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I like and use matrix (I'm indeed one of those ideological types), but even their nice webapp is janky in comparison to discord, with fewer features on paper (E

I like and use matrix (I'm indeed one of those ideological types), but even their nice webapp is janky in comparison to discord, with fewer features on paper (E2EE is huge, but the median discord user doesn't care). I use it in spite of the jank. With bluesky on the other hand, there really isn't much jank, certainly not relative to twitter (except right now when it feels like the servers are struggling to scale fast enough...). The average bluesky user doesn't seem to be ideologically motivated (or if they are, their ideology is "I don't like elon musk"). They mostly use bluesky because it works for them, regardless of implementation details.

bsimpson 2y ago
I suspect being spun out of Twitter, developed by Dan Abramov, and not owned by Mark Zuckerberg are all inputs that make Blue Sky feel like the blessed continuation of what used to be Twitter (at least for people in the hacker sphere).
Arathorn 2y ago
On the Matrix side: to be clear, Element Web/Desktop isn't a nice new webapp (yet) - it's an 8 year old codebase which is improving slowly but surely (unless we get lucky and can focus on a step change). Element X however is an entirely new mobile app written in Rust + Swift UI / Jetpack Compose, and it has zero jank, and gives an idea of just how good Matrix can be: https://element.io/blog/deep-dive-into-element-x/ https://element.io/blog/deep-dive-into-element-x/ etc. It's fascinating to see how well Bluesky has done with RN + Expo though, and makes me wonder what an equivalent Matrix client would feel like. Unfortunately rnmatrix.com looks to have been stalled since Annie joined Beeper/a8c.
- iwishmatrix2736 2y ago
  Element X has been a long time coming and most of the people I brought to the matrix ecosystem have left (calls are basically broken and everything is jank). Telling them there is a new app will not bring them back. Finally I am tapering off my use and moving to other applications. Hope you can pull it out of the fire. Good luck.
  - Arathorn 2y ago
    i’m flattered you made an acct just to wish us luck :) EX is here, and the jank is gone (although Element Call is admittedly still beta). Sorry it comes too late for you. But just as Bluesky dipped and then returned with critical mass, so can Matrix. The uptake patterns of decentralised platforms seems to be much less linear than the tightly controller centralised apps of the path.

bsimpson 2y ago

I suspect being spun out of Twitter, developed by Dan Abramov, and not owned by Mark Zuckerberg are all inputs that make Blue Sky feel like the blessed continuation of what used to be Twitter (at least for people in the hacker sphere).

Arathorn 2y ago

On the Matrix side: to be clear, Element Web/Desktop isn't a nice new webapp (yet) - it's an 8 year old codebase which is improving slowly but surely (unless we get lucky and can focus on a step change). Element X however is an entirely new mobile app written in Rust + Swift UI / Jetpack Compose, and it has zero jank, and gives an idea of just how good Matrix can be: https://element.io/blog/deep-dive-into-element-x/ https://element.io/blog/deep-dive-into-element-x/ etc. It's fascinating to see how well Bluesky has done with RN + Expo though, and makes me wonder what an equivalent Matrix client would feel like. Unfortunately rnmatrix.com looks to have been stalled since Annie joined Beeper/a8c.

iwishmatrix2736 2y ago
Element X has been a long time coming and most of the people I brought to the matrix ecosystem have left (calls are basically broken and everything is jank). Telling them there is a new app will not bring them back. Finally I am tapering off my use and moving to other applications. Hope you can pull it out of the fire. Good luck.
- Arathorn 2y ago
  i’m flattered you made an acct just to wish us luck :) EX is here, and the jank is gone (although Element Call is admittedly still beta). Sorry it comes too late for you. But just as Bluesky dipped and then returned with critical mass, so can Matrix. The uptake patterns of decentralised platforms seems to be much less linear than the tightly controller centralised apps of the path.