Because of the ongoing fucktastrophe, the cries of "Use SIGNAL!" are constant and unavoidable. And I get it, it may be the least-bad option in a sea of terrible options. If, that is, you choose to ignore the advice of "don't use your phone for that shit" (the Stringer Bell Rule). But out of curiosity, because I haven't been keeping up, has the Signal Corporation addressed: The fact that they ...
Could you explain/elaborate to a know-nothing (me) on the following from your link?:
Caveats of federation: Metadata leaking
When using federation, Matrix’s room states (containing a lot of Metadata) get replicated and stored indefinitely on every homeserver any user connects with or connects to. While this is a feature for enabling distributed chat rooms, it comes at a serious privacy cost.
To avoid this, you can either disable federation, or make sure that your users signed up with no linkable identifiers other than their user names.
Matrix is not really a chat system, but rather a distributed database that pretends to be a chat system. As a result all servers participating in a room get a full copy of the room metadata all the way back to when the room was created, which is a serious privacy issue.
This is not a general problem of federated systems though, and XMPP for example basically only shares the metadata that other participating servers strictly need to function.
The main difference is that in Matrix, a chat’s history and media is stored indefinitely on every participating server, while on XMPP it’s only the duty of the one “hosting” it. And to my understanding, in 1-to-1 chats, the server doesn’t even retain the messages after delivering them, since there’s a separate module for “syncing” the history between devices (that you can set the retention time for).
The main difference is that XMPP (like most other federated systems) is based on passing messages, so if a new server joins a chat, it gets send messages from that point onwards.
In Matrix that is different. When a new server joins a chat it exchanges the entire database for that chat, and for DAG consistency reasons this means all the metadata since the chat was first created, often years ago.
That could work, it looks like it was a lot of features like reacts and video calls. How easy it is to setup and ‘plug-and-play’ will determine whether I’ll be able to convince people to use it
I sure don’t know. SimpleX is suggested, among others: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html#good-alternatives
Could you explain/elaborate to a know-nothing (me) on the following from your link?:
The author of that essay (@dessalines@lemmy.ml) is one of the main devs of lemmy, so you’re asking in the right place lmao
Matrix is not really a chat system, but rather a distributed database that pretends to be a chat system. As a result all servers participating in a room get a full copy of the room metadata all the way back to when the room was created, which is a serious privacy issue.
This is not a general problem of federated systems though, and XMPP for example basically only shares the metadata that other participating servers strictly need to function.
How…do you think chat systems with storage are supposed to work? They store data. In a database
What specific fields are shared by matrix but not xmpp?
The main difference is that in Matrix, a chat’s history and media is stored indefinitely on every participating server, while on XMPP it’s only the duty of the one “hosting” it. And to my understanding, in 1-to-1 chats, the server doesn’t even retain the messages after delivering them, since there’s a separate module for “syncing” the history between devices (that you can set the retention time for).
Yes in a local database, not a distributed one.
The main difference is that XMPP (like most other federated systems) is based on passing messages, so if a new server joins a chat, it gets send messages from that point onwards.
In Matrix that is different. When a new server joins a chat it exchanges the entire database for that chat, and for DAG consistency reasons this means all the metadata since the chat was first created, often years ago.
I’ve never looked into how Matrix works at all, so I can’t really speak to that.
That could work, it looks like it was a lot of features like reacts and video calls. How easy it is to setup and ‘plug-and-play’ will determine whether I’ll be able to convince people to use it
It is still in early stages but the bones are good.
I would not advise for people who expect shit to just work.
Maybe next year. A lot of progress since last time I tried it.