4 ms·

> you want to know if any of your contacts are on it already. For me that is an anti-feature and something which I have so far never wanted to do. I hate when

by jeltz 7y ago

> you want to know if any of your contacts are on it already. For me that is an anti-feature and something which I have so far never wanted to do. I hate when apps ask me to add users based on my other contact lists. I want to curate my contact list and only add the people I communicate with over this platform. I do not want to add a bunch of old contact's which I have forgot who they are when moving to a new messenger and I do not want to add people's accounts which they may have only used once years ago. And this is entirely ignoring the privacy aspect of it which I do not care that much about.

Arathorn 7y ago
Yup, while many people do like this feature (the billions of people who use WhatsApp and breathe a sigh of relief that they can find their friends & family on the app without having to manually create a whole new contact list), obviously there are others who do not (irrespectively of privacy concerns). The point of the blog post is to show we're trying to cater for both, rather than assuming that everyone falls into the WhatsApp bracket.
- techntoke 7y ago
  If you are trying to cater to people that will use your app like the other services, then why would they just not choose Discord or Telegram in the first place?
  - cyphar 7y ago
    The goal is to make it easier for those people to use Matrix too. Otherwise you won't ever expand past a fraction of the tech community and won't overcome the network effect of larger messaging systems. This is the same reason why (for instance) E2E isn't the default right now -- there were massive usability issues that most normal users would have trouble with (until very recently you could lose all your historical session keys unless you were very careful and backed them up religiously). Speaking anecdotally, several people I've switched to Matrix really wanted to switch away because they lost all of our old chat messages when they logged out of their account. I hope you agree that people without very strong privacy concerns should be able to use Matrix as well.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
>> you want to know if any of your contacts are on it already. > For me that is an anti-feature and something which I have so far never wanted to do. This is also true of me. I have no reason to want to know if any of my contacts are available through the messaging app I just downloaded. I downloaded the app because I want to communicate with a particular person or set of people. I already know about them. These people who would like to know if anyone in their contacts list is available on their new chat app -- why did they download it in the first place?

by jeltz 7y ago

Arathorn 7y ago

Yup, while many people do like this feature (the billions of people who use WhatsApp and breathe a sigh of relief that they can find their friends & family on the app without having to manually create a whole new contact list), obviously there are others who do not (irrespectively of privacy concerns). The point of the blog post is to show we're trying to cater for both, rather than assuming that everyone falls into the WhatsApp bracket.

techntoke 7y ago
If you are trying to cater to people that will use your app like the other services, then why would they just not choose Discord or Telegram in the first place?
- cyphar 7y ago
  The goal is to make it easier for those people to use Matrix too. Otherwise you won't ever expand past a fraction of the tech community and won't overcome the network effect of larger messaging systems. This is the same reason why (for instance) E2E isn't the default right now -- there were massive usability issues that most normal users would have trouble with (until very recently you could lose all your historical session keys unless you were very careful and backed them up religiously). Speaking anecdotally, several people I've switched to Matrix really wanted to switch away because they lost all of our old chat messages when they logged out of their account. I hope you agree that people without very strong privacy concerns should be able to use Matrix as well.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

>> you want to know if any of your contacts are on it already. > For me that is an anti-feature and something which I have so far never wanted to do. This is also true of me. I have no reason to want to know if any of my contacts are available through the messaging app I just downloaded. I downloaded the app because I want to communicate with a particular person or set of people. I already know about them. These people who would like to know if anyone in their contacts list is available on their new chat app -- why did they download it in the first place?