[oddvar]

I agree. We're building https://matrix.org (a free and open communication protocol) and we've realised that until we have a client with better UX than proprietary offerings, people just won't switch.

We hope that a Matrix-enabled client (https://vector.im is looking promising) will get the UI/UX right - and thus actually offer an open and free solution where you can run your own server (should you choose) and own and control your own data!

[lewisl9029]

Wow. Vector is progressing along quite nicely! This new build has none of the rough edges that I remember from the last time I saw it. Congrats to the team for the awesome work!

My biggest issue with Matrix still has to do with its privacy properties though. Homeservers simply know too much about their users. End to end encryption from clients to homeservers appears to be optional in Matrix (and even with e2e encryption, metadata will still be fully exposed to homeservers), and message histories are stored in plaintext at rest.

Now, this probably won't be a huge problem in the ideal scenario where the Matrix network would be composed of a large number of small independent homeservers, but history has shown that decentralized systems that aren't fully decentralized tend to eventually converge towards centralization as it becomes more popular (just look at what happened to email). And in a world where Google, Facebook and Microsoft's homeservers might eventually have a combined market share of over 90%, the privacy aspects of Matrix leave a lot to be desired.

[filterfish]

Yeah, it's pretty usable now. We moved from slack to matrix/vector about three months ago. The only complaint was text formatting and that has been fixed now.