Down for me in the UK for the past 30 mins.
OR, get people on Matrix or similar so we can actually stop jumping ship when our centralized dear service stops acting in our best interest.
Matrix being federated does absolutely nothing to solve this problem since there's no failover if a user's homeserver goes down. It just limits the potential blast radius but if matrix.org went down Matrix might as well be down for most people.
> There is no single point of control or failure in a Matrix conversation which spans multiple servers: the act of communication with someone elsewhere in Matrix shares ownership of the conversation equally with them. Even if your server goes offline, the conversation can continue uninterrupted elsewhere until it returns.
So right now, if you're trying to message someone via either whatsapp, facebook or instagram they will all fail, most likely because of the same issue as they are run by the same company. If you were on Matrix, you would for sure be able to find a way of reaching this person even if servers go down, that's the entire point of federation in the first place.
True, but it makes a difference between a single Homeserver not working any more and the entire global service. This likely won't ever happen.
> matrix.org went down Matrix might as well be down for most people.
not really (afaik less than a third of public(!) users use matrix.org)
Also consider ongoing developments of distributing accounts on multiple servers (which may also reside on your device) for P2P Matrix. This gives additional redundancy.
Decentralisation is the right answer. Unfortunately we always cannot convert or move others every-time we say the word 'Matrix' or 'Element/Matrix', which leaves the user confused with the client and the protocol. It is close to the GNU/Linux naming all over again and that did not catch on.
If you want others to make the switch to (Chat client that uses Matrix) without confusing them, then at least avoid telling them to: 'Use Matrix' which is like saying 'Use MTProto' or 'Use libsignal'. The client's name is always mentioned but this is why compared to Signal or Telegram the name 'Element' sounds totally off, even without mentioning the protocol.
For example: Almost everyone has heard of 'Bitcoin' and it's decentralised. That works. No need to mention 'Blockchain' or any of that jargon. So let's have a user-friendlier decentralised client that does not need to mention the protocol's name.
Then it's up to us nerds to find the best client for our non-hacker friends and family.