Hacker News Reader

Ok, so this is "decentralized" in the sense that a communication from one client will be sent directly to another client, but you still have to have a centralized discovery method. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't WebRTC already cover the same bases? I think I might be missing what is really new or interesting here.

View on HN

Matrix is not peer-to-peer. It's decentralized in the sense that it's federated. Like email, (or other messaging systems before it, like XMPP,) each user's account exists primarily on a specific server, but they can choose which server that is, or run their own, and it doesn't change their ability to message anyone else in the system or for anyone else to message them.

so will it die the same way as xmpp?

death by spam

Oh, does XMPP have trouble with spam? I guess it makes sense, since it works like email, but I have never received any.

Not Spam issue itself, but there's been a lot of spammy bot accounts created on many domains, which is the reason why In-Band registration is disallowed on most of the public domains. It has also been said that when Google still federated, a major part of the federation was for spam accounts to connect to Google, and only very few actual humans used federation, so they just cut it.

it wasnt said... it was the official reason Google gave for shutting it down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com