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by JHSheridan 2691 days ago
I found Matrix and Riot a while back while I was searching for an encrypted, open-source alternative to Rocket Chat for my team.

While there are still some things that need improving, they're mostly just rough edges. All of my coworkers are at least semi-technical, so that makes things a little easier for us. At times, the key verification can be frustrating, but I think this is just a hard problem to solve in general.

As I began to use Matrix more, I realized that there's potential for Matrix to be much, much more than just a Slack/Mattermost/Rocket Chat killer. I could see this replacing texting, what's app, group chat for business and outside of work. I haven't tested much of the video chat or phone calling features, but if support for those become robust, I could see Matrix replacing almost every form of communication I currently have. That would be really excellent considering most of the communication channels I currently use are controlled by corporations I don't like and don't trust.

Following that line of thought, your Matrix address could become a universal point of contact. A Matrix address seems so much simpler than a phone number, and you don't have to worry about the fact that you may not be able to transfer numbers between carriers or something like that.

I have so much hope for this project. We need an open-source, encrypted, decentralized communications standard. This is the best and broadest attempt I've seen at this so far.

3 comments

It's also ridiculously easy to use. When his friend left their matrix riot chatroom for lent, this guy made a textgenrnn chatbot out of his friends chat history on Matrix. For the people looking for a demo, it's a pretty good start.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hRVVn-8CzXE

> This is the best and broadest attempt I've seen at this so far

The old chaps around here had exactly the same hope for XMPP that you're having right now. It had it all, except, crucially, marketing.

And let's not forget the mess that is push support - this murders it on mobile and therefore more or less the biggest messaging market.
Did you get around if this works?

https://github.com/exul/matrix-rocketchat