Technology

Could someone smarter than me explain Matrix to me?

I wouldn't assume that I'm smarter, but I do have more than a little experience here, so I'll try to answer your questions. :)

It's a real-time messaging platform. The most common use for it is text chat, both in groups (like Discord or IRC) and person-to-person (like mobile phone text/SMS). It supports other uses as well, like voice chat, video conference, and screen sharing, although much of that is newer and gradually showing up in clients.

What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?

Compared to Signal:

• Matrix doesn't require a phone number, or even an email address (although some public homeservers want an email address these days, as a recovery method in case you forget your password).
• Matrix has a variety of clients, so it's more likely that an app fitting your needs exists.
• Matrix clients typically don't require Google services at all; neither to get the software nor to receive notifications.
• Matrix cannot be monitored at any single location, so it's more resistant to meta-data tracking at the network level.
• Matrix cannot be shut down by any single organization, so it's more resistant to censorship and denial-of-service attacks. If a homeserver is ever forced offline, only the accounts on that homeserver go away; all your other contacts remain intact. Same thing if a service operator changes its policies or goes out of business.
• Matrix (last time I checked) had better support for using multiple devices on the same account. Phone, laptop, and office computer, for example.
• Matrix homeservers can be self-hosted by anyone, and still participate in the global network.
• Signal's encryption covers more meta-data at the application level than Matrix currently does. This might be important if you're a whistleblower or journalist whose safety depends on hiding your contacts from well-positioned adversaries.

Compared to email:

• Matrix has end-to-end encryption, with forward secrecy, built in. It's generally better for privacy than bolting PGP onto email, and it's far easier.
• Matrix is well suited to instant messaging.
• Matrix supports features that people have come to expect from modern chat platforms, like reaction emoji and editing after sending.
• Email has a greater variety of servers and clients.
• Email apps often have more composition features to support long-form writing.

What advantage would it give me over other services?

We already covered Signal, and there are too many other services to compare every difference in all of them, but here are some more common advantages:

• Matrix is a completely open protocol, developed through a public and open process, with open-source servers and client apps. This is important to people who care about privacy because it can be scrutinized by anyone to verify that it operates as it claims to, and can be improved by anyone with a good idea and motivation to participate. It's important to people who care about longevity because nobody can take it away.
• Matrix has multiple clients for every major platform: desktop, mobile, and web.
• Matrix handles groups of practically any size (including just one or two people).
• Matrix messages are delivered even when you're offline.

Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that’s still fully in development?

Until recently: Ever since cross-signing and encryption-by-default arrived a couple years ago, it has been somewhere between "still rough" and "pretty good", depending on one's needs and habits. I have been using it with friends and small groups for about five years, and although encrypted chats have sometimes been temperamental, they have worked pretty well most of the time. When frustrating glitches have turned up, we sorted them out and continued to use it. This has been worthwhile because Matrix offers a combination of features that is important to us and doesn't exist anywhere else. I haven't recommended it to extended family members yet, because not everyone cares as much about privacy or has the patience for troubleshooting in order to get it. However...

Recently: The frequency of glitches has dropped dramatically. Most of the encryption errors have disappeared, and the remaining ones look likely to be solved by the "Invisible Encryption" measures in Matrix 2.0. Likewise with things like sign-in lag and client set-up.

If you're considering whether it's time to try it, I suggest waiting until Matrix 2.0 features are formally released in the clients and servers you want to use, which should be very soon for the official ones. I wouldn't be surprised if I could confidently recommend it to family members in the coming year.

How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?

If you just want to chat, not very. Even one or two of my friends who can barely use email got up and running pretty quickly with a little guidance. Someone who can get started using Lemmy by themselves can probably handle it on their own.

If you want to host your own server, moderately tech savvy.

What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?

Matrix is more like discord, no phone numbers, just email, and you can make big groups with different channels within. More meant for communities then something like Signal, that's mostly for 1:1 conversation or small groups

What advantage would it give me over other services? Keeping the discord example i said above, no tracking, possibility to have end to end encryption, and open source code, along with the ability of having different instances that can communicate to each other, just like here on lemmy, so if you don't trust anyone else you can run your own instance

Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that's still fully in development?

It's mostly good already, but as with many other privacy focused services it lacks a wide adoption, so most of the communities there are about privacy, Linux and that type of stuff.

How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?

The most used client, Element, is IMO very easy to use, you can directly register through there, and you get the choice of choosing between the official matrix.org instance (which on certain occasions is laggy due to the many people using it), or other instances

What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?

Your organization can't host a federated Signal server, and email isn't private.

Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that's still fully in development?

My previous organization has used it for over 4 years without issues, however mostly limited to text.

How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?

Simply using? Not very much, basically like Lemmy.

matrix is for chat rooms full of strangers. signal is for talking to your friends

• What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?

None? Use signal, as long as it works. If the Signal server goes down tho, you could selfhost Matrix.

Yes I'm waiting until it's ready for the average user before I recommend it to anyone.

I've been very mindful not to recommend Matrix until the clients and protocol become much more stable. When you're recommending platforms to average users you really need to jump in and try it yourself. If too many problems come up just don't recommend. Or alternatively do recommend if you want them to leave you alone :3

UX is very difficult, unfortunately, especially for open-source projects where the contributors are usually programmers and not so much UX/product managers.

I laughed a bit. Thanks.

i'm guessing they'll actually be done in 6 months or so

You're not the chosen one.

Encryption is a mess with Matrix. Randomly doesn‘t decrypt messages. Most non-techies don‘t get the process of saving key files or creating secure passphrases.

Awful to self-host (resources, administration) and rolling their own crypto

On the UX-Side it's too complicated to explain to my parents.

I'd love for it to succeed, but for now I'll just stick woth Signal

With docker it's quite easy (assuming you are familiar with docker)

But docker / containerization is a skill that becomes really really helpful to learn if you are interested in this type of thing.

How much did you ask for?

Oh

I like this reddit comment's explanation:

As someone said before, compare it to E-Mail.

Matrix ~ smtp/pop3/imap (protocol layer)

synapse ~ sendmail/postfix/dovecot/exchange/... (server)

element, fluffy, ... ~ thunderbird, outlook, pine, elm, ... (clients)

Everyone can host it's own server and have it's on private chat cloud. Thats like E-Mail and other opensource chat servers like Rocket.Chat, Mattermost and so on.

But like for E-Mail, it is easy possible to federate with others (like mail: "talk" to other mailservers), to be able to chat with people on other Matrix Servers. That's the difference to most of the other opensource chat.servers, which are stuck to their cloud.

As for EMail: Choose your best weapon, will say, client or server software. The protocol is free and will stay free. At this time, there's mainly synapse as the reference implementation from matrix.org and upcoming dendrite, but more servers will be available in future I think. At client side, theres element as the reference implementation and also some others, for example fluffy.chat.

Another cool feature ist bridging. The protocol specification allows bridges to other chat-systems, so you are for example able to talk to IRC-Servers or XMPP-Servers too. Many bridges are in development, less are stable. But more to come in future.

Matrix.org is "outsourced" from university and responsble for developing the specs. They are the big brain behind. They also server matrix.org as free service for people to test matrix or use it without having their own servers.

Element.io is also an outsourced company, which is developing element (reference clients). They are also selling hosted solutions to get money to the project.

Both are under the roof of the new Vector limited.

Because the Api is free, everyone can produce own servers an clients and (in theory) no one can take the whole network over. (in practice: if a big company does its own "cool" non open addons and has enough users, the same shit as for xmpp and WhatsApp could happen...)

Because everyone can host its own servers *and* optionally federate, the same product can be used for high secure private chat-clouds, for example in hostpital, military, schools, whatever, but it can also be uses to talk everyone like e-mail or phone. *And* no one has the masterhost, so no one has all data and no one can change the rules overnight to get money, more data or whatever.

From functional side: Matrix is what some people call "modern", it has text chat, you can send files, you can do voice- and video-calls (in element: 1:1, for groups with jisi as backend) and send voice-messages (at least in fluffy.chat, upcoming in element also). You can also plugin things like etherpad or BigBluButton and send cute stickers if needed. You can structure your contacts with "spaces" (beta).

Element got better and better in the last year and is imho very easy to use for now, but with some last edges. Fluffy is somewhat easier some users as far as I've heared but not feature complete.

I hope, Matrix will be the E-Mail-Version of Chat in the future. I have reviewed some systems for my university and it was the only one from which I think it has the potential to do so. So, give it a try. It's great.