Hello fellow c/privacy members.
I’m not new to privacy related things but I had a hard time persuading my family members and friends to switch to Matrix/Element. It is a reponse to UK’s Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act that may soon in effect.
While it is just a preperation and planning in case those actually became law, I already face resistance from them. When I ask them would they switch, their first reaction is “Why one more app?” then follows with “That’s cumbersome.” or “I don’t want to learn a new app.” and suggest something more popular like Line, Telegram or Discord. Sometimes they would “Install WhatsApp because X is on there and he/she won’t install one more app just for you.”
What can I do to persuade them to use a new platform? Thanks in advance.
EDIT: I think I should elebroate more of what Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act does[1]. As far as I understand, OSB will break E2EE by require scanning data on client device, like CSAM but much more generic. IPA requires companies to submit security funcition to the government for approval before releasing, and disable such feature upon request. Apple[2], Single[3] and WhatsApp made the announancment of exiting the UK market totally or partically if two were signed into law.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/thenextweb.com/news/uk-investigatory-powers-act-default-surveillance-devices-privacy
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2023/07/21/apple-threatens-to-pull-facetime-and-imessage-from-the-uk
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20230809125823/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65301510#2023-08-09T12:57:48+00:00
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 57 users / day
- 383 users / week
- 1.5K users / month
- 5.7K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 2.44K Posts
- 57.5K Comments
- Modlog
The problem with Matrix is that it sucks. It’s so comically laggy that you’d be able to have a conversation more efficiently in a Lemmy comments section than in a Matrix room. Consequences of trying to make a scalable backend for a real-time app in fucking Python, I suppose.
I’m planning to use Conduit[1] which is written in Rust instead of Synapse. I belive this will consume less resources but have no idea will it run smooth or not.
[1] https://gitlab.com/famedly/conduit
Afaik conduit is even more beta than denderite, personally I would not use it after seeing how buggy experience friends had with it
I haven’t tried yet. Dendrite follows the micro services architecture which I don’t need and increases management work. That’s why I choose Conduit.
This paragraph is why you won’t convince friends and family to use Matrix. It’s still too technical for non-technical people.
friends and family dont even have to think about servers. they pick the client they like, log in to their account, and thats it.
conduit is server software, an alternative to the official python-based homeserver that is called synapse
I agree it is technical. However, considering if the laws are in effect, there might not be a secure option, let alone private. It means that all conversations might be under government’s watch. That’s why I’m looking for a self hostable option, that can make sure data is in my control.
I am open to considering alternatives, but the foundation of the plan is based on the assumption that apps commonly used for secure and private conversations, such as Signal, may become insufficiently secure and private due to potential future laws or the possibility of exiting the UK market. The preferred criteria for the chosen app are that it is open source, audited, or ideally, both.
if it is an option to use different apps for daily chit chat and private matters, you may also take a look at Briar.
I say it this way because you both need* to be
onlineconnected** to receive the message. It is also a bit more than a messaging app, its useful for organizing group events.* there is a workaround. they have a software that you can run on a regular computer that will hold the incoming messages until your phone becomes accessible, and the outgoing ones until the recipient becomes available.
** the app can use the internet (always through Tor), the local network (like a wifi network) and bluetooth to connect to your contacts
It would be nice to use just one app as they are the users. Not me.
And having a computer online the whole time because one might not present is quite a deal breaker.
Yes, but I was telling you this option because you are concerned about laws that will outlaw encryption. If they come into effect, it could easily happen that only solutions like this will remain.
I can’t confirm this. For me it runs smooth and without bugs. Calls with Element are sometimes better than calls with my mobile carrier.
But I don’t have the technical knowledge to understand why a backend in python is a bad thing. Maybe your experience with Matrix is biased because of this knowledge?
I had a terrible, completely unusable experience with Matrix before I found out what it was made with. It took several minutes to load, 5-10 minutes to join a room, and about a couple minutes per message (which would just not send half the time). It was slower than email.
when did you experience this?
loading the web client also takes a lot of time (1-2 minutes) for me, but everything else is ok. even that is because of an API design problem, and they are already working to replace that bad decision
I think it was about a year or two ago.
I believe it was this year that they made some great improvements in performance, so you might get a different experience if you try it again.
Well, it looks we might have convinced someone that it’s not that bad :)
I tried it again and the difference was astounding! Instead of waiting multiple minutes to send one message, I only had to wait a whole minute!
I like the idea of a federated chat platform, but I’ll have to stick to discord for now, it would seem.
This huge difference in experience isn’t a great sign. But I hope it gets better over time.