I've heard, obliquely, of Matrix, but just assumed it's yet another messaging protocol. Would appear that's not the case though? Where would one get started? Why would I even want to use this vs the multitude of others? Is there an NZ Matrix server? Does it even matter? Why did the last season of GoT go so badly off the rails (oh wait, we know the answer to that one)...

TIA!

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[–] Rossphorus@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Matrix is an open source protocol for federated chatrooms, kind of like if someone mixed Lemmy with Discord and Signal. You make an account with a Matrix 'homeserver' (can be your own self-hosted server) just like Lemmy, so you'll have a username like user@homeserver.com. Once you do you can join any number of Spaces, akin to Discord servers. Unlike Discord, these servers will be hosted on the homeserver which means they can be self-hosted, and often come with strong safety guarantees like end-to-end encryption or the double ratchet algorithm as seen in Signal (depending on how the homeserver is configured). Matrix is really just a protocol, so there are a bunch of chat clients that implement it, the first-party client is called Element, but there are many to choose from.

I would argue the main reason to use Matrix over Slack or Discord is much the same reason you'd use Signal over Whatsapp - data privacy. Because you can self-host the homeserver any spaces you make can be hosted on your local machine. For those who are privacy advocates that's a very good reason to use Matrix over most other solutions. If you're a company or a concerned individual that routinely deals with data that really shouldn't be on the 'cloud' (e.g. trade secrets, materials under NDA, personal information, etc.) then Matrix seems like a better fit than say Slack, provided you self-host. Discord has been under fire for their privacy policy for end users, so you might consider Matrix as a replacement for Discord too.