[hwbehrens]

From my perspective, the biggest differentiator is that Matrix allows users to remove the centralized coordinator from their chat provider. That is, I can run my own Matrix server, where my users can chat with each other, without any interaction with Element.io or other operator. All other major providers (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc) all rely on a single operator to coordinate the system.

Of course, it's still useful to be able to chat with people without accounts on your private server, which is why the federation is still important. You can link up with broader networks, but you're not reliant on them.

Why this might matter is because if e.g. the UK government compels WhatsApp to implement a backdoor, as an end user I would never know. But, as someone operating entirely outside of the UK, they have no standing to compel me as a private person to implement a backdoor in my own deployment (or at the worst, at least I would know if it occurred).

Think of it as the chat analog to running your own mail server. Does everyone need to run your own mailserver? No. But if we'd started with a siloed system in email, we'd probably still be sending emails only to people with our same TLDs to this day.

[astro1]

We've had this with XMPP already.

[bjoli]

Oh, but people don't like XML.

XML means xmpp is awful apparently. I feel pretty alone in having a bad experience with matrix, but a good one with xmpp+omemo.

[dingnuts]

yes and XMPP is actually a messaging protocol. Matrix is an eventually consistent database with a crappy messaging app implemented on top, and because of the insane architecture they are justifying decisions like message ordering that is non-deterministic[0] -- for multi user chat!

What could possibly go wrong if users in a multi user chat see messages in different orders? This decision is a perfect example of how smart systems engineers can be so completely divorced from the real problem (human communication) that they make completely asinine choices justified by implementation details no user cares about.

Matrix needs to die so it can stop sucking the air out of this space. The funding problems are also completely predictable but that's an opinion for another time.

0 https://artificialworlds.net/blog/2024/12/04/message-order-i...