that regard already. Been a while since I tried anything else since I only have one person that I communicate regularly with on there. Everyone else is more sporadic, so I haven't had as much impetus to keep up on apps as much as I used to.
I don't disagree tbh.
However, in terms of ui/ux it is still the closest comparison that's not wholly dominated by capital drives. Things like WhatsApp have better ui, but I don't think anyone remotely interested in things like signal would use those at all if not forced to it.
Right now, matrix, arcane chat, xmpp, and similar options are better than signal under the hood (supposedly, I don't have the knowledge base to verify for myself), but the ui is anywhere from outdated to outright horrible.