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The announcement mentions only two features: safety and accessibility, but places no emphasis on the technical merits of the choice for the majority of users. T

The announcement mentions only two features: safety and accessibility, but places no emphasis on the technical merits of the choice for the majority of users. That is disappointingly irrational for a technology organization. I don't feel comfortable with the strong emphasis on "progressive" concerns that mozilla (and the rust community) have. It's not inclusive: I have normal liberal views (I'm from a European country and under 40) and I don't think I'd feel comfortable working for one of those organizations because I suspect the progressives there would be angry or offended with my reluctance to embrace the identity politics dogma. I didn't even feel comfortable posting this under my usual account, such is the atmosphere. Accessibility is clearly important. But "safety" concerns have become overblown: reasonable concerns have become polluted by the politics of the "safe space" contingent, and the sorts of people that are closing down legitimate debate in the name of progressive/identity politics. And technical suitability for the 95% of modally-abled users is still an important consideration.

mwcampbell 7y ago
> technical suitability for the 95% of modally-abled users is still an important consideration. Are you saying that we should give more advantages to people who already have the advantage of having no significant disability, while adding difficulty for people who already have extra difficulties (or at best making only token efforts toward accessibility)? That seems unreasonable to me. Fortunately, with an open system like Matrix, everyone can have a client that works well for them.
bzbarsky 7y ago
Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla, and I was quite happy with IRC personally. The announcement may not mention it, but there were trial instances of a number of messaging apps set up, people could use them and submit feedback, and that feedback was in fact considered as far as I know. Accessibility and safety were not the only criteria at all. As far as "safety" concerns being overblown... I personally had approximately zero problems with IRC that way, though some of the random spammers who sounded like foul-mouthed 12-year-olds could be annoying at (rare, in my experience) times. But I absolutely have co-workers whose IRC experience was a lot less pleasant. And if moving to a different system lets us get rid of that unpleasantness for them, that is a _very_ strong reason to consider such a move, both on general moral grounds and on purely business-reasons "people who can get their work done sanely get more work done" efficiency grounds. Note that we're not talking about safety from debate or opposing viewpoints or whatnot. We're talking about people being able to discuss a bugfix with others without being constantly spammed with invective and threats in the process. _That_ is what "safety" means in this context.
jeltz 7y ago
Accessibility was actually as far as I understand an argument in favor of staying on IRC (but also in favor of Matrix) since there are IRC clients which work very well with screenreaders (I think weechat for example). It is the proprietary solutions which have poor accessibility.

mwcampbell 7y ago

> technical suitability for the 95% of modally-abled users is still an important consideration. Are you saying that we should give more advantages to people who already have the advantage of having no significant disability, while adding difficulty for people who already have extra difficulties (or at best making only token efforts toward accessibility)? That seems unreasonable to me. Fortunately, with an open system like Matrix, everyone can have a client that works well for them.

bzbarsky 7y ago

Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla, and I was quite happy with IRC personally. The announcement may not mention it, but there were trial instances of a number of messaging apps set up, people could use them and submit feedback, and that feedback was in fact considered as far as I know. Accessibility and safety were not the only criteria at all. As far as "safety" concerns being overblown... I personally had approximately zero problems with IRC that way, though some of the random spammers who sounded like foul-mouthed 12-year-olds could be annoying at (rare, in my experience) times. But I absolutely have co-workers whose IRC experience was a lot less pleasant. And if moving to a different system lets us get rid of that unpleasantness for them, that is a _very_ strong reason to consider such a move, both on general moral grounds and on purely business-reasons "people who can get their work done sanely get more work done" efficiency grounds. Note that we're not talking about safety from debate or opposing viewpoints or whatnot. We're talking about people being able to discuss a bugfix with others without being constantly spammed with invective and threats in the process. _That_ is what "safety" means in this context.

jeltz 7y ago

Accessibility was actually as far as I understand an argument in favor of staying on IRC (but also in favor of Matrix) since there are IRC clients which work very well with screenreaders (I think weechat for example). It is the proprietary solutions which have poor accessibility.