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Its not a lazy cop out. There is a reason why Telegram, WhatsApp, iMessage have more users - they are simple to use for an audience that is not tech savvy. Mat

Its not a lazy cop out. There is a reason why Telegram, WhatsApp, iMessage have more users - they are simple to use for an audience that is not tech savvy. Matrix has a long way to go before getting people to join is "easy". Theyve done great work over this year to get that done, but its far from perfect. Fight the good fight but dont forget what makes an app attract users. Even now on matrix, when you sign up, matrix.org is the default server. If majority go about signing up without changing that, you end up with a centralized service.

rglullis 6y ago
I've got a good part of my family who is not tech savvy on matrix (not their server, but actual accounts on communick.com homeserver), nothing that a 10 minute walk-through didn't solve. It on us the tech savvy to identify these issues, educate and help them overcome them, and ideally contribute for these issues to be solved in the first place. This gives us progress and freedom. Saying "matrix is hard/incomplete, let's just stick in the golden cage" gives us convenience, but no progress.
- asutekku 6y ago
  10 min walkthrough/registration process versus a <1 min registration. Think whatever of it but people appreciate convenience over everything.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    "Look, mom/dad/wife/brother/friends, I know that WhatsApp is easier and everyone else is using it and it you already know it and it is super convenient. But I don't want to use it anymore for a bunch of different reasons. If you want to talk to me, I can help you get set up on this app and we can talk. I know it sounds like a pain in the ass, but I am willing to help you with whatever issue you have. Just please don't ask me to sacrifice my freedom for your convenience." 100% conversion rate. Stop with excuses and Just. Ask. Them. In fact even if I have no paying customers at all for communick I wouldn't still shut it down just so my friends and family can continue using it.
    - dividedbyzero 6y ago
      100% conversion rate with those you can apply sufficient pressure on, perhaps. Who'd want to lose contact with a son, brother, father over something like that? But it's a hassle, even if you don't see it that way. Over the years I myself have been converted to Signal, Telegram (encrypted chats), Threema, some kind of encrypted IRC and OTR on at least two other messengers, Google Wave, Google Talk, Viber, ... can't remember them all. I have no idea anymore what person prefers which app and since most of those people weren't the very best of friends, contact to almost all of them has effectively ceased (in part because those specific people don't often start conversations themselves), which is a pity, but it's simply really bothersome to cater to everyone's preferences, and I absolutely can't and won't switch to $other_app fully myself, because I really value being able to talk to all my acquaintances and friends and relatives and being able to stay in touch with new ones easily and frictionlessly, and pretty much everyone is on Whatsapp, and all I need is a phone number. If some people categorically don't value other people who don't use their preferred app, that totally weirds me out. Their choice, but not one I'm willing to make, especially since that notion of freedom I gain feels like a very, very abstract kind of freedom in a world where billions use Whatsapp for next to anything and all sorts of devices, apps and websites from all sorts of brands and sources phone home lots and lots of data, which also means eschewing Whatsapp doesn't matter a thing unless I make dozens of other painfull choices like opting out of all mainstream social media, complex privacy-centric browser setups that need constant attention to not fall behind, no mainstream phone (possibly no smartphone at all), no smart devices at all, Linux exclusively, etc. pp., otherwise I'll just leak data like a sieve elsewhere. Given that I gain what feels like very little, life just feels too short for this.
      - rglullis 6y ago
        Of course it is a hassle! I never claimed otherwise. But it is a hassle worth fighting for and this is what I try to show when I am helping them getting started with something else. > If some people categorically don't value other people who don't use their preferred app, that totally weirds me out. Who said anything about judging/not valuing other people by their preferred app? I am not claiming exclusivity. I still have WhatsApp on my phone for contacts and groups who are not close enough to me for me to ask them to use a different app. The point I am trying to make is that if everyone (including privacy-sensitive, tech-savvy people) keep this apathy in regards to their digital hygiene, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and there is no way we will ever get out of this mess. I presume anyone on Hacker News can and know how to do better, and we should be the ones in the front lines fighting for more open systems instead of passively waiting for some magical benevolent entity to save us from Big Tech.
- wruza 6y ago
  >It on us the tech savvy to identify these issues, educate and help them overcome them, and ideally contribute for these issues to be solved in the first place. No, it’s on IM app developers. And not ideally, but today. Nobody is buying into tomorrow’s promises, the quicker signal/matrix will understand it, the better for everyone. Tell them.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    I think you are arguing with a strawman. Signal is as centralized as Telegram and moxie has already stated that he does not care about open or federated systems because of the usability trade-off required. My argument is that the inferior usability is not an intrinsic issue of federated systems, just circunstancial. Being closed/centralized on the other hand, is an intrinsic property of all major platforms, and any of these major platforms will screw its users whenever they have enough lock-in. So, I am not saying simply that open is good and closed is bad. What I am saying is that open should be preferred and promoted. And no, people working on open systems should not just sit on their asses and say "you have no other choice, so you will have to take whatever we do". People working on Matrix already have quite a lot of work cut out for them and I am painfully aware of the points were it can improve. The thing is I am also aware of how much improvement has happened already, while there is absolutely zero proprietary platform that opened up itself for public benefit.
    - wruza 6y ago
      >open should be preferred and promoted And I’m saying that preference is a function of many parameters, and you can’t change preferences by just promoting a new parameter to the public. They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. What we think it should or should not be is effectively irrelevant to their minds. To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. This looks like a strawman because it addresses (I believe) a wrong premise.
      - rglullis 6y ago
        > you can’t change preferences Who said anything about changing preferences? When I said about converting those close to me, I mean in the sense that I get them to install and use Matrix for communicating with me. If they want to use/prefer close platforms to talk with other people, I am not stopping them/thinking less of them for it. > They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. Yes, it's obvious. If they had prioritized openness and privacy over other bells and whistles they would been using already something like Matrix or XMPP. What I am saying since my very first comment is that I acknowledge that, but I also say that I prefer to use open tools and that I am willing to help them as much as possible to setup an account for them, install the apps and give basic guidance so that we can talk. I am not asking them to drop other applications nor refusing to understand the reasons they have to prefer to use closed platforms. At no point I am challenging their preferences. I am just stating mine and supporting them for the hassle that I know that I am causing. > To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. It's not an exclusive thing. I don't have to change them all of their existing tools in order to get them to talk with me. I hope that one day the open applications will be so much easier to more people will actively look to make the switch, but I am willing to invest time and effort to keep as much as I can from my communications on open platforms and that has already been enough to get a good number of close people to become continued users.

rglullis 6y ago

I've got a good part of my family who is not tech savvy on matrix (not their server, but actual accounts on communick.com homeserver), nothing that a 10 minute walk-through didn't solve. It on us the tech savvy to identify these issues, educate and help them overcome them, and ideally contribute for these issues to be solved in the first place. This gives us progress and freedom. Saying "matrix is hard/incomplete, let's just stick in the golden cage" gives us convenience, but no progress.

asutekku 6y ago
10 min walkthrough/registration process versus a <1 min registration. Think whatever of it but people appreciate convenience over everything.
- rglullis 6y ago
  "Look, mom/dad/wife/brother/friends, I know that WhatsApp is easier and everyone else is using it and it you already know it and it is super convenient. But I don't want to use it anymore for a bunch of different reasons. If you want to talk to me, I can help you get set up on this app and we can talk. I know it sounds like a pain in the ass, but I am willing to help you with whatever issue you have. Just please don't ask me to sacrifice my freedom for your convenience." 100% conversion rate. Stop with excuses and Just. Ask. Them. In fact even if I have no paying customers at all for communick I wouldn't still shut it down just so my friends and family can continue using it.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    100% conversion rate with those you can apply sufficient pressure on, perhaps. Who'd want to lose contact with a son, brother, father over something like that? But it's a hassle, even if you don't see it that way. Over the years I myself have been converted to Signal, Telegram (encrypted chats), Threema, some kind of encrypted IRC and OTR on at least two other messengers, Google Wave, Google Talk, Viber, ... can't remember them all. I have no idea anymore what person prefers which app and since most of those people weren't the very best of friends, contact to almost all of them has effectively ceased (in part because those specific people don't often start conversations themselves), which is a pity, but it's simply really bothersome to cater to everyone's preferences, and I absolutely can't and won't switch to $other_app fully myself, because I really value being able to talk to all my acquaintances and friends and relatives and being able to stay in touch with new ones easily and frictionlessly, and pretty much everyone is on Whatsapp, and all I need is a phone number. If some people categorically don't value other people who don't use their preferred app, that totally weirds me out. Their choice, but not one I'm willing to make, especially since that notion of freedom I gain feels like a very, very abstract kind of freedom in a world where billions use Whatsapp for next to anything and all sorts of devices, apps and websites from all sorts of brands and sources phone home lots and lots of data, which also means eschewing Whatsapp doesn't matter a thing unless I make dozens of other painfull choices like opting out of all mainstream social media, complex privacy-centric browser setups that need constant attention to not fall behind, no mainstream phone (possibly no smartphone at all), no smart devices at all, Linux exclusively, etc. pp., otherwise I'll just leak data like a sieve elsewhere. Given that I gain what feels like very little, life just feels too short for this.
    - rglullis 6y ago
      Of course it is a hassle! I never claimed otherwise. But it is a hassle worth fighting for and this is what I try to show when I am helping them getting started with something else. > If some people categorically don't value other people who don't use their preferred app, that totally weirds me out. Who said anything about judging/not valuing other people by their preferred app? I am not claiming exclusivity. I still have WhatsApp on my phone for contacts and groups who are not close enough to me for me to ask them to use a different app. The point I am trying to make is that if everyone (including privacy-sensitive, tech-savvy people) keep this apathy in regards to their digital hygiene, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and there is no way we will ever get out of this mess. I presume anyone on Hacker News can and know how to do better, and we should be the ones in the front lines fighting for more open systems instead of passively waiting for some magical benevolent entity to save us from Big Tech.
wruza 6y ago
>It on us the tech savvy to identify these issues, educate and help them overcome them, and ideally contribute for these issues to be solved in the first place. No, it’s on IM app developers. And not ideally, but today. Nobody is buying into tomorrow’s promises, the quicker signal/matrix will understand it, the better for everyone. Tell them.
- rglullis 6y ago
  I think you are arguing with a strawman. Signal is as centralized as Telegram and moxie has already stated that he does not care about open or federated systems because of the usability trade-off required. My argument is that the inferior usability is not an intrinsic issue of federated systems, just circunstancial. Being closed/centralized on the other hand, is an intrinsic property of all major platforms, and any of these major platforms will screw its users whenever they have enough lock-in. So, I am not saying simply that open is good and closed is bad. What I am saying is that open should be preferred and promoted. And no, people working on open systems should not just sit on their asses and say "you have no other choice, so you will have to take whatever we do". People working on Matrix already have quite a lot of work cut out for them and I am painfully aware of the points were it can improve. The thing is I am also aware of how much improvement has happened already, while there is absolutely zero proprietary platform that opened up itself for public benefit.
  - wruza 6y ago
    >open should be preferred and promoted And I’m saying that preference is a function of many parameters, and you can’t change preferences by just promoting a new parameter to the public. They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. What we think it should or should not be is effectively irrelevant to their minds. To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. This looks like a strawman because it addresses (I believe) a wrong premise.
    - rglullis 6y ago
      > you can’t change preferences Who said anything about changing preferences? When I said about converting those close to me, I mean in the sense that I get them to install and use Matrix for communicating with me. If they want to use/prefer close platforms to talk with other people, I am not stopping them/thinking less of them for it. > They’ll still have other important (to them) unrelated concerns with more weight. Yes, it's obvious. If they had prioritized openness and privacy over other bells and whistles they would been using already something like Matrix or XMPP. What I am saying since my very first comment is that I acknowledge that, but I also say that I prefer to use open tools and that I am willing to help them as much as possible to setup an account for them, install the apps and give basic guidance so that we can talk. I am not asking them to drop other applications nor refusing to understand the reasons they have to prefer to use closed platforms. At no point I am challenging their preferences. I am just stating mine and supporting them for the hassle that I know that I am causing. > To catch them, open IMs should have their whistles on top of regular bells, not instead. It's not an exclusive thing. I don't have to change them all of their existing tools in order to get them to talk with me. I hope that one day the open applications will be so much easier to more people will actively look to make the switch, but I am willing to invest time and effort to keep as much as I can from my communications on open platforms and that has already been enough to get a good number of close people to become continued users.