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> The official client is plagued with UX bugs. Agree. As a pretty knowledgeable tech person, I tried a few days ago to get an account working with Element, and

> The official client is plagued with UX bugs. Agree. As a pretty knowledgeable tech person, I tried a few days ago to get an account working with Element, and I almost failed entirely. Different logins failing to sync with each other, one login which claimed that it could not verify ITSELF as a valid login, the "emoji check" button doing quite simply nothing at all. And on top of all that, the security aspects of Matrix are sufficiently non-obvious that even I am not confident that I have things set up securely, what the relevant trade-offs are (if any), and what security model the default setup is using. It's shocking but 100% true that I feel more confident in my ability to communicate securely with someone using GPG than with Matrix at present. > I think technological advances shouldn't be made at the expense of the UX. Disagree. Every other service out there, including Signal (especially Signal) has focused on getting UX right and making it easy to use. Matrix is trying to solve a hard problem with decentralized communication, and we need someone out there trying to solve that problem. They've deliberately set themselves up for UX difficulties by refusing to compromise on features. It would be a problem if everyone did that, but not everyone is doing that - Matrix is more or less going it alone. Matrix is best understood as an experiment; maybe it will work, maybe not. I think we just have to wait and see - though I agree with you that it's not usable yet for the general public.

lrvick 5y ago
I really wish I understood comments like these as what you describe is just not my experience at all in over a year. My partner, entire social circle, etc and I all communicate via matrix, via a mix of clients ranging from Element to Weechat to Fluffychat across a number of different servers for both personal and business. I have helped migrate hundreds of people to matrix and in the last year or so I have not had to hand hold people anymore as UX has improved dramatically. They just go sign up and drop in just like they would with Signal or WhatsApp or any other messenger. I also admin a number of rooms with hundreds of people and everything just works. Personally Matrix and IRC (often also via Matrix) are all I use for messaging. I login with a new device, have an existing device verify me when prompted, then type messages in boxes to people and people see them, with end to end encryption that works. For conversations that require high trust I additionally do key verification. I do encounter minor bugs from time to time like stuck messages, or occasional slowdowns of the giant primary matrix.org server, but honestly I have found it dramatically more reliable than SMS for me, but with actual E2EE. We really need the internet to be open and decentralized and that happens with technical people going all in on efforts like Matrix and helping report any bugs found and get then fixed. Element -was- for sure as buggy as you describe in my experience for many in my circle a couple years ago but even then we were happy to accept occasional glitches than continue to build our social graph in walled garden ecosystems that don't care about censorship resistance, security, or privacy. It really depends on what you value.
- hirako2000 5y ago
  I value what matrix is providing. Thus I continue to use it despite what could call minor issues that other mainstream messengers aren't experiencing. I think the question is what is most important. Adoption or those principles. Here the article is about yet another break through the matrix team is accomplishing. Great. And they should not shy away from that, but given what they already accomplished ,in providing a true e2e decentralised messaging system, they should focus more resources they have towards making it work properly. I'm not talking about adding mainstream features such as voice messages. Just getting the core feature reliably working. Notifications issues and the client freezing at startup until reinstalling the app is something more than one users I know , including myself have faced. Such a great project deserve to be perceived as reliable. And unfortunately it doesn't, other than for the geeks we are who understand what's behind the scene and what's continously brewing. It isn't an attack on the team, just voicing how the lambda users perceive the app, and how it's holding many to get their circles of connection onto it so that the wall gardens can be entirely avoided.
- bscphil 5y ago
  > They just go sign up and drop in just like they would with Signal or WhatsApp or any other messenger. Are they actually verifying each of their devices and getting full end-to-end encryption across all their devices with each of their one-to-one conversants? I will grant you that if you don't care about encryption at all there aren't that many issues to worry about. If not, well, to each their own? I can't deny that you personally and a bunch of people you know use Matrix without any problems. You can't deny that I (and many, many other people) have encountered these problems. So the bugs are out there, but may not affect everyone. I'd be rather shocked if no one you know has encountered problems with the emoji-based verification thing. I have experimentally used Matrix on and off for maybe five years now. It has never (no not even once) simply worked for me when setting up a new device / reverifying an old device. I click the button and nothing happens. I click it a few more times, nothing happens. Sometimes, 15 minutes later, I'll get a popup about it on another device, but by then I will have given up and clicked out of the modal on the original device. It's just been insanely broken in my experience.

lrvick 5y ago

I really wish I understood comments like these as what you describe is just not my experience at all in over a year. My partner, entire social circle, etc and I all communicate via matrix, via a mix of clients ranging from Element to Weechat to Fluffychat across a number of different servers for both personal and business. I have helped migrate hundreds of people to matrix and in the last year or so I have not had to hand hold people anymore as UX has improved dramatically. They just go sign up and drop in just like they would with Signal or WhatsApp or any other messenger. I also admin a number of rooms with hundreds of people and everything just works. Personally Matrix and IRC (often also via Matrix) are all I use for messaging. I login with a new device, have an existing device verify me when prompted, then type messages in boxes to people and people see them, with end to end encryption that works. For conversations that require high trust I additionally do key verification. I do encounter minor bugs from time to time like stuck messages, or occasional slowdowns of the giant primary matrix.org server, but honestly I have found it dramatically more reliable than SMS for me, but with actual E2EE. We really need the internet to be open and decentralized and that happens with technical people going all in on efforts like Matrix and helping report any bugs found and get then fixed. Element -was- for sure as buggy as you describe in my experience for many in my circle a couple years ago but even then we were happy to accept occasional glitches than continue to build our social graph in walled garden ecosystems that don't care about censorship resistance, security, or privacy. It really depends on what you value.

hirako2000 5y ago
I value what matrix is providing. Thus I continue to use it despite what could call minor issues that other mainstream messengers aren't experiencing. I think the question is what is most important. Adoption or those principles. Here the article is about yet another break through the matrix team is accomplishing. Great. And they should not shy away from that, but given what they already accomplished ,in providing a true e2e decentralised messaging system, they should focus more resources they have towards making it work properly. I'm not talking about adding mainstream features such as voice messages. Just getting the core feature reliably working. Notifications issues and the client freezing at startup until reinstalling the app is something more than one users I know , including myself have faced. Such a great project deserve to be perceived as reliable. And unfortunately it doesn't, other than for the geeks we are who understand what's behind the scene and what's continously brewing. It isn't an attack on the team, just voicing how the lambda users perceive the app, and how it's holding many to get their circles of connection onto it so that the wall gardens can be entirely avoided.
bscphil 5y ago
> They just go sign up and drop in just like they would with Signal or WhatsApp or any other messenger. Are they actually verifying each of their devices and getting full end-to-end encryption across all their devices with each of their one-to-one conversants? I will grant you that if you don't care about encryption at all there aren't that many issues to worry about. If not, well, to each their own? I can't deny that you personally and a bunch of people you know use Matrix without any problems. You can't deny that I (and many, many other people) have encountered these problems. So the bugs are out there, but may not affect everyone. I'd be rather shocked if no one you know has encountered problems with the emoji-based verification thing. I have experimentally used Matrix on and off for maybe five years now. It has never (no not even once) simply worked for me when setting up a new device / reverifying an old device. I click the button and nothing happens. I click it a few more times, nothing happens. Sometimes, 15 minutes later, I'll get a popup about it on another device, but by then I will have given up and clicked out of the modal on the original device. It's just been insanely broken in my experience.