12 ms·

The Matrix Trashfire

308 points by summm 3y ago

t0bia_s 3y ago
Never used Element on iOS however on Android its... Ok. Not great, not terrible. Recently it's slower in loading chats in rooms and overall responsiveness is sometimes laggy. Desktop experience is without any issues.
crimsoneer 3y ago
I mean, this is quite silly. Matrix is the open-source network infrastructure, Element is the client. Of course if you go to the Matrix web-page, it's not particularly user-friendly - if you expect to just use the thing, you should be going to Element. The ActivityPub page won't exactly help you sign up to Mastodon either. There are plenty of problems with Element and Matrix (I say that as someone who has been trying to migrate off Slack for 1+ year) but this comes off as the author just not doing basic reading.
- IanCal 3y ago
  > if you expect to just use the thing, you should be going to Element. Element sent them to matrix.org
  - crimsoneer 3y ago
    I'll happily admit the Element/Element X migration they're currently on is silly and unhelpful, but the point being if they'd just gone to the Element home page, or download the actual Element app instead of the X one, it would have perfectly happily registered them to Matrix.org by default and everything would have been just fine.
    - IanCal 3y ago
      > or download the actual Element app instead of the X one MacOS app store only had element X, and also how is a user supposed to know to use the old one? Matrix.org tells me element X supports more stuff! The author says it's in beta but I can't see any indication that clearly tells me that and I'm looking for it. > just gone to the Element home page The app doesn't take you there. But OK let's do that. element.io There's a big getting started button. Now there's a form asking for my work email address and phone number and what challenges I'm looking to overcome. > Setup a self-hosted or cloud deployment, with powerful enterprise capabilities. To get started I need to not go to "get started" I need to go to sign in, which I can't do, then register.
    - skywhopper 3y ago
      You’re missing the point. He’s following a reasonable user flow. If he went to the wrong place in the beginning, that confusion itself is a problem that the Matrix community needs to address.
      - LeonB 3y ago
        100% agree. The user should fall into the “pit of success” — no matter where/how they first enter the pages of matrix or element … it should be natural that they end up at the correct getting started for them.
- skowalak 3y ago
  I disagree. I have been using Matrix with Element as my main IM with my own homeserver for 3 years now, and the onboarding experience is just bad. You have to read so many texts which are spread across so many pages just to get stuff to work and even then sometimes it just won't. Sure, the author could have prevented some of their problems by reading the documentation, but Matrix is trying to become a solution everyone can use. And noone wants to read a manifest only to send some messages.
  - crimsoneer 3y ago
    Honestly, on this I totally agree - hosting your own Element/Matrix instance is really unnecessarily painful, with the documentation all over the place. But hey, it's free and open-source. But as as user, if you're even a little technical, downloading Element, registering and messaging your friends is really not the difficult bit.
- 4ad 3y ago
  > his comes off as the author just not doing basic reading. Perhaps a technology will not have success if its users need to do basic reading.
  - bhaney 3y ago
    Perhaps I would prefer a chat platform devoid of people who can't do basic reading
  - arlort 3y ago
    A chat platform for the illiterates might not be the best business proposition Jokes aside, I don't think matrix/element, at this stage, are trying to overthrow telegram or whatsapp. It seems their main approach is somewhat aimed at the people who use(d) IRC on the general audience side and institutional clients who they work with to create ad hoc solutions for employees, in which case which client to download is slightly less problematic since it's going to be a custom one anyway
    - joshsimmons 3y ago
      As the Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation I can assure you I'd love nothing more than to displace centralized, proprietary communication tools. It just so happens that right now it's easier to land with folks who are patient with sharp edges and already believe in the value of FOSS, E2EE, and decentralization. Gotta start somewhere, right? :) IDK if you caught it, but the project lead, Matthew Hodgson, gave a main stage talk at FOSDEM a couple weeks ago and offered an update on the project and, in particular, on how we're taking advantage of the push that regulators are making for interoperability. WhatsApp, in particular, gets mentioned in this context and the writers at WIRED and Tech Crunch seemed to pick up on that!
  - DoItToMe81 3y ago
    You literally just install the non-beta client and register an account and then log in. It's that simple. I'm impressed that anyone could get this wrong and then blame the program.
- Havoc 3y ago
  Things like this are technically correct but irrelevant. If the average person can't figure out the UI & flow without getting frustrated then it's game over.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  I think the core of the problem is the naming separation between the default client and default instance. It is ok that matrix the protocol and matrix the server software have a different name than element. But the official server instance used by element should not be matrix.org but element.io because that is where you have to sign up and log in if you want to use the default official instance. Otherwise you redirect clueless end users to protocol papers and server administration docs.
- skywhopper 3y ago
  He did start with Element. He only went to matrix.org because there was no way to set up an account through the Element client.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  The ability of some in the FOSS community to always blame the user for poor UX design is truly impressive. Do we need to test and simplify our onboarding? No, it's the confused users who are wrong!
  - DoItToMe81 3y ago
    My grandmother could use Matrix when she was starting to develop dementia. The only thing that tripped her up was the end to end encryption and key loss. It's not a UX problem, its a PEBKAC issue.
turblety 3y ago
We also tried to use it, but frequently, messages will fail to decrypt with no option to retry. Threads is a mess, where messages will show as unread, but you can't actually see what message was unread. Matrix/Element is so close to a great alternative to Slack, but in it's current state it's totally unusable.
- wakeupcall 3y ago
  > We also tried to use it, but frequently, messages will fail to decrypt with no option to retry. This is a years-old issue with Element, which never happened to me with other sending clients such as FluffyChat. It's unbelievable that it's unfixed given it's a dealbreaker as it results in permanently unreadable messages on your end (the "waiting" in "waiting for this message" is a lie). And since this needs to be fixed on the sending side, you NEED to use another messenger to fix the conversation (if at all, as this requires reading extremely long issues on github with buried suggestions many won't do). After getting it a few times most users would just dump Element and blame matrix as a failure to never touch it again. The excuse "we're working on this on the next client iteration" is actually ensuring a growing list of users will hit this (as it's bound to happen) and avoid matrix in the future. UI/onboarding issues are minor compared to the fact that the conversation can be randomly broken.
  - creatonez 3y ago
    This just sounds like a description of Matrix's key sharing mechanism? Messages are supposed to be unencryptable if you don't have the keys, and bringing online another device (or having all your keys pre-shared so you don't have to) is what provides the keys. If you want to avoid this altogether, the UI prominently advertises the optional encrypted key backup service provided by the homeserver, and various manual options for sharing keys. If FluffyChat is not having this issue, it is probably overly eager to share encryption keys instead of allowing the user fine-grained access to control keys, which is successfully hiding the complexity of the ratchet encryption but potentially exposing the user to attacks to force the sharing of keys. Edit: I was looking around. While Matrix is well documented, Element's documentation is poor because they expect you to figure things out from popups in the UI -- fair enough, unfortunately most apps are like this, and Element's popups have gotten a lot clearer. But I did find these two pages from a university that seem to serve well as "Element's missing manual". Worth a read if you are trying Matrix for the first time, because it discusses some things that can look like bugs but are really user error. https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/settings/ https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/settings/ https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/faq/ https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/faq/
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
I gotta say, he nails it. I so wanted to love Matrix. I tried it for a year and it just had too many sharp edges.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I was on IRC when ircII and BitchX were common clients along with huge scripts on both for "irc wars" and shit. I can deal with jank. But the Matrix UI/UX still grates me on how bad it is. Just stop pretending, copy what Discord does and be done with it.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    Cinny is the Matrix client that copies Discord's UI. My friends and I use it as the default web interface for our private server, no complaints (other than the fact that it makes you appreciate Discord's sometimes-annoying "join all channels by default" feature; the opposite, classic IRC approach of forcing everyone to search for and manually join all channels scales better but is an absolute disaster for discoverability on small-to-medium servers).
    - raziel2p 3y ago
      This bothers me just as much in Discord as it does Slack/IRC. Has any chat software figured out this problem yet? Surely there must be some middle ground, like optional channel categories or something.
      - spencerflem 3y ago
        The discord solution is to hide channels behind a role, put a message in the welcome page with emoji reactions, and run a not to assign the role to anyone who clicks on the emoji. Only downside is that its publicly visible and very jank. I wish they had a built in way, & also some way to make channels line bot_commands default to muted
bhaney 3y ago
I tried to follow along with the author by going to the same pages and seeing the difference between what he should have done and what he actually did, and it convinced me that there's no way he was doing this in good faith (unless something has changed). I still can't figure out how he managed to get to some of the pages he described, when the thing that he said he wanted was clearly right on the page he said he was viewing before.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  The fact that the official Matrix Mastodon account as well as the "Matrix Director of Program Development" agree with his assessment with the Mastodon account agreeing that it is a "trashfire" makes me sceptical of your suggestion that he was manufacturing these issues.
  - crimsoneer 3y ago
    I mean, Element and Matrix are 2 separate entities, which is kind of the key problem with all these efforts - there have been plenty of posts about how hard it was to join a Mastodon instance, or creating 2 accounts etc. That said, the Element/Element X migration is a mess. But if he'd just gone to the Element website and clicked "get started", it would have just worked.
    - master-lincoln 3y ago
      agree, the author mainly complained about UX issues in the client, but then only tried one client it seems. Article should have been titled "The Element Trashfire" > my recommendation is to avoid Matrix for at least two years which seems arbitrary. Why wait 2 years and not one or just a couple months? The french administration is already using it now https://www.tchap.gouv.fr/ https://www.tchap.gouv.fr/ In federated protocols it's always harder for the user to choose an instance for them. Not sure if the responsibility for that should be on the protocol managing party.
      - Attrecomet 3y ago
user-the-name 3y ago
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danpalmer 3y ago
I've never used Matrix, directly. However I use Beeper all day every day, via their iOS, Android, and macOS clients. Beeper (not the iMessage app, but their previous and continuing multi-network app) is pretty great. I get one consistent UX across all chat networks I use. Sometimes the networks drop out, but rarely due to Beeper issues. Beeper is essentially a Matrix homeserver, plus a bunch of hosted Matrix bridges, and as far as I can tell, that whole part of Beeper was a great technical decision. The Beeper clients started off as forks of the Element clients, and honestly they were a trashfire at the beginning, but Beeper have been quickly iterating and replacing parts, and they're now pretty solid. They're not yet WhatsApp quality UX, but they're approaching it. I don't think the problem is Matrix.
- LorenDB 3y ago
  This. I use Matrix daily using nheko for my client. It's a rock solid experience (except for a bit of trouble with voice calling one of my friends). I've never been randomly told I have to reverify. If you are being asked to relogin and reverify every time you restart your client, you're doing something wrong.
- raziel2p 3y ago
  Depends on how you define "Matrix", I guess. The technology is undoubtedly great, but it also needs to sell itself as a (standalone) product if it wants to catch on.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    But Matrix isn't a product. There are companies building products on it, such as Element and Beeper, and as far as I can see the latter are doing a perfectly good job of selling themselves.
    - raziel2p 3y ago
      That may be technically correct, but reality is if Matrix wants to catch on (large scale) as a concept, it needs to act as a product in some way. Even if that just means having a good landing page guiding users on how to sign up on a server, install a client, and connect the two - and making sure that this always works.
haltcatchfire 3y ago
We used Matrix for a couple of years at my company, but got kicked out from their managed hosting due to the new requirement of 50+ seats. The years we've been using it has been more of tolerating its flaws than a pleasant user experience. We migrated to Slack and was blown away of how It Just Works.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  Who is "they"? Afaik the matrix organization doesn't offer hosted servers
  - apetresc 3y ago
    They do indeed: https://element.io/pricing https://element.io/pricing
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      Matrix and Element are no longer the same entity. Element (New Vector Ltd) is the core behind the Matrix protocol, but they're distinct from the organisation that manages the protocol. If Matrix does ever take off, this will be an extremely valuable distinction to have.
      - apetresc 3y ago
        I understand that completely, I even considered including a "Before anyone jumps in with 'akshually that's Element', [..]" disclaimer but decided nobody would be that pedantic. Element is the same team as the Matrix.org foundation, with the same objectives. I understand why they maintain a separation of concerns at the institutional level, but for someone to say "Matrix offers hosted servers" and to act confused like "What do you mean, who's 'they'? Matrix doesn't do that! Only Element, the organization run by the exact same people, who's only goal is to further the adoption of the Matrix.org spec. I can't possibly fathom what you think the connection is." is the very definition of being disingenuous.
rglullis 3y ago
Ok, now do XMPP. Or Signal, but with the added requirement that you want to run your own server.
- rapsey 3y ago
  i.e. moving the goalpost fallacy.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    My goal is "let's have a communication protocol that is secure, enables applications with modern features on all major platforms and is not controlled by any single entity". If not for the last point, I'd be using WhatsApp just fine. But because of it, Matrix/Element is currently the best we have. Is it great? Absolutely not, but it is the best we have at the moment, and to call it a "trashfire" without putting things in perspective is a disservice.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      Interestingly Delta Chat kind of fits the bill thanks to their investigation of webxdc, i.e. mini apps that run entirely within the chat and never connect to the outside world, only with peers in the chat: https://webxdc.org/ https://webxdc.org/ I can't say if this is the future, but I like it taking another direction. Taking a few steps back, this model solves a lot of problems with a very easy UX for beginners: shared calendar, shared expenses, shared notes can all happen inside your chat, which is naturally the place where you already share stuff with people, but now it can be more without any server installation or anything.
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  I find that XMPP interoperability (terrible as it is) is still just miles ahead of Matrix. For all intents and purposes Element controls the protocol and despite that I almost constantly find friction communicating the client for Android and the desktop Electron-based client. With 3rd party clients it is a nightmare.
IanCal 3y ago
This kind of process is extremely valuable and should be done by devs more often. Start from the start and follow whatever your application tells you to do. Note down when it doesn't tell you where to go or what to do. You'd be surprised by just how many things you do automatically while working because you know the little tricks and things to get by, and that wording doesn't necessarily match what the app requires now. Side note - this kind of this is why good QA people are awesome. They'll show you what users will actually do. I'll add in something here. Element the app said they were logging into matrix.org. matrix.org has a "try matrix". The first thing is it tells me to choose a client (this feels like a loop), then says to choose a server but also maybe I don't need to, then has a create account button. The create account button takes me to a docs page. Which tells me to go to the element site, and then create an account with matrix. So that's matrix -> use element -> element says to use matrix -> matrix says to use someone else, ok you can use us -> to use us go to element -> element says you're making an account with matrix. edit - oh you can and should also do this with your dev process. Create an empty folder, check out the repo and follow the readme. Do you actually get a running system for local dev? Can you successfully run the tests? If you are able to, do this on a clean machine (maybe load up a docker image and see if you can follow it in a truly clear system). Does it turn out it assumes you already have tool X installed because your developers already have it from another project? Do you actually need postgres running with a specific user with specific login details? If you're like me you don't like writing docs, so this may actually just push you to add scripts that do the setup required. To not sound sanctimonious about this every time I've done this with my own code I've found issues with the documentation.
- INTPenis 3y ago
  >This kind of process is extremely valuable and should be done by devs more often. The fact that it's not being done doesn't bode well for their perceived engagement to this project. I remember when it launched and how much they hyped it up to be the future of secure messaging. That was how many years ago now? It was pre-pandemic. I'm a lover of all selfhostable federated solutions so I actually hosted a Matrix server for a couple of years. My conclusion is that it's just not ready for production scalability. And you can't migrate easily between implementations because of their unique database design.
amarant 3y ago
Huh, I've been using element for a while now, and the only problem I've encountered is that quite few of my friends use it. I've joined a few communities based around common interests, and never really had any technical issues with anything. I don't really recall much about the sign-up process at all, which I guess I would've if it was anywhere near as difficult as this guy claims... I'm on android tho, while he uses iPhone, maybe that's the issue?
gtirloni 3y ago
These user reports are invaluable. They contain so much information that us devs miss because we're so used to working with our software.
- onli 3y ago
  Note though that this is not a regular user, but an old school blogger with deep database experience and afaik programming skills, at the very least someone highly technical (and known in Germany). He is just able to put his user hat on -> regular devs can do that too.
  - gtirloni 3y ago
    Yeah, that's a good point. When I put my user hat on, I try to force myself to not know things (conciously ignore them if I can), but I think it's not a "natural" experience like an end user report. Still, better than automatically doing what will work.
vdaea 3y ago
Developers could also do these processes. And they probably do, often. But they usually have their heads so far up their asses that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding process is even for very technical users. It's like when you use one of those Linux phones and your reaction all along is "ew". Do developers not notice how bad this is? No, they don't. Some of them haven't used a good UI ever. They can't fathom it could be better. They really think they are doing a good job. Why did Discord win? Oh, it must be dark patterns, regulatory capture, moat, etc. It can't possibly be because the UI makes sense!
- rapsey 3y ago
  The state of the project is completely typical of open source trying to do end user applications.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  > Why did Discord win? Oh, it must be dark patterns, regulatory capture, moat, etc. It can't possibly be because the UI makes sense! I don't know but the Discord UI doesn't makes much sense to me, this is a huge mess. Signing up might be better though with the caveat that I never had any problem signing up with Element (not Element X for which I have 0 experience).
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  Nowadays companies win because of better marketing and then network effect. The quality of the product does normally not play a big role for capturing a market
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Bullshit. Discord absolutely gained traction among gamers (and then other communities) due to being a good product that Just Worked.
- mpldr 3y ago
  > Developers could also do these processes. And they probably do, often. But they usually have their heads so far up their asses that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding process is even for very technical users. I would argue that as the one developing a system (frontend or backend) you can not perform something like that. The reason being that you already know all the small little bits, tricks, and band-aids. The only way to get proper feedback, is by putting someone completely fresh in front of the system.
dschuetz 3y ago
Can we please stop submitting click-baity titles?
- bowsamic 3y ago
  Changing the title is against the rules, isn't it?
- hannob 3y ago
  I feel the "clickbait" accusation has a tendency to be overused. I mean, when I hear "clickbait", I think "the headline makes me think there's something interesting that isn't really backed up by the content". But here? The headline says "Matrix Trashfire", the content delivers exactly that.
  - Steltek 3y ago
    "Trashfire" is absolutely clickbait. The article lays out some poor onboarding documentation for a hypothetical 100% naive user. Matrix, Element, etc work and they work pretty well. The onboarding workflow for most Federated services don't suffer fools. There's nothing exceptional here.
influencer3000 3y ago
While it's never fun to receive negative feedback, it'll only help to improve the product. Still, I run Matrix servers since inception of the project (10 years now \o/), and for an experienced system administrator this is not something difficult to do. If you think running a Matrix server is difficult, you are probably not the intended audience: running an IRC server, an email server, or some other server, is mostly similarly difficult. Matrix is a communication protocol, and it is not intended to be touched by end-users. If your goal is to just communicate on the matrix network as an enduser, stay away from matrix. I haven't seen an email enduser who browsers to https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html, to figure out how to sign up for hotmail..... Element on the other hand, IS intended to be userfriendly, and there is obviously a lot of room for improvement. But through the years I experienced that users who want to use Element to stay in touch with their loved once, have no problem with that. Lastly I think comparing an open source project like Matrix/Element to Publicly traded corporations like Slack or Meta, is not fair. They operate with totally different business models. If you'd compare the quality of Matrix/Element to Slack in relation to annual budget, Slacks ROI would be depressing.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  > Lastly I think comparing an open source project like Matrix/Element to Publicly traded corporations like Slack or Meta, is not fair. If we want to "win" (reach similar/higher adoption), we need to at least come close. It's not easy work, but not doing it and leaving the product that so much good work has ready gone into unusable for a vast number of people would be a bummer.
  - influencer3000 3y ago
    Not sure we want to "win". If endusers want apps "to just work" without "paying up", then I would recommend them to stay with Whatsapp. That kind of users aren't worth the hassle if they have no money. I personally have better relationships with people that enjoy learning something new, and coming up with solutions for issues themselves, eventually contributing to the ecosystem.
juped 3y ago
It's heartening that some Matrix people responded positively to this free QA work; that's something we almost never see.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  Maybe because it was mostly feedback for the Element people, so the Matrix people can sit back
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    The initial Element response is at https://mastodon.matrix.org/@element/111935349393238249 https://mastodon.matrix.org/@element/111935349393238249 fwiw.
maelito 3y ago
I'm talking daily with friends on Element. Most of them don't work in tech, but are quite comfortable with computers. It's ok. Most bugs concern threads. But it's one of the only chat apps that enable threads, so I'm ok with that, threads are absolutely needed in my opinion. Signal conversations can become such a mess because of that. ElementX lacks threads, but apart from that is refreshing. Looks more like a chat app than an enterprise messaging app. Still your article is very important. The UX should be improved.
- hiq 3y ago
  > Signal conversations can become such a mess because of that. The workaround is to create new groups, even if that's with the same set of people. I even have groups with just another person and myself, e.g. for specific projects. In my experience that works well enough, also because if something is longer-lived, I'll put it in a shared doc instead.
  - maelito 3y ago
    But I won't create a new group to for example talk about a video. That's what I just did with a friend : share 10 messages about a video. We're 4 in the group. 2 of them might never be interested by the talk about that video. It's completely unpractical to create a new group to just talk about that. Then you need to either close or leave the group. No problems with threads, it's created with a click and finishes by lack of new messages. It's just what happens in real life : people move around 2 meters when they want to talk about something in particular, and other people can either ignore, either join the ephemeral group.
    - hiq 3y ago
      In practice I just skim through these 10 messages in such small groups. There's the opposite problem with threads, with which it's easy to miss messages you care about, and harder to have a single topic at a given time. Being able to reply to individual messages also makes the transition from one topic to another smoother. I can definitely see the problem if you try to use Signal like you use IRC, with big channels with 100+ people and very different topics, not all of them relevant and with people you care about, and I still use Matrix / forums for that. > It's just what happens in real life : people move around 2 meters when they want to talk about something in particular, and other people can either ignore, either join the ephemeral group. It really depends on the setting, that's only if you're standing and even then, if you're having a meal sitting at a table, I'd be surprised to see this.
jesprenj 3y ago
I really don't like the forced end to end encryption of chats. I do not care that much about the security of my chats to justify the complications of end to end encryption -- verifying devices, constant "reset" prompts that I don't even know what they do, but they seem like they are very destructive. I trust my homeserver, since I host it myself. I do not need end to end encryption. I understand this is an issue of the client, not the protocol. But there aren't many clients. Prebuilt element for android from fDroid will connect to matrix.org, vector.im and other network hosts and I don't want that at all, although this tracking can't easily be disabled. It feels very centralised. I run my own homeserver and want to chat with my friend that runs his own server. It is unacceptable to me that clients connect to anything other than those two homeservers (apart from CRL and OCSP, which should also be disabled by default, as I consider those protocols great spyware). Not to mention the fact that homeserver software itself is known to make connections to the servers of the developers by default, without ever talking to someone on matrix.org. This is also unacceptable. My homeserver should only connect to other homeservers. 3PID is a failed attempt, as it centralises identities and works by utilising a single point that gathers a lot of personat information at one place. I don't want it. XMPP does not have those issues. Set up prosody and use dino or Conversations and they won't make any connections to non-essential servers. Furthermore, the end to end encryption is way easier to use in XMPP (OMEMO), and it's easy to turn it off if you don't need it.
- lxgr 3y ago
  It sounds like you’re happy with XMPP – are you missing anything from Matrix in terms of functionality? If not, why not just stick with XMPP?
  - jesprenj 3y ago
    I think matrix has group voice calls. But maybe I'm wrong and they're just using Jitsi. I like that Matrix puts an emphasis on message history, but on XMPP that seems like an afterthought. For example on XMPP multi user chats, messages history retention relies on the server that hosts the chatroom and this is sometimes very limited, sometimes even disabled. And if that's the case, you only get messages when you have a _client_ online, as your server won't store messages when you don't have a client connected. Or something like that. And AFAIK, multiple clients with a MUC room opened will appear as multiple users sometimes. I'm not sure how it all works really, so take my words with a grain of salt. XMPP seems more like a pubsub system for system messages, like MQTT (:
skywhopper 3y ago
Fantastic writeup. I’m a little confused by the screenshot with the caption “Servers marked as vulnerable, unavailable and with profanity in their name.” In the screenshot, three things are highlighted: labels for “Vulnerable”, “Unavailable”, and the server name “cyberfurz.chat”. Is “cyberfurz” supposed to be profanity?
- LeonB 3y ago
  I had a hunch … so I opened a German to English translator and put in the words Cyber furz In English: Cyber fart Every day is a school day!
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    It's not German, it's a furry instance with some 90s flavor.
    - LeonB 3y ago
      Fair enough. But the author of the original article is German, and I’m explaining why he described the instance name as he did.
tdullien 3y ago
People call this "QA", but isn't this just good product management?
nottorp 3y ago
Interesting how most comments come from people inside the bubble that have an intuitive understanding of the system now and assume everyone else does.
Yanael 3y ago
A friend wanted me to switch to Matrix for our 1:1 conversations and group chat of 3 people. The onboarding and user experience have been very poor on Element for years. I'm left with the feeling it is not made to replace a 1:1 messaging app. The protocol covers a broader use case, and the end-user apps are buggy and have a confusing user experience. There is some complexity in educating due to its distributed nature, but a top notch UX is much needed to overcome it.
noirscape 3y ago
Honestly, the matrix documentation is a total mess in general. The protocol is from what I can tell pretty cleverly designed/usable as a casual chat app (even if it leans heavily towards IRC esque design), but actually figuring out how to use it is somewhere between "wisdom of the ancients" and actually impossible. A lot of very relevant information is stored in old documentation that is currently marked as outdated on the site but has no updated equivalent. The bad apps and onboarding only hamper it further. It's still baffling to me that the best way to actually administer a selfhosted matrix homeserver (specifically, synapse, the reference homeserver) is to do a database hack to promote a user to an admin and then use an external PWA hosted on GitHub[0] so you can actually do basic moderation actions without having to resort to using curl. [0]: https://awesome-technologies.github.io/synapse-admin/ https://awesome-technologies.github.io/synapse-admin/
- thibaultamartin 3y ago
  Indeed the documentation generally needs much more love. In an ideal world, every single page of the documentation would have a person in charge of keeping it up to date. We're a rather small team on the Foundation side and lack the personpower to do so. We're in the process of listing what documentation we need and what we need to update. This will be the foundational work to apply to Google Summer of Docs and for individual tech writers to apply to grants like NLNet (who doesn't usually fund "large" organisations like us) to help us out. I'm also adding instructions on how people can step in and contribute to the docs if they have the time and desire to do so: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/2155 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/2155 We're doing our best with our limited resources, but I'm confident we can improve the situation eventually!
phyzome 3y ago
There are a lot of sharp corners, but going for the beta option was not a wise move.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 3y ago
  Unless I read it wrong, the author chose element x because it was available on all platforms. It looked like element wasn't available in the Mac app store
  - phyzome 3y ago
    Ah! I see now.
LukaD 3y ago
I have been using matrix from time to time to chat with some folks who prefer matrix over other chat systems for reasons unknown. Matrix is an absolute trash fire indeed. Every once in a while a chat session with someone just craps itself and my client is unable to decrypt received messages (both element and element x). The issue then usually fixes itself within a couple of days. The bad UX aside, a chat system should at let me reliably send and receive messages. The other issues I had were related to the device verification. The last time I wanted to verify a new phone the verification request simply did not arrive on my other devices. At that point I gave up on matrix.
1attice 3y ago
This feels like a mis-aimed article -- I use Matrix a lot, and Element, while annoying, is only one of many options. Compare "The IRC trashfire" (an article about the infelicities of Mirc)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nusl 3y ago
Pretty poor post. It highlights some issues, sure, though the author obviously never tried to actually try. Also, they say there's profanity but I don't see any; apparently the word "cyberfurz" is profanity? The author's prejudice is showing.
- zaik 3y ago
  Furz means fart in German.
  - nusl 3y ago
    Okay. Even then I wouldn’t call it profanity
the__alchemist 3y ago
It's nice to hear I'm not alone. I use Matrix/Element to chat with Rust embedded devs; I have heard about it in other contexts; generally favorably. In my experience, it is awful, and has been for years. Highlights: - The verification is a mess (in the article; By the way: Once your account is set up, the verification failures don't go away). It has frequent verification popups and overlays; when I attempt to follow them, various errors occur, and it fails. So, the client nags you to verify, but the verification process is broken. - The read notification system is broken; most chat groups will show as having unread messages, when there are none. This is possibly related to the thread system, but my results here are inconclusive in regards to the exact nature of the problem, nor the solution. - Message posting and syncing is unreliable, especially after edits. Some messages will show on the PC program, but not the mobile, and vice versa. Sometimes edits I or someone makes will show up on one client, but not the other.
stevenicr 3y ago
Really glad to see these discussions happening. I started creating a similar post for matrix/element/server installs - a while back, Screenshots and saving putty sessions.. (wondering if I should find a tool that records ssh input/output or just use the save sessions built in).. I've succeeded with a matrix server install 2 out of 6 tries. I am about to try again with a new install since I don't have faith in succeeding a multi-version upgrade. I wish there was an easy way to export user names and email addys to port to a new install, as I worry that making a new install could allow for some nefarious people to come in and create accounts with another old user's name. I love matrix and element and other clients, it's the best for what many need - although there are many rough spots in using it both server side and as an end user. Moderation usability is a major issue for us, maybe with a new install I will jump into that rabbit hole of how to set things up for that and see if it's easier these days. I hope the vucuum DB and such is better with the newer versions. Looking forward to scouring the web for tutorials on all the basic things debian and perhaps logging the journey, maybe just screenshots will be fine, we'll see.
- joshsimmons 3y ago
  Likewise, glad for these discussions. Even if it's a bit uncomfortable to be on the receiving end, this kind of feedback is a gift. Please do share more about your experiences, we're all ears and looking to learn and improve! BTW, on the moderation front: Draupnir is the most actively maintained tool in that space and I recommend checking it out. Separately, the Foundation is currently investing in developing better tooling to complement moderation bots like Draupnir. We don't have a planned release date, but what we're making will be FOSS and available to all to use. We're also looking to involve more technical writers to help us better support new users and homeserver admins – for sure, it's a rough road right now. Josh, Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation
- brokenmachine 3y ago
  Check out https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/ https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/
worik 3y ago
Me too I tried to get Matrix working to have a conversation. Many worthy people I know use it But I failed in a similar way Do many people actually use it? When it is so easy to use Signal or (Dog help us, WhatsApp)
- joshsimmons 3y ago
  We definitely have work to do on the onboarding experience, but I'm pleased to say that there are 115M addressable users on the open federation – so many people are having great success once they get past the initial friction. Aside from all the FOSS projects that use Matrix, it's also used by the German healthcare agency, French civil servants, NATO, a number of universities including MIT and TU Dresden, Moodle, and many others. We're moving quickly to address the feedback in the blog post and will be investing more in docs and UX to address the friction. Please don't hesitate to share your own experiences if you run into trouble! Stuff like that is a real gift. We're always looking to learn and improve. Josh, Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation
friend_and_foe 3y ago
> All in all, this is a mess, and my recommendation is to avoid Matrix for at least two years. Two more years. I've been a matrix user for almost a decade. Things have not gotten better at all. I used to use Riot, I invested (and subsequently lost) a good amount of social capital on boarding my close circle, mostly non technical people, to using it. We used it. It was a little janky with the key sharing and verifying users and what not, but we managed. Then Element came out, and at first, whatever, but then a lot of those verification tools just stopped working. Several of our accounts became locked in some limbo where they couldn't be verified because the verification methods didn't support legacy verification. Nobody wanted to move to a new client which was less feature rich. We moved to signal eventually and have been mostly happy ever since. I still use it with a couple of people. Its still just as janky as ever. First riot, then element. Now Element X? Dendrite... How many times are these guys going to rebuild from scratch before they realize they're in over their heads? I just gave up on it, I still use it with the couple of people I'm connected to and I don't do new contacts on it with anyone. I treat it like I do Discord. For me now it's XMPP and email, and signal for real world contacts. I mess with some of the newer messaging tools out there like Simplex (which absolutely has a terrible onboarding flow, but they're new so they get a pass for now) and things, and I hope to get utility out of them, but I'm never going to burn myself again pushing people to use something new, I'll wait until these things prove themselves, a lesson I learned from Matrix which never did mature into anything worthwhile.
hammyhavoc 3y ago
Matrix protocol with Element on my own Synapse Docker container has been working great for me for two years at this point. Not really had any issues with it, whereas maintaining other solutions like Rocket.Chat became a real time-sink prior to switching to Matrix.
DoItToMe81 3y ago
This is just stereotypical ineptitude and inability to RTFM or use common sense from somebody used to the spoonfed walled garden side of tech. I do not understand how anyone with a background in technology can't know "beta means buggy and poor support and use the flagship instance if you don't know what you want". I understood this as a teenager, as most people here also should have. I think Matrix has a lot of problems. E2E encryption is too much for most laymen users to work with and it being so damn resource heavy being the too biggest ones. But come on.

308 points by summm 3y ago

Never used Element on iOS however on Android its... Ok. Not great, not terrible. Recently it's slower in loading chats in rooms and overall responsiveness is sometimes laggy. Desktop experience is without any issues.

crimsoneer 3y ago

I mean, this is quite silly. Matrix is the open-source network infrastructure, Element is the client. Of course if you go to the Matrix web-page, it's not particularly user-friendly - if you expect to just use the thing, you should be going to Element. The ActivityPub page won't exactly help you sign up to Mastodon either. There are plenty of problems with Element and Matrix (I say that as someone who has been trying to migrate off Slack for 1+ year) but this comes off as the author just not doing basic reading.

IanCal 3y ago
> if you expect to just use the thing, you should be going to Element. Element sent them to matrix.org
- crimsoneer 3y ago
  I'll happily admit the Element/Element X migration they're currently on is silly and unhelpful, but the point being if they'd just gone to the Element home page, or download the actual Element app instead of the X one, it would have perfectly happily registered them to Matrix.org by default and everything would have been just fine.
  - IanCal 3y ago
    > or download the actual Element app instead of the X one MacOS app store only had element X, and also how is a user supposed to know to use the old one? Matrix.org tells me element X supports more stuff! The author says it's in beta but I can't see any indication that clearly tells me that and I'm looking for it. > just gone to the Element home page The app doesn't take you there. But OK let's do that. element.io There's a big getting started button. Now there's a form asking for my work email address and phone number and what challenges I'm looking to overcome. > Setup a self-hosted or cloud deployment, with powerful enterprise capabilities. To get started I need to not go to "get started" I need to go to sign in, which I can't do, then register.
  - skywhopper 3y ago
    You’re missing the point. He’s following a reasonable user flow. If he went to the wrong place in the beginning, that confusion itself is a problem that the Matrix community needs to address.
    - LeonB 3y ago
      100% agree. The user should fall into the “pit of success” — no matter where/how they first enter the pages of matrix or element … it should be natural that they end up at the correct getting started for them.
skowalak 3y ago
I disagree. I have been using Matrix with Element as my main IM with my own homeserver for 3 years now, and the onboarding experience is just bad. You have to read so many texts which are spread across so many pages just to get stuff to work and even then sometimes it just won't. Sure, the author could have prevented some of their problems by reading the documentation, but Matrix is trying to become a solution everyone can use. And noone wants to read a manifest only to send some messages.
- crimsoneer 3y ago
  Honestly, on this I totally agree - hosting your own Element/Matrix instance is really unnecessarily painful, with the documentation all over the place. But hey, it's free and open-source. But as as user, if you're even a little technical, downloading Element, registering and messaging your friends is really not the difficult bit.
4ad 3y ago
> his comes off as the author just not doing basic reading. Perhaps a technology will not have success if its users need to do basic reading.
- bhaney 3y ago
  Perhaps I would prefer a chat platform devoid of people who can't do basic reading
- arlort 3y ago
  A chat platform for the illiterates might not be the best business proposition Jokes aside, I don't think matrix/element, at this stage, are trying to overthrow telegram or whatsapp. It seems their main approach is somewhat aimed at the people who use(d) IRC on the general audience side and institutional clients who they work with to create ad hoc solutions for employees, in which case which client to download is slightly less problematic since it's going to be a custom one anyway
  - joshsimmons 3y ago
    As the Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation I can assure you I'd love nothing more than to displace centralized, proprietary communication tools. It just so happens that right now it's easier to land with folks who are patient with sharp edges and already believe in the value of FOSS, E2EE, and decentralization. Gotta start somewhere, right? :) IDK if you caught it, but the project lead, Matthew Hodgson, gave a main stage talk at FOSDEM a couple weeks ago and offered an update on the project and, in particular, on how we're taking advantage of the push that regulators are making for interoperability. WhatsApp, in particular, gets mentioned in this context and the writers at WIRED and Tech Crunch seemed to pick up on that!
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  You literally just install the non-beta client and register an account and then log in. It's that simple. I'm impressed that anyone could get this wrong and then blame the program.
Havoc 3y ago
Things like this are technically correct but irrelevant. If the average person can't figure out the UI & flow without getting frustrated then it's game over.
prmoustache 3y ago
I think the core of the problem is the naming separation between the default client and default instance. It is ok that matrix the protocol and matrix the server software have a different name than element. But the official server instance used by element should not be matrix.org but element.io because that is where you have to sign up and log in if you want to use the default official instance. Otherwise you redirect clueless end users to protocol papers and server administration docs.
skywhopper 3y ago
He did start with Element. He only went to matrix.org because there was no way to set up an account through the Element client.
TulliusCicero 3y ago
The ability of some in the FOSS community to always blame the user for poor UX design is truly impressive. Do we need to test and simplify our onboarding? No, it's the confused users who are wrong!
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  My grandmother could use Matrix when she was starting to develop dementia. The only thing that tripped her up was the end to end encryption and key loss. It's not a UX problem, its a PEBKAC issue.

turblety 3y ago

We also tried to use it, but frequently, messages will fail to decrypt with no option to retry. Threads is a mess, where messages will show as unread, but you can't actually see what message was unread. Matrix/Element is so close to a great alternative to Slack, but in it's current state it's totally unusable.

wakeupcall 3y ago
> We also tried to use it, but frequently, messages will fail to decrypt with no option to retry. This is a years-old issue with Element, which never happened to me with other sending clients such as FluffyChat. It's unbelievable that it's unfixed given it's a dealbreaker as it results in permanently unreadable messages on your end (the "waiting" in "waiting for this message" is a lie). And since this needs to be fixed on the sending side, you NEED to use another messenger to fix the conversation (if at all, as this requires reading extremely long issues on github with buried suggestions many won't do). After getting it a few times most users would just dump Element and blame matrix as a failure to never touch it again. The excuse "we're working on this on the next client iteration" is actually ensuring a growing list of users will hit this (as it's bound to happen) and avoid matrix in the future. UI/onboarding issues are minor compared to the fact that the conversation can be randomly broken.
- creatonez 3y ago
  This just sounds like a description of Matrix's key sharing mechanism? Messages are supposed to be unencryptable if you don't have the keys, and bringing online another device (or having all your keys pre-shared so you don't have to) is what provides the keys. If you want to avoid this altogether, the UI prominently advertises the optional encrypted key backup service provided by the homeserver, and various manual options for sharing keys. If FluffyChat is not having this issue, it is probably overly eager to share encryption keys instead of allowing the user fine-grained access to control keys, which is successfully hiding the complexity of the ratchet encryption but potentially exposing the user to attacks to force the sharing of keys. Edit: I was looking around. While Matrix is well documented, Element's documentation is poor because they expect you to figure things out from popups in the UI -- fair enough, unfortunately most apps are like this, and Element's popups have gotten a lot clearer. But I did find these two pages from a university that seem to serve well as "Element's missing manual". Worth a read if you are trying Matrix for the first time, because it discusses some things that can look like bugs but are really user error. https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/settings/ https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/settings/ https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/faq/ https://docs.matrix.kit.edu/en/faq/

ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago

I gotta say, he nails it. I so wanted to love Matrix. I tried it for a year and it just had too many sharp edges.

theshrike79 3y ago
I was on IRC when ircII and BitchX were common clients along with huge scripts on both for "irc wars" and shit. I can deal with jank. But the Matrix UI/UX still grates me on how bad it is. Just stop pretending, copy what Discord does and be done with it.
- kibwen 3y ago
  Cinny is the Matrix client that copies Discord's UI. My friends and I use it as the default web interface for our private server, no complaints (other than the fact that it makes you appreciate Discord's sometimes-annoying "join all channels by default" feature; the opposite, classic IRC approach of forcing everyone to search for and manually join all channels scales better but is an absolute disaster for discoverability on small-to-medium servers).
  - raziel2p 3y ago
    This bothers me just as much in Discord as it does Slack/IRC. Has any chat software figured out this problem yet? Surely there must be some middle ground, like optional channel categories or something.
    - spencerflem 3y ago
      The discord solution is to hide channels behind a role, put a message in the welcome page with emoji reactions, and run a not to assign the role to anyone who clicks on the emoji. Only downside is that its publicly visible and very jank. I wish they had a built in way, & also some way to make channels line bot_commands default to muted

bhaney 3y ago

I tried to follow along with the author by going to the same pages and seeing the difference between what he should have done and what he actually did, and it convinced me that there's no way he was doing this in good faith (unless something has changed). I still can't figure out how he managed to get to some of the pages he described, when the thing that he said he wanted was clearly right on the page he said he was viewing before.

bowsamic 3y ago
The fact that the official Matrix Mastodon account as well as the "Matrix Director of Program Development" agree with his assessment with the Mastodon account agreeing that it is a "trashfire" makes me sceptical of your suggestion that he was manufacturing these issues.
- crimsoneer 3y ago
  I mean, Element and Matrix are 2 separate entities, which is kind of the key problem with all these efforts - there have been plenty of posts about how hard it was to join a Mastodon instance, or creating 2 accounts etc. That said, the Element/Element X migration is a mess. But if he'd just gone to the Element website and clicked "get started", it would have just worked.
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    agree, the author mainly complained about UX issues in the client, but then only tried one client it seems. Article should have been titled "The Element Trashfire" > my recommendation is to avoid Matrix for at least two years which seems arbitrary. Why wait 2 years and not one or just a couple months? The french administration is already using it now https://www.tchap.gouv.fr/ https://www.tchap.gouv.fr/ In federated protocols it's always harder for the user to choose an instance for them. Not sure if the responsibility for that should be on the protocol managing party.
    - Attrecomet 3y ago

user-the-name 3y ago

[dead]

danpalmer 3y ago

I've never used Matrix, directly. However I use Beeper all day every day, via their iOS, Android, and macOS clients. Beeper (not the iMessage app, but their previous and continuing multi-network app) is pretty great. I get one consistent UX across all chat networks I use. Sometimes the networks drop out, but rarely due to Beeper issues. Beeper is essentially a Matrix homeserver, plus a bunch of hosted Matrix bridges, and as far as I can tell, that whole part of Beeper was a great technical decision. The Beeper clients started off as forks of the Element clients, and honestly they were a trashfire at the beginning, but Beeper have been quickly iterating and replacing parts, and they're now pretty solid. They're not yet WhatsApp quality UX, but they're approaching it. I don't think the problem is Matrix.

LorenDB 3y ago
This. I use Matrix daily using nheko for my client. It's a rock solid experience (except for a bit of trouble with voice calling one of my friends). I've never been randomly told I have to reverify. If you are being asked to relogin and reverify every time you restart your client, you're doing something wrong.
raziel2p 3y ago
Depends on how you define "Matrix", I guess. The technology is undoubtedly great, but it also needs to sell itself as a (standalone) product if it wants to catch on.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  But Matrix isn't a product. There are companies building products on it, such as Element and Beeper, and as far as I can see the latter are doing a perfectly good job of selling themselves.
  - raziel2p 3y ago
    That may be technically correct, but reality is if Matrix wants to catch on (large scale) as a concept, it needs to act as a product in some way. Even if that just means having a good landing page guiding users on how to sign up on a server, install a client, and connect the two - and making sure that this always works.

haltcatchfire 3y ago

We used Matrix for a couple of years at my company, but got kicked out from their managed hosting due to the new requirement of 50+ seats. The years we've been using it has been more of tolerating its flaws than a pleasant user experience. We migrated to Slack and was blown away of how It Just Works.

master-lincoln 3y ago
Who is "they"? Afaik the matrix organization doesn't offer hosted servers
- apetresc 3y ago
  They do indeed: https://element.io/pricing https://element.io/pricing
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Matrix and Element are no longer the same entity. Element (New Vector Ltd) is the core behind the Matrix protocol, but they're distinct from the organisation that manages the protocol. If Matrix does ever take off, this will be an extremely valuable distinction to have.
    - apetresc 3y ago
      I understand that completely, I even considered including a "Before anyone jumps in with 'akshually that's Element', [..]" disclaimer but decided nobody would be that pedantic. Element is the same team as the Matrix.org foundation, with the same objectives. I understand why they maintain a separation of concerns at the institutional level, but for someone to say "Matrix offers hosted servers" and to act confused like "What do you mean, who's 'they'? Matrix doesn't do that! Only Element, the organization run by the exact same people, who's only goal is to further the adoption of the Matrix.org spec. I can't possibly fathom what you think the connection is." is the very definition of being disingenuous.

rglullis 3y ago

Ok, now do XMPP. Or Signal, but with the added requirement that you want to run your own server.

rapsey 3y ago
i.e. moving the goalpost fallacy.
- rglullis 3y ago
  My goal is "let's have a communication protocol that is secure, enables applications with modern features on all major platforms and is not controlled by any single entity". If not for the last point, I'd be using WhatsApp just fine. But because of it, Matrix/Element is currently the best we have. Is it great? Absolutely not, but it is the best we have at the moment, and to call it a "trashfire" without putting things in perspective is a disservice.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Interestingly Delta Chat kind of fits the bill thanks to their investigation of webxdc, i.e. mini apps that run entirely within the chat and never connect to the outside world, only with peers in the chat: https://webxdc.org/ https://webxdc.org/ I can't say if this is the future, but I like it taking another direction. Taking a few steps back, this model solves a lot of problems with a very easy UX for beginners: shared calendar, shared expenses, shared notes can all happen inside your chat, which is naturally the place where you already share stuff with people, but now it can be more without any server installation or anything.
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
I find that XMPP interoperability (terrible as it is) is still just miles ahead of Matrix. For all intents and purposes Element controls the protocol and despite that I almost constantly find friction communicating the client for Android and the desktop Electron-based client. With 3rd party clients it is a nightmare.

IanCal 3y ago

This kind of process is extremely valuable and should be done by devs more often. Start from the start and follow whatever your application tells you to do. Note down when it doesn't tell you where to go or what to do. You'd be surprised by just how many things you do automatically while working because you know the little tricks and things to get by, and that wording doesn't necessarily match what the app requires now. Side note - this kind of this is why good QA people are awesome. They'll show you what users will actually do. I'll add in something here. Element the app said they were logging into matrix.org. matrix.org has a "try matrix". The first thing is it tells me to choose a client (this feels like a loop), then says to choose a server but also maybe I don't need to, then has a create account button. The create account button takes me to a docs page. Which tells me to go to the element site, and then create an account with matrix. So that's matrix -> use element -> element says to use matrix -> matrix says to use someone else, ok you can use us -> to use us go to element -> element says you're making an account with matrix. edit - oh you can and should also do this with your dev process. Create an empty folder, check out the repo and follow the readme. Do you actually get a running system for local dev? Can you successfully run the tests? If you are able to, do this on a clean machine (maybe load up a docker image and see if you can follow it in a truly clear system). Does it turn out it assumes you already have tool X installed because your developers already have it from another project? Do you actually need postgres running with a specific user with specific login details? If you're like me you don't like writing docs, so this may actually just push you to add scripts that do the setup required. To not sound sanctimonious about this every time I've done this with my own code I've found issues with the documentation.

INTPenis 3y ago
>This kind of process is extremely valuable and should be done by devs more often. The fact that it's not being done doesn't bode well for their perceived engagement to this project. I remember when it launched and how much they hyped it up to be the future of secure messaging. That was how many years ago now? It was pre-pandemic. I'm a lover of all selfhostable federated solutions so I actually hosted a Matrix server for a couple of years. My conclusion is that it's just not ready for production scalability. And you can't migrate easily between implementations because of their unique database design.

amarant 3y ago

Huh, I've been using element for a while now, and the only problem I've encountered is that quite few of my friends use it. I've joined a few communities based around common interests, and never really had any technical issues with anything. I don't really recall much about the sign-up process at all, which I guess I would've if it was anywhere near as difficult as this guy claims... I'm on android tho, while he uses iPhone, maybe that's the issue?

gtirloni 3y ago

These user reports are invaluable. They contain so much information that us devs miss because we're so used to working with our software.

onli 3y ago
Note though that this is not a regular user, but an old school blogger with deep database experience and afaik programming skills, at the very least someone highly technical (and known in Germany). He is just able to put his user hat on -> regular devs can do that too.
- gtirloni 3y ago
  Yeah, that's a good point. When I put my user hat on, I try to force myself to not know things (conciously ignore them if I can), but I think it's not a "natural" experience like an end user report. Still, better than automatically doing what will work.

vdaea 3y ago

Developers could also do these processes. And they probably do, often. But they usually have their heads so far up their asses that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding process is even for very technical users. It's like when you use one of those Linux phones and your reaction all along is "ew". Do developers not notice how bad this is? No, they don't. Some of them haven't used a good UI ever. They can't fathom it could be better. They really think they are doing a good job. Why did Discord win? Oh, it must be dark patterns, regulatory capture, moat, etc. It can't possibly be because the UI makes sense!

rapsey 3y ago
The state of the project is completely typical of open source trying to do end user applications.
prmoustache 3y ago
> Why did Discord win? Oh, it must be dark patterns, regulatory capture, moat, etc. It can't possibly be because the UI makes sense! I don't know but the Discord UI doesn't makes much sense to me, this is a huge mess. Signing up might be better though with the caveat that I never had any problem signing up with Element (not Element X for which I have 0 experience).
master-lincoln 3y ago
Nowadays companies win because of better marketing and then network effect. The quality of the product does normally not play a big role for capturing a market
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Bullshit. Discord absolutely gained traction among gamers (and then other communities) due to being a good product that Just Worked.
mpldr 3y ago
> Developers could also do these processes. And they probably do, often. But they usually have their heads so far up their asses that they don't see how inscrutable this onboarding process is even for very technical users. I would argue that as the one developing a system (frontend or backend) you can not perform something like that. The reason being that you already know all the small little bits, tricks, and band-aids. The only way to get proper feedback, is by putting someone completely fresh in front of the system.

dschuetz 3y ago

Can we please stop submitting click-baity titles?

bowsamic 3y ago
Changing the title is against the rules, isn't it?
hannob 3y ago
I feel the "clickbait" accusation has a tendency to be overused. I mean, when I hear "clickbait", I think "the headline makes me think there's something interesting that isn't really backed up by the content". But here? The headline says "Matrix Trashfire", the content delivers exactly that.
- Steltek 3y ago
  "Trashfire" is absolutely clickbait. The article lays out some poor onboarding documentation for a hypothetical 100% naive user. Matrix, Element, etc work and they work pretty well. The onboarding workflow for most Federated services don't suffer fools. There's nothing exceptional here.

influencer3000 3y ago

While it's never fun to receive negative feedback, it'll only help to improve the product. Still, I run Matrix servers since inception of the project (10 years now \o/), and for an experienced system administrator this is not something difficult to do. If you think running a Matrix server is difficult, you are probably not the intended audience: running an IRC server, an email server, or some other server, is mostly similarly difficult. Matrix is a communication protocol, and it is not intended to be touched by end-users. If your goal is to just communicate on the matrix network as an enduser, stay away from matrix. I haven't seen an email enduser who browsers to https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html, to figure out how to sign up for hotmail..... Element on the other hand, IS intended to be userfriendly, and there is obviously a lot of room for improvement. But through the years I experienced that users who want to use Element to stay in touch with their loved once, have no problem with that. Lastly I think comparing an open source project like Matrix/Element to Publicly traded corporations like Slack or Meta, is not fair. They operate with totally different business models. If you'd compare the quality of Matrix/Element to Slack in relation to annual budget, Slacks ROI would be depressing.

solarkraft 3y ago
> Lastly I think comparing an open source project like Matrix/Element to Publicly traded corporations like Slack or Meta, is not fair. If we want to "win" (reach similar/higher adoption), we need to at least come close. It's not easy work, but not doing it and leaving the product that so much good work has ready gone into unusable for a vast number of people would be a bummer.
- influencer3000 3y ago
  Not sure we want to "win". If endusers want apps "to just work" without "paying up", then I would recommend them to stay with Whatsapp. That kind of users aren't worth the hassle if they have no money. I personally have better relationships with people that enjoy learning something new, and coming up with solutions for issues themselves, eventually contributing to the ecosystem.

juped 3y ago

It's heartening that some Matrix people responded positively to this free QA work; that's something we almost never see.

master-lincoln 3y ago
Maybe because it was mostly feedback for the Element people, so the Matrix people can sit back
- Arathorn 3y ago
  The initial Element response is at https://mastodon.matrix.org/@element/111935349393238249 https://mastodon.matrix.org/@element/111935349393238249 fwiw.

maelito 3y ago

I'm talking daily with friends on Element. Most of them don't work in tech, but are quite comfortable with computers. It's ok. Most bugs concern threads. But it's one of the only chat apps that enable threads, so I'm ok with that, threads are absolutely needed in my opinion. Signal conversations can become such a mess because of that. ElementX lacks threads, but apart from that is refreshing. Looks more like a chat app than an enterprise messaging app. Still your article is very important. The UX should be improved.

hiq 3y ago
> Signal conversations can become such a mess because of that. The workaround is to create new groups, even if that's with the same set of people. I even have groups with just another person and myself, e.g. for specific projects. In my experience that works well enough, also because if something is longer-lived, I'll put it in a shared doc instead.
- maelito 3y ago
  But I won't create a new group to for example talk about a video. That's what I just did with a friend : share 10 messages about a video. We're 4 in the group. 2 of them might never be interested by the talk about that video. It's completely unpractical to create a new group to just talk about that. Then you need to either close or leave the group. No problems with threads, it's created with a click and finishes by lack of new messages. It's just what happens in real life : people move around 2 meters when they want to talk about something in particular, and other people can either ignore, either join the ephemeral group.
  - hiq 3y ago
    In practice I just skim through these 10 messages in such small groups. There's the opposite problem with threads, with which it's easy to miss messages you care about, and harder to have a single topic at a given time. Being able to reply to individual messages also makes the transition from one topic to another smoother. I can definitely see the problem if you try to use Signal like you use IRC, with big channels with 100+ people and very different topics, not all of them relevant and with people you care about, and I still use Matrix / forums for that. > It's just what happens in real life : people move around 2 meters when they want to talk about something in particular, and other people can either ignore, either join the ephemeral group. It really depends on the setting, that's only if you're standing and even then, if you're having a meal sitting at a table, I'd be surprised to see this.

jesprenj 3y ago

I really don't like the forced end to end encryption of chats. I do not care that much about the security of my chats to justify the complications of end to end encryption -- verifying devices, constant "reset" prompts that I don't even know what they do, but they seem like they are very destructive. I trust my homeserver, since I host it myself. I do not need end to end encryption. I understand this is an issue of the client, not the protocol. But there aren't many clients. Prebuilt element for android from fDroid will connect to matrix.org, vector.im and other network hosts and I don't want that at all, although this tracking can't easily be disabled. It feels very centralised. I run my own homeserver and want to chat with my friend that runs his own server. It is unacceptable to me that clients connect to anything other than those two homeservers (apart from CRL and OCSP, which should also be disabled by default, as I consider those protocols great spyware). Not to mention the fact that homeserver software itself is known to make connections to the servers of the developers by default, without ever talking to someone on matrix.org. This is also unacceptable. My homeserver should only connect to other homeservers. 3PID is a failed attempt, as it centralises identities and works by utilising a single point that gathers a lot of personat information at one place. I don't want it. XMPP does not have those issues. Set up prosody and use dino or Conversations and they won't make any connections to non-essential servers. Furthermore, the end to end encryption is way easier to use in XMPP (OMEMO), and it's easy to turn it off if you don't need it.

lxgr 3y ago
It sounds like you’re happy with XMPP – are you missing anything from Matrix in terms of functionality? If not, why not just stick with XMPP?
- jesprenj 3y ago
  I think matrix has group voice calls. But maybe I'm wrong and they're just using Jitsi. I like that Matrix puts an emphasis on message history, but on XMPP that seems like an afterthought. For example on XMPP multi user chats, messages history retention relies on the server that hosts the chatroom and this is sometimes very limited, sometimes even disabled. And if that's the case, you only get messages when you have a _client_ online, as your server won't store messages when you don't have a client connected. Or something like that. And AFAIK, multiple clients with a MUC room opened will appear as multiple users sometimes. I'm not sure how it all works really, so take my words with a grain of salt. XMPP seems more like a pubsub system for system messages, like MQTT (:

skywhopper 3y ago

Fantastic writeup. I’m a little confused by the screenshot with the caption “Servers marked as vulnerable, unavailable and with profanity in their name.” In the screenshot, three things are highlighted: labels for “Vulnerable”, “Unavailable”, and the server name “cyberfurz.chat”. Is “cyberfurz” supposed to be profanity?

LeonB 3y ago
I had a hunch … so I opened a German to English translator and put in the words Cyber furz In English: Cyber fart Every day is a school day!
- dale_glass 3y ago
  It's not German, it's a furry instance with some 90s flavor.
  - LeonB 3y ago
    Fair enough. But the author of the original article is German, and I’m explaining why he described the instance name as he did.

tdullien 3y ago

People call this "QA", but isn't this just good product management?

nottorp 3y ago

Interesting how most comments come from people inside the bubble that have an intuitive understanding of the system now and assume everyone else does.

Yanael 3y ago

A friend wanted me to switch to Matrix for our 1:1 conversations and group chat of 3 people. The onboarding and user experience have been very poor on Element for years. I'm left with the feeling it is not made to replace a 1:1 messaging app. The protocol covers a broader use case, and the end-user apps are buggy and have a confusing user experience. There is some complexity in educating due to its distributed nature, but a top notch UX is much needed to overcome it.

noirscape 3y ago

Honestly, the matrix documentation is a total mess in general. The protocol is from what I can tell pretty cleverly designed/usable as a casual chat app (even if it leans heavily towards IRC esque design), but actually figuring out how to use it is somewhere between "wisdom of the ancients" and actually impossible. A lot of very relevant information is stored in old documentation that is currently marked as outdated on the site but has no updated equivalent. The bad apps and onboarding only hamper it further. It's still baffling to me that the best way to actually administer a selfhosted matrix homeserver (specifically, synapse, the reference homeserver) is to do a database hack to promote a user to an admin and then use an external PWA hosted on GitHub[0] so you can actually do basic moderation actions without having to resort to using curl. [0]: https://awesome-technologies.github.io/synapse-admin/ https://awesome-technologies.github.io/synapse-admin/

thibaultamartin 3y ago
Indeed the documentation generally needs much more love. In an ideal world, every single page of the documentation would have a person in charge of keeping it up to date. We're a rather small team on the Foundation side and lack the personpower to do so. We're in the process of listing what documentation we need and what we need to update. This will be the foundational work to apply to Google Summer of Docs and for individual tech writers to apply to grants like NLNet (who doesn't usually fund "large" organisations like us) to help us out. I'm also adding instructions on how people can step in and contribute to the docs if they have the time and desire to do so: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/2155 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/pull/2155 We're doing our best with our limited resources, but I'm confident we can improve the situation eventually!

phyzome 3y ago

There are a lot of sharp corners, but going for the beta option was not a wise move.

c0wb0yc0d3r 3y ago
Unless I read it wrong, the author chose element x because it was available on all platforms. It looked like element wasn't available in the Mac app store
- phyzome 3y ago
  Ah! I see now.

LukaD 3y ago

I have been using matrix from time to time to chat with some folks who prefer matrix over other chat systems for reasons unknown. Matrix is an absolute trash fire indeed. Every once in a while a chat session with someone just craps itself and my client is unable to decrypt received messages (both element and element x). The issue then usually fixes itself within a couple of days. The bad UX aside, a chat system should at let me reliably send and receive messages. The other issues I had were related to the device verification. The last time I wanted to verify a new phone the verification request simply did not arrive on my other devices. At that point I gave up on matrix.

1attice 3y ago

This feels like a mis-aimed article -- I use Matrix a lot, and Element, while annoying, is only one of many options. Compare "The IRC trashfire" (an article about the infelicities of Mirc)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nusl 3y ago

Pretty poor post. It highlights some issues, sure, though the author obviously never tried to actually try. Also, they say there's profanity but I don't see any; apparently the word "cyberfurz" is profanity? The author's prejudice is showing.

zaik 3y ago
Furz means fart in German.
- nusl 3y ago
  Okay. Even then I wouldn’t call it profanity

the__alchemist 3y ago

It's nice to hear I'm not alone. I use Matrix/Element to chat with Rust embedded devs; I have heard about it in other contexts; generally favorably. In my experience, it is awful, and has been for years. Highlights: - The verification is a mess (in the article; By the way: Once your account is set up, the verification failures don't go away). It has frequent verification popups and overlays; when I attempt to follow them, various errors occur, and it fails. So, the client nags you to verify, but the verification process is broken. - The read notification system is broken; most chat groups will show as having unread messages, when there are none. This is possibly related to the thread system, but my results here are inconclusive in regards to the exact nature of the problem, nor the solution. - Message posting and syncing is unreliable, especially after edits. Some messages will show on the PC program, but not the mobile, and vice versa. Sometimes edits I or someone makes will show up on one client, but not the other.

stevenicr 3y ago

Really glad to see these discussions happening. I started creating a similar post for matrix/element/server installs - a while back, Screenshots and saving putty sessions.. (wondering if I should find a tool that records ssh input/output or just use the save sessions built in).. I've succeeded with a matrix server install 2 out of 6 tries. I am about to try again with a new install since I don't have faith in succeeding a multi-version upgrade. I wish there was an easy way to export user names and email addys to port to a new install, as I worry that making a new install could allow for some nefarious people to come in and create accounts with another old user's name. I love matrix and element and other clients, it's the best for what many need - although there are many rough spots in using it both server side and as an end user. Moderation usability is a major issue for us, maybe with a new install I will jump into that rabbit hole of how to set things up for that and see if it's easier these days. I hope the vucuum DB and such is better with the newer versions. Looking forward to scouring the web for tutorials on all the basic things debian and perhaps logging the journey, maybe just screenshots will be fine, we'll see.

joshsimmons 3y ago
Likewise, glad for these discussions. Even if it's a bit uncomfortable to be on the receiving end, this kind of feedback is a gift. Please do share more about your experiences, we're all ears and looking to learn and improve! BTW, on the moderation front: Draupnir is the most actively maintained tool in that space and I recommend checking it out. Separately, the Foundation is currently investing in developing better tooling to complement moderation bots like Draupnir. We don't have a planned release date, but what we're making will be FOSS and available to all to use. We're also looking to involve more technical writers to help us better support new users and homeserver admins – for sure, it's a rough road right now. Josh, Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation
brokenmachine 3y ago
Check out https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/ https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/

worik 3y ago

Me too I tried to get Matrix working to have a conversation. Many worthy people I know use it But I failed in a similar way Do many people actually use it? When it is so easy to use Signal or (Dog help us, WhatsApp)

joshsimmons 3y ago
We definitely have work to do on the onboarding experience, but I'm pleased to say that there are 115M addressable users on the open federation – so many people are having great success once they get past the initial friction. Aside from all the FOSS projects that use Matrix, it's also used by the German healthcare agency, French civil servants, NATO, a number of universities including MIT and TU Dresden, Moodle, and many others. We're moving quickly to address the feedback in the blog post and will be investing more in docs and UX to address the friction. Please don't hesitate to share your own experiences if you run into trouble! Stuff like that is a real gift. We're always looking to learn and improve. Josh, Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation

friend_and_foe 3y ago

> All in all, this is a mess, and my recommendation is to avoid Matrix for at least two years. Two more years. I've been a matrix user for almost a decade. Things have not gotten better at all. I used to use Riot, I invested (and subsequently lost) a good amount of social capital on boarding my close circle, mostly non technical people, to using it. We used it. It was a little janky with the key sharing and verifying users and what not, but we managed. Then Element came out, and at first, whatever, but then a lot of those verification tools just stopped working. Several of our accounts became locked in some limbo where they couldn't be verified because the verification methods didn't support legacy verification. Nobody wanted to move to a new client which was less feature rich. We moved to signal eventually and have been mostly happy ever since. I still use it with a couple of people. Its still just as janky as ever. First riot, then element. Now Element X? Dendrite... How many times are these guys going to rebuild from scratch before they realize they're in over their heads? I just gave up on it, I still use it with the couple of people I'm connected to and I don't do new contacts on it with anyone. I treat it like I do Discord. For me now it's XMPP and email, and signal for real world contacts. I mess with some of the newer messaging tools out there like Simplex (which absolutely has a terrible onboarding flow, but they're new so they get a pass for now) and things, and I hope to get utility out of them, but I'm never going to burn myself again pushing people to use something new, I'll wait until these things prove themselves, a lesson I learned from Matrix which never did mature into anything worthwhile.

hammyhavoc 3y ago

Matrix protocol with Element on my own Synapse Docker container has been working great for me for two years at this point. Not really had any issues with it, whereas maintaining other solutions like Rocket.Chat became a real time-sink prior to switching to Matrix.

DoItToMe81 3y ago

This is just stereotypical ineptitude and inability to RTFM or use common sense from somebody used to the spoonfed walled garden side of tech. I do not understand how anyone with a background in technology can't know "beta means buggy and poor support and use the flagship instance if you don't know what you want". I understood this as a teenager, as most people here also should have. I think Matrix has a lot of problems. E2E encryption is too much for most laymen users to work with and it being so damn resource heavy being the too biggest ones. But come on.