I think that has been made very clear its not going to happen
https://matrix.org/blog/2020/01/02/on-privacy-versus-freedom
Moxie has made it known on several occasions he doesnt believe decentralization is the right approach
Moxie has made it known on several occasions he doesnt believe decentralization is the right approach
> to elaborate his thoughts on why he feels he “no longer believes that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.”
I think competitive is the key word here. Signal has moved fast in the last year, especially in the last few months. I can't imagine that happening on a federated system.
The other point is it isn't as trivial to join a federated system or create your own node. Signal? Download app and you're good to go. Matrix? Well who has a node? Where are we going? How do I set one up?
Personally I'll be happy with a bridge (like Matrix wants) when Signal is fully featured (I'd argue it is almost there. Just a few things like usernames, video scaling, channels, etc). But I couldn't imagine the mass adoption and moving at the speed they did (are) with a federated system. Even email didn't take off until Yahoo and Hotmail. Pretty much every federated system people are mentioning here didn't gain mass adoption until there was a large provider. Which has gone to such a point that rolling your own email now is difficult and you'll have a harder time avoiding all the spam. So even these examples have moved more towards centralization, if not at least a hybrid.
So what am I missing here? What's the big killer feature of federation that makes things better and proven?
I just read both (Moxie and Matrix.org) and I will stay with Matrix response.
I understand Moxie points and the main one is about speed, as I understood. But, as Matthew Hodgson pointed out: the governance of decentralisation is hard, but not impossible.
So, in the end, Signal moves are driven by the market. And, IMO, sometimes it can be dangerous.