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Encryption in Matrix is a nightmare. I set up Synapse and pulled half a dozen or so people onto it. We have a few chat rooms. Randomly different users clients a

Encryption in Matrix is a nightmare. I set up Synapse and pulled half a dozen or so people onto it. We have a few chat rooms. Randomly different users clients are unable to decrypt the messages of other users clients. You click some button about syncing encryption keys, and nothing happens. Then randomly a week later you can start reading each others messages again. shrug This has been going on for years now. This alone makes Matrix the worse chat platform out there from a users perspective IMO. I invested too much effort in getting things up and running and using it now though, so I'm just hoping that this gets fixed one day, or something better comes along that I can migrate to.

Arathorn 3y ago
Sorry. As per the sibling comment to yours, we made a decision on Element Web/Desktop to rip out the old encryption implementation and replace it with matrix-rust-sdk’s crypto implementation about a year ago, and while it’s due to land next week, it means that some folks have had a miserable time in the interim.
- beanjuiceII 3y ago
  so one hand says they are making things better for friends and family, and the other is ripping out things to make peoples lives miserable? and then letting them float in that misery for some period of time?
  - dkasak 3y ago
    A lot of the problems were caused by the legacy crypto implementations. The misery is not caused by ripping them out and replacing them with matrix-rust-sdk crypto, but by it (unavoidably) taking a while.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  I'm curious and extremely skeptical as to how the UX is going to be made better regarding the terrible UX surrounding encryption. I used Matrix with a non-technical family member for about six months before giving up and going back to SMS because she frequently got messages about encryption that she was in no way equipped to deal with, and did not even begin to understand (yes, the "user-friendly" key fingerprint screen is one of those pain points) and I had to handhold her through the process, every time she got a new device or similar. One time I had to manually export and import my own keys to be able to read old messages, which was a task that would have been too technical for most of the people I'd like to chat with, and was supremely annoying for me. It's just a non-starter. I have a community I've been considering moving to Matrix for literal _years_ now and there are just so many sharp edges. I've been confused about Matrix's priorities for a long, long time. I am not getting any less confused, to be honest.
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    Well, just as folks might be skeptical about Matrix clients ever being as performant as WhatsApp/iMessage/Telegram, and yet we eventually got there with Element X... I'm expecting a similar outcome with E2EE UX. The high level plan is: * Fix all the bugs which cause random undecryptable messages, which was the main thing causing frustration. This is (hopefully) done now by converging on the new Rust implementation. * Generate a recovery key, rather than confuse the user by asking them to pick two passwords (one for their account, one for their encryption). Impress on the user that if they ever want to recover their history, they'll need it. Expect that most users will lose it. * When logging in on a new device, scan a QR code on an existing device to transfer over the keys (and thus history). Users are used to this now thanks to WhatsApp and Discord, and empirically they can do it fine. The recovery key is used only as a worst-case scenario if the user has no other devices. The act of logging in (either via scanning another device, or via recovery key) signs that device as owned by you. * Only accept messages from devices that a given user has signed (i.e. trust on first use for users). If you want to verify that user out of band, they get an green tick too, purely to help you keep track of which users you're sure are legit and which users you've assumed are legit. * At any given point, encryption is either enabled on your device (i.e. you've signed that device; it can access your encrypted message history; it can store keys for your encrypted message history) or it's not (and you can't do any E2EE). There are no halfway states. This may sound simple and obvious when written out like this, but each point is a major change from the supremely confusing system we have today. The thing stopping us from having implemented it sooner is the huge amount of effort which went into reimplementing the engine in Rust. But having now (almost) finished that project, next thing up is fixing the UX, at last. The rough timeline is hopefully end-of-year, but, again, timings are contingent on funding pressure.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      that sounds promising. looking forward to it.

Arathorn 3y ago

Sorry. As per the sibling comment to yours, we made a decision on Element Web/Desktop to rip out the old encryption implementation and replace it with matrix-rust-sdk’s crypto implementation about a year ago, and while it’s due to land next week, it means that some folks have had a miserable time in the interim.

beanjuiceII 3y ago
so one hand says they are making things better for friends and family, and the other is ripping out things to make peoples lives miserable? and then letting them float in that misery for some period of time?
- dkasak 3y ago
  A lot of the problems were caused by the legacy crypto implementations. The misery is not caused by ripping them out and replacing them with matrix-rust-sdk crypto, but by it (unavoidably) taking a while.
dingnuts 3y ago
I'm curious and extremely skeptical as to how the UX is going to be made better regarding the terrible UX surrounding encryption. I used Matrix with a non-technical family member for about six months before giving up and going back to SMS because she frequently got messages about encryption that she was in no way equipped to deal with, and did not even begin to understand (yes, the "user-friendly" key fingerprint screen is one of those pain points) and I had to handhold her through the process, every time she got a new device or similar. One time I had to manually export and import my own keys to be able to read old messages, which was a task that would have been too technical for most of the people I'd like to chat with, and was supremely annoying for me. It's just a non-starter. I have a community I've been considering moving to Matrix for literal _years_ now and there are just so many sharp edges. I've been confused about Matrix's priorities for a long, long time. I am not getting any less confused, to be honest.
- Arathorn 3y ago
  Well, just as folks might be skeptical about Matrix clients ever being as performant as WhatsApp/iMessage/Telegram, and yet we eventually got there with Element X... I'm expecting a similar outcome with E2EE UX. The high level plan is: * Fix all the bugs which cause random undecryptable messages, which was the main thing causing frustration. This is (hopefully) done now by converging on the new Rust implementation. * Generate a recovery key, rather than confuse the user by asking them to pick two passwords (one for their account, one for their encryption). Impress on the user that if they ever want to recover their history, they'll need it. Expect that most users will lose it. * When logging in on a new device, scan a QR code on an existing device to transfer over the keys (and thus history). Users are used to this now thanks to WhatsApp and Discord, and empirically they can do it fine. The recovery key is used only as a worst-case scenario if the user has no other devices. The act of logging in (either via scanning another device, or via recovery key) signs that device as owned by you. * Only accept messages from devices that a given user has signed (i.e. trust on first use for users). If you want to verify that user out of band, they get an green tick too, purely to help you keep track of which users you're sure are legit and which users you've assumed are legit. * At any given point, encryption is either enabled on your device (i.e. you've signed that device; it can access your encrypted message history; it can store keys for your encrypted message history) or it's not (and you can't do any E2EE). There are no halfway states. This may sound simple and obvious when written out like this, but each point is a major change from the supremely confusing system we have today. The thing stopping us from having implemented it sooner is the huge amount of effort which went into reimplementing the engine in Rust. But having now (almost) finished that project, next thing up is fixing the UX, at last. The rough timeline is hopefully end-of-year, but, again, timings are contingent on funding pressure.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    that sounds promising. looking forward to it.