On the side bar it lists the following:
- [Matrix/Element]Dead
- Discord
“Discord” is an active link, but the Matrix link is completely inactive. Not only is it inactive (which could have be excused as a broken link), but it is also manually labeled as “Dead”, as if there is no intention of making it work. How can a community that is focused on privacy willingly favor a service that is privacy non-respecting when a perfectly functional privacy-respecting alternative exists?
It’s the timeless debate between accessibility and exclusivity. Do you want more people in your community by compromising some values? Or would you rather be a hardliner but never reach those people?
Most of the time you have to pick somewhere on that spectrum. It’s a question of pragmatism and utilitarianism.
Does it do more good for lots of people to be slightly more privacy-aware, or is it better to have a very small portion of the population that are super privacy-aware?
You have to decide, and the debate rages on all the time.
If you compromise on the very topic you’re promoting, you don’t care enough.
Wait, really? So you think Matrix is the ultimate form of secure and private “chat” communities? Because if it is not then it is a compromise.
This Lemmy instance for sure as hell is not the most private and secure.
It’s a lot better than discord, that’s for sure
That depends on your threat model. All lemmy posts are publicly visible and can be scooped up by Farcebook, google et al. Discord is very definitely not properly private but all posts aren’t public. They are undoubtedly doing the same thing FB does and selling a semi anonymised set of meta data about you, but the world doesn’t have direct visibility
I know the three letter acronyms have access to everything I do, hidden or not, I don’t like it but I don’t see anyway around it.
I can however do my level best to keep FB, google, M$ out of my stuff to some extent
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Never used it but I can imagine it being better. Discord is annoying as hell. Point was that the commenter seemed to argue that you should not accept any compromises, which seems silly to me.
They said a “big” compromise? Why did you skip over their qualifier? Are all compromises equal?
(Test)
Where did they say that?
I dunno. The comment doesn’t have the word in it now; that’s why #1981 is important. But, maybe they didn’t and I imagined it.
It remains true that not all compromises are equal, and the privacy compromises we make for Discord are relatively large compared to the ones for Matrix.
There is an “edited” indicator for posts, and the post you’re referring to doesn’t have it.
Sure, your point is true, but you were (incorrectly) accusing the other commenter of skipping a qualifier that would make your point relevant.
You’re right; Voyager doesn’t show the “edited” flag.
I was mistaken about the word, and the accusation about skipping over it was unwarrented.
I think this is missing the point by arguing semantics, but my phrasing was wrong.
Isn’t Lemmy itself a big compromise?
Not compromising at all would be not using the internet though. Probably live in a cottage somewhere in the middle of nowhere too.
The people that need a topic to be promoted are the people outside of the topic. A place where privacy and non privacy focused individuals can meet is needed to atract and teach new users.
Yeah! If you’re teaching elementary school and not at the Doctorate level, it means you don’t care about education!
/sWe all compromise somewhere, it’s just a question of where the line is. Even Richard Stallman makes concessions for things like Firmware and hardware being closed source.
I want a nicely bridget matrix - discord channel, so that the individuals of the community can choose themselves
In addition to adoption, it takes time for the usability to catch up.
Right now Signal is just as good (IMO better) as Messenger usability wise, but that wasn’t always there.
Matrix needs some time to iron out those issues
I agree to an extent, but usability is not a sufficient condition for mass adoption. I think Lemmy for end users is just as usable as Reddit was, at least for me it is. But people don’t want to leave their communities.
That’s why personally I have a Discord still. There are too many communities I am an active part of on there to abandon Discord outright. Plus all of my friends and family are on there, and I’ve already approached some them about switching and they all have said the same thing I just did.
I wasn’t ever super invested in Reddit, so it was easy for me to abandon it for Lemmy, and I vastly prefer the communities here. Discord though is a different story for now, unfortunately.
Accessibility would be to let people have the choice: making a bridge between Discord, Matrix, Telegram, XMPP, IRC, etc… There are plenty of tools to do that today, it’s not complicated.
How is this more accessible? Have you read the installation instructions? How would someone that has no IT background even manage to configure this? Even just grabbing a binary from the releases page is complicated for a lot of people.
Are you able to at least bridge you matrix to the discord? You should, at the very least, be able to do that while also promoting matrix.
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Ehh not really; at least if you care about your own anonymity. Sure the communication is as private as the weakest link (or less because now you have to trust the bot relaying it, too), but nobody from Discord would be able to easily look up your identity.
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Oh shit. I did not realize that.
Yes there are bridge bots. But discord breaks them, and bands their accounts. Sometimes
Thanks!
Do you want more people in your community by compromising some values? Or would you rather be a hardliner but never reach those people?
Is there any reason you couldn’t have a discord and a matrix channel? It seems to me that would reach the most people.
The issue becomes moderation at that point, not a big problem for a larger community, but small communities tend to struggle with moderation with just one hub of communications.
Also, the hardliners wouldn’t be interested in co-existing, that’s against their ethics generally.
You also split your intended audience and every discussion. It’s one of the big issues with Lemmy and federation right now. People create multiple copies of the same community across different servers.
Just curious.
Because privacy communities are a joke.
Yeah it quickly becomes a dick measuring contest and shunning people for using different things. It becomes very black/white views, and have some crazy out of touch takes, like expecting your grandma to self host lol. They also confuse anonymity with privacy, like how not being able to sign up for something with tor and monero is a privacy violation, it’s not.
it quickly becomes a dick measuring contest and shunning people for using different things. It becomes very black/white views, and have some crazy out of touch takes
In other words, it’s just like literally every online community in the history of the Internet. When Sir TimBL created the first web page, people probably used it to bitch about how everyone else was doing it wrong.
Shun!
I think it falls into the same pitfalls as most super niche communities, like a lot of subreddits did.
For example, the shaving subreddit (/r/wicked_edge I think?). Its mission statement was to introduce people to cleaner, safer, and more efficient shaving methods. And for the most part, with all of its resources and wikis, it successfully did it. But if you choose to stay after you’ve made your informed purchases, the posts were mostly braggarts showing off their latest hundreds-of-dollars handles, supreme razor blades, brushes made from actual gold, that sort of thing. My point is, the average person (by my guess, like 90% of people going to the site) gets the information they need and then never participate in the community again. But those who stay are those who really want to stay– people who are most likely to brag and boast. So over time, it falls more and more into plain old dick measuring contests.
This obviously isn’t true of all communities, but I think it’s a common pitfall for a lot of them. I can imagine privacy is very similar: take all the steps you can to learn to protect your privacy, and then… you’re good, for the most part.
Wow this is great I am surprised to see people talking about this (let alone even being aware of it).
Really refreshing to not have it to be a contest to follow random dogmas.
Lemmy is refreshingly smarter than I was used to seeing on Reddit.
Just a slightly higher barrier to entry really filters out the low-quality ignorant/belligerent/unconstructive posters, don’t you think? The relative absence of useless posts made either by bots or unhelpful users is refreshing too. It’s not perfect but it’s a huge step in the right direction.
Hahahaha
Not have it be a contest to follow random dogmas
Lemmy is refreshingly smarter than… reddit
I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but either way this was hilarious!!
Reminds me of what happened to the pipe tobacco sub after Reddit banned trading of tobacco.
What had been a thriving sub of trading, sharing, well written reviews and friendly discussion quickly became stagnant and started leaning towards people showing off their expensive pipes and tobacco orders. Without the people who came for the trading and stayed to chat, the sub became boring quickly.
Pfft. My gramgram self-hosts on her own LFS build with a hardened kernel and custom written SELinux policies. All your grandparents need to get on her level.
Disclaimer: Everything here is a lie.
like how not being able to sign up for something with tor and monero is a privacy violation, it’s not.
Note that “secrecy” and “privacy” are often understood in Security lingo as different things. One protects confidentiality, the other one protects anonymity.
It’s possible to have one and not the other…
You can have a very private system through onion routing but have the contents of the messages exchanged be in plaintext, open to the public. Nobody will be able to know the one who wrote the message was you. But they can see the message. (then there is privacy, but not secrecy).
Or you can have very strongly encrypted communications (say HTTPS) but have the DNS exchanges (or the TLS handshake, or the IP addresses) be in the clear, so people in the middle (eg. your ISP… or your workplace tech guys) can know exactly that the packages are sent by you and where you sent them, even if their content is encrypted. They can know which service you tried to access to, for how long and how many times (so you have secrecy, but not privacy).
Lol this is 100% the truth. Privacy communities are a fucking meme. 99% of posts are just people circlejerking about Firefox vs Brave.
I’ve never gotten why Brave got popular in the first place. I downloaded it once and uninstalled within 3 minutes.
Cromite and Waterfox are all I’ll ever need.
Idk and I don’t care. Just tired of watching the Brave circlejerk. Like everyone knows that company is sketchy as absolute shit. If you still want to use the browser then that’s on you. But I’m tired of seeing people screaming about it in every one of these threads lol
Because privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites and you can only go so far in the privacy direction before you start losing everything. Discord just works a million times better as a public forum/community than Matrix and is much more easily accessible to everyone.
There is a limit. I am privacy conscious but I still use all Google Services for example, because they actually provide me with a better web, work, mobile and entertainment experiences. Similarly, I prefer Discord for big communities with channels, server bots and topics, over Matrix.
Edit: all those people saying we can’t be privacy conscious and use Google Services at the same time: yes you can. Their services literally make my life better so I will keep using them, but I keep what I share with them to the absolute minimum. I go into their settings and disable everything I can about tracking and ads personalization (even if they still track me, I do my best not to be). You can surely still be privacy conscious using non-private products. Being extremist is not how you convince average joes to think about privacy, nor by telling them to give up all they use for unknown (for them) alternatives.
i dont think anyone using google services is “privacy conscious”
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Well they’re privacy “conscious” but still feel trapped. IMHO the first sentence is even more telling namely “privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites” as a justification. It’s not necessarily true, namely one can use… well pretty much anything BUT Google or Meta product and have a perfectly convenient experience. They are just used to it, so amalgamating what they are used to to what is objectively convenient for all.
Maybe some day in the near future they will decide to go from being conscious to active about it and I can tell in advance, they are going to feel a lot better, but it requires more than introspection, it requires action.
non-privacy services have more money=have more and probably better people to work on them=better quality
Please stop using questionable logic to promote large companies, they do not need your free help for more marketing. There is even research showing it’s false https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/when-31-4-the-effect-of-gift-salience-on-employee-effort-in-an-online-labor-market in many ways https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672231159781
There is no correlation between pay and quality work. I’m genuinely shocked this is even an argument held on a platform running on FLOSS.
Some might be more “convenient” on having an easier on-boarding, and even that is questionable, but regardless that’s not the same as “better quality”.
i said more and probably better programmers
Yes, Google even read your mails, it’s sooo private. Its right that Google offers good services respect quality, but its a privacy nightmare and nowadays there are very good alternatives out there, even when they are also propietary. Eg, YT is maybe the best streaming platform, but full of ads, clickbaits, tracking and other crap, now even blocks videos if you use some adblockers. Because of this a lot of people translade subscriptions and playlists to Odysee, also privacy but way better respect privacy and few ads (online service of IMDB)
Discord is certainly not the best but also not the worse (see Reddit, X, Fakebook, WhatsCrap, etc), but offers a lot of features which other platforms don’t have.
Privacy in internet finish when you go online, the user can only patch the worst leaks more or less succesfull, beginning with the worst privacy and security hole, himself. Read the TOS and PP of an soft or service you want to use, check the sites with Blacklight, Webkoll, UrlVoid, Exodus Privacy, AV or similar, even if it is FOSS, which no neccesarly is a security or privacy feature, tracking APIs from Google, Amazon, Facebook and M$ are also FOSS and included in a lot of FOSS in this Microsoft site called GitHub.
You don’t need a tin foil hat, but common sense in the internet.
Matrix is pretty convenient. They’ve got a great mobile and web app experience.
What exactly does discord have that mateix doesn’t? They both have threading, replies, reacts, etc.
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How and who is addressing this at large scale? I mean uptake of foss vs proprietary, privacy compliant vs not etc… It’s the same story for signal vs WhatsApp, when one sees the majority of relatives using WhatsApp, s/he would then drop signal altogether or keep it alongside for the one geek that uses it. I am in this situation and it defeats me that not much people care and chose convenience over concerns that I find legitimately vital, or in any case not trivial. I quit using Facebook/Instagram 2 years ago seeing what it does to society and am better off mentally, but the interactions I have through mastodon and pixelfed are zero, although my meta pages are still up with these links
But that’s cyclic reasoning. Nothing that you need/want will be on matrix if you (and everyone else) does not think it’s worth to make what you need/want be in matrix…
I don’t need EVERYTHING to be in Matrix, just the things I’m interested in. So I’m happy when I see a push to have those specific things there. This is the same argument as to why I don’t use Reddit anymore, despite Lemmy/Kbin having only a fraction of the content.
It also helps the fact that Matrix is very flexible when it comes to mirroring/proxying other protocols. I can easily access IRC communities from Matrix, for example. The integration in that direction is nicer than requiring discord channels to add bots that parrot an IRC chat.
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Yes, but the question is: what does matrix need to establish itself as a solid alternative?
You can’t answer that by saying “people don’t use it, change that” because that’s something only people can change, not matrix, that’d lead to a cyclic problem.
Specially when that’s given as a counterpoint to justify not wanting to do the change for “this community”. It’s contradictory to want its popularity to be changed but accept the lack of change alone as a valid reason to justify your communities not changing.
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I don’t think EVERYONE needs to understand / know about it. I mean, I remember when I was young most people had no idea how to use the internet (hell, they didn’t even know how to program a VHS), yet I was perfectly happy using that technology.
I only need a specific set of people and specific communities to be there for it to be worth it. Like I said: I no longer use reddit, even though the fediverse has only a small fraction of the content existing in reddit… I would have expected people in the fediverse would be more receptive to unpopular but technologically/ethically superior alternatives.
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Could you elaborate?
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Each matrix chat is it’s own channel. To admin multiple channels as you would on discord you just have to set up multiple matrix chats held by a common owner.
There is a mod role but you’re right that you can’t make custom ones though I honestly don’t see much need to for a simple privacy community.
And I think matrix has voice now.
But yah I get what you’re saying. Thank you for the elaboration.
Because conversations about increasing privacy doesn’t need to be private. It’s usually about learning about other tools and that they exist.
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This only makes sense if discord is a common entry point into the community which seems unlikely to me
It probably isn’t, but it’s probably a good place to get a quick answer about something.
I guess people just prefer and are more active on Discord
“I guess people just prefer and are more active on Facebook Messenger”
“I guess people just prefer and are more active on TikTok”
Most cryptocurrency communities use Discord or Telegram. It’s such an embarrasment.
I’ve never understood this either, given the whole notion and enthusiasm behind decentralization. I get the trade-offs regarding privacy, security, and convenience, but if you’re really tryna start a movement, and you really believe in the concept and principles of something like cryptocurrency, it seems like your communities and communication channels should also reflect similar values.
And that’s where you realize that them defending decentralization is just trying to have a nice-sounding argument instead of assuming their dreams of getting rich with new tech
Crypto enthusiasts don’t really care or understand decentralization. If you talk to crypto bros you will realize pretty quickly that a lot of them are very very low IQ morons.
I was at an event and met a crypto bro. He tried to explain to a group of us that btc is like moss and the world is the forest. A couple people legitimately “got it” and began to get excited about crypto.
Crypto enthusiasts don’t really care or understand decentralization.
I wouldn’t criticize others for their low IQ while making such a dumb generalization.
you don’t trade off your security, instead you increase it.
for Bitcoin you can increase your privacy with various tools like coinjoin and lightning network with convenience tradeoff
or you just use Monero.
If you have questions feel free to ask in Monero@monero.town
Oh I hate communities that use Telegram. I mean, sure, I guess there’s better privacy, but Telegram was just not built for that. Messages always get lost, and there are no channels, which means no info channel, so they have to try and cram everything into the description.
You should check privacy coin Monero.
Matrix and XMPP is pretty much popular in XMR community
And often discord and telegram channels are bridged with other platforms.
Should be telling the only two services they use is one infamous for fuck tons of child grooming and one infamous for fuck tons of terrorism.
What benefit is there to use Matrix for a public community? It’s not like there is extra privacy since anyone can see the messages.
You’re still feeding a proprietary platform your information (not just the messages) directly. In this case in particular, if some privacy conscious person wanted to discuss with others and didn’t have a Discord account for the same reason, they’d have to sign up and give up some of that privacy
I don’t disagree with that. Obviously for private messages it’s a different scenario.
Also, doesn’t matrix.org have almost all metadata on most users anyways? Unless you explicitly block everyone that uses it from ever reaching you.
Idk about all, I do know it’s a lot, but the argument for me there is how the privacy policies differ.
I admit that I haven’t really looked much into it, but just assumed that since Discord is so terrible to be borderline violating the GDPR in respects to user data deletion, matrix.org couldn’t ever be worse than that. Of course, mine is just an assumption, Matrix definitely aligns more with my values though, and some E2EE will always beat none, but everyone should do their research before trusting me.Also note, there are other open registration Matrix hosts, so maybe you can find someone with even better policies.
Same reason why people use Google products when they could use something else (and note very often that they can’t): it’s more convenient because Google products are better. Because Google has the clout to make them better and bury the competition even more. which is the very definition of monopolistic anti-competitiveness.
Element is garbage in my experience. It’s just not very user friendly, it’s slow, it’s bloated (and no wonder, it’s a React application) and it’s not very stable on the desktop. I tried my best to like it but I just can’t: it’s awful. And unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that’s the best Matrix client out there.
I’m sure the Element people are trying their hardest and I don’t fault them. But I’m pretty sure they don’t have the resources to make it better, unlike Discord. So people staying on Discord is a self-perpetuating prophecy, until someone commits the resources to make Matrix an easy, fast and attractive proposition.
When leading a chunk of the privacy community you could really use cryptpad (for online documents) and such alternatives.
Good alternatives do exist, and they’re perfectly fine. Unless huge rounded corners and empty spaces on the UI are a requirement, though…In some cases it’s fine, though, like youtube has pretty good proxy services (for now…) that are basically effortless to use for viewing videos. Until a usable alternative emerges.
About Element: yes it’s garbage because the backend’s API design was… not good. End of the year they are finalizing an API that works much better, and let’s clients not to waste resources. There’s a new element app for android that takes advantage of it, and I can tell from experience, it’s usable now even on a throttled mobile connection when you have not opened it in a long time (weeks). They will also fix the web client.
I use element for work and don’t have many complaints. I miss the gifs because I’m a dork but don’t find it bloated, garbage, or unstable. I have more complaints about discord to be honest.
Well maybe not that unstable if I’m honest. But super, SUPER slow to sync up for sure. As for bloated, I suggest you check its memory usage: it’s quite obscene for what is essentially just a chat client.
You sound like you haven’t used matrix in a while. I use it daily. It isn’t super slow to sync.
Discord is just the preferred platform for that sort of group-based text comms. It’s better both in a technical sense (more feature-rich and more reliable), and a UX sense, for a majority of users. It’s also free to set up a server, which gives it a huge boost to usability. Matrix has a long way to go if they want to compete.
This is total bullshit. You should start at the fact that Discord is owned by a chinese company. Then discuss everything else. To me Discord looks and acts like a spoiled child: too many things going on, too many flashy stuff, too manny obnoxious “features”.
You should start at the fact that Discord is owned by a chinese company.
Discord Inc is a privately-owned American company. If you’re referring to Tencent, they are investors, and not owners. And they’re only one of several foreign investors. As for ownership, two dudes share majority ownership of the company.
Then discuss everything else.
Maybe you should do ten seconds of Googling before discussing anything.
It’s not free to set up a server on discord. It’s not possible at all.
I know what you actually mean, the word server means that the mods and admins have control over it and they have control over how data stored on the server gets used. The discord definition is misleading in this regard.
On discord, neither of these are true: if the admin’s account is banned (or “suspended” until a phone number is given) they don’t have any control anymore, and regardless of this they don’t have any control over how the data is used (which includes private date like messages of users, how much and when are they online, etc).Yes, I’m using Discord’s terminology for a discussion about Discord. What they call a “server” is not actually a server, but that’s the term they went with.
I could’ve used the Discord dev term “guild”, since that’s how “servers” are referred to internally and in the code, but I don’t think as many people would understand what I meant by that.
Yes, I’m using Discord’s terminology for a discussion about Discord.
A terminology that is (designed to be) very misleading.
I know I’m just a random internet stranger, but please, don’t use the “server” name for discord communities.
Another person who thinks Discord is the equivalent of PRISM for China because Tencent helped with funding them? You’re welcome to go work for them. They mostly live in Sanfranciso and got a whoping ~5% of their startup money from Tencent.
As a light reminder, Discord has been blocked in China since… 2018?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord
https://discord.com/open-source
https://venturebeat.com/games/hammer-chisel-pivots-to-voice-comm-app-for-multiplayer-mobile-games/
China bad USA good because USA got all those data protection and privacy laws right??
Exactly lol. It’s such a silly sentiment.
Light remind me why china banned it?
Nowhere in the post does OP claim that Discord’s privacy issues are China related…
Right, he’s just super concerned about privacy while speaking in hushed tones without naming anything because… Of privacy gnomes.
None of the other people talking about China owning Discord are here either lol.
Thank you! It’s basically impossible to use discord anonymously
you can use webcord as a frontend qhich is better but it still is a shitshow
Inb4 aNoNiMiTy iS nOt tHe sAmE aS pRiVaCy
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It literally isn’t.
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This thread begs to differ. Lots of Matrix users here who can’t use Discord for privacy reasons.
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The Matrix link is marked as ‘dead’ in the side bar. The people who wrote the side bar are actively discouraging people from using Matrix.
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I’m told discord is encrypted too, so could you be more specific?
Discord isn’t encrypted at all
It’s encrypted between you and discord. So somebody on your Wi-Fi can’t see what you’re typing. But it’s not encrypted end to end. Discord can see everything that people talk about. And that’s the problem
That’s just ssl tho
Which is encryption
Secure socket layer is a type of encryption. So discord can correctly claim it is encrypted. And the commenter above can get confused by that. Confusing user to server encryption and end-to-end encryption where the messages are encrypted between users is important distinction.
Ceaser cipher is a type of encrypton. That doesn’t make it safe. Nor is TLS with a terribly broken PKI.
Yeah ur right, it is encryption, barely, but it is “military grade encryption”
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People who dislike discord and want a good alternative besides matrix should check out revolt.chat <3
