If users' behaviour has shown us anything, it's that they love it. And for all the dangers of their privacy loss, they happily trade it for the convenience of finding the people they know.
The average person barely knows what a server is. They install e.g. WhatsApp on their phone, they are likely to think that the app on their phone is doing the work of telling them who else is on WhatsApp. They are not likely to think that their contact list is being scraped and uploaded and stored on someone else's computer in a warehouse, and then profiled for advertising purposes and then exposed to strangers via an API.
The average person may love the convenience, but the average person does not understand how it is implemented or the consequences of using such a service (as described in this paper).
Last time it was the (I think Whatsapp?) feature that allows, when replying to a message with an attached picture, to highlight a portion of the attached picture. That's it. There was no network effect at this point whasoever. This pseudo-feature was enough for an adult person to decide to switch back to Whatsapp and fuck my and everyone's privacy. THEN the network effect kicks in in favor of Whatsapp, because of course Whatsapp is a walled garden, so everyone is forced to switch to Whatsapp.
I have seen this already happen several times network-wide and I will see it happen again. Non-walled garden IM networks are just set-up to lose.
Why didn’t you write it then? It’s easy to dismiss the work of others, not so easy to do the work yourself.
Mass uploading contacts should be limited, like Telgram rightfully implemented. Signal should do the same.
Also, for signal you have to give the list of your contacts. And you don't have with Telegram (and I didn't).
Some may argue that Matrix still a centralized server by the virtue of seeding your group info somewhere. But this seeding can be done via paper-only thereby it is still a true decentralized messaging server.
There are also multiple client and server implementations already. You can find them here: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now/
There are also at least two companies offering homeserver hosting: https://matrix.org/hosting/
As long as one for-profit company decides how it changes and evolves, it's nothing more than that.
What do you understand by federated protocol?
As I understand it, Matrix seems to be an open protocol that supports federation.
The open protocol part is evident by the extense documentation of the protocol specification that I linked in my previous message and by the fact that anyone can propose a change in the spec: https://spec.matrix.org/unstable/proposals/
You can see how the protocol supports federation here: https://matrix.org/docs/spec/server_server/r0.1.4
As for the organization governing the protocol, there is The Matrix.org Foundation: https://matrix.org/foundation/
In the foundation page it states it is "a non-profit UK Community Interest Company, incorporated to act as the neutral guardian of the standard on behalf of the whole Matrix community"
Until this is possible, it is not really a protocol, it's more like a private API available on multiple instances.
Sounds like a fair position to have.
Further, there is a alternative server implementation: Conduit.
What main selling point are you talking about?
Same thing here. It's a product of one commercial company, which fully decides how it works.
Conduit is not finished, and, given the monolytic nature of matrix protocol (as opposed to XMPP, by the way) it will likely never be finished. Even on it's GitHub page it writes with big big letters: DO NOT RELY ON IT.
True, but this isn't the case. The device you are talking about is Element, which uses the protocol. Here you can find the protocol: https://spec.matrix.org/unstable/
It is an open standard.
> Same thing here. It's a product of one commercial company, which fully decides how it works.
You, again, conflate Matrix with Element, which btw. does not fully decide how it works. Read more about that here: https://matrix.org/foundation/
> Conduit is not finished, and, given the monolytic nature of matrix protocol (as opposed to XMPP, by the way) it will likely never be finished. Even on it's GitHub page it writes with big big letters: DO NOT RELY ON IT.
Conduit is a server of a competing entity. I didn't claim it was finished or will ever be finished in the way that there won't be any development any more.
what's it's RFC number? which body does govern the development of this 'protocol'?
It's governed by the Matrix Foundation, which I have linked before
But it’s design intent isn’t FEDERATION, not at all.