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There were no good alternatives at the time. They were competing largely with Telegram and Whatsapp so basically anything was seen as an improvement. Since then Signal has gained popularity and set a much more robust standard for implementation, instead of hollow feature count.

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That doesn't make sense : Signal is slightly older (both 2014), and was end-to-end encrypted from the start, while Matrix only got it officially in 2020 ?

Isn't it more that they have different use-cases : Matrix is PC-first, while Signal (and Telegram, WhatsApp) are mobile-first, to the point of requiring a phone number ?

Yeah, it was kind of a case of both. Signal was strictly an sms replacement, it used to overlay and replace the sms app on Android. Matrix was designed to work more like telegram where it was supposed to be more standalone and fully featured. Signal later started to add more telegram like features and people started to view it as an alternative.

why do you put Matrix as PC-first?

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