[liberationtech] Time to Switch to Discord & Mozilla Firefox?

Tue Jun 25 17:42:41 CEST 2019

FWIW, we experimented about a year ago with getting a three of our civil
society organisations running internally on Matrix (via Riot.im) vs
Mattermost. The main feedback against Matrix/Riot was UI/UX issues. A lot
of users just felt overwhelmed with the options around things like security
(of course personally I love that). So all of the orgs ended up going with
Mattermost. Which is still a decent system but obviously still lacks e2e
encryption at the moment I think.

On Tue, 25 Jun 2019 at 15:37, Yonatan Miller <mathsolver24 at gmail.com> wrote:

> What are your thoughts in terms of usability between setting up mattermost
> and riot for developer and non developer audiences?
>
> On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 10:12 PM Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com>
> wrote:
>
>> ..on Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 12:28:26PM -0700, Yosem Companys wrote:
>> > Internet Freedom Festival uses Mattermost:
>> >
>> >
>> https://medium.com/iff-community-stories/were-not-a-conference-9cf252199652
>>
>>
>> Definitely go with self-hosted Mattermost or RocketChat or RiotIM. The
>> former
>> FLOSS 'team edition' is *astonishingly* performant. I installed and
>> sysadmin a
>> server with many thousands of members (at risk groups) spanning over 160
>> teams.
>> It's extra-ordinarily fast - barely expresses any load on the system, and
>> is
>> used heavily day in and out.
>>
>> Discord has among the worst privacy ToS in the chat space, openly
>> presenting
>> their service as a data harvest for downstream buyers.
>>
>> "By uploading, distributing, transmitting or otherwise using Your Content
>> with
>> the Service, you grant to us a perpetual, nonexclusive, transferable,
>> royalty-free, sublicensable, and worldwide license to use, host,
>> reproduce,
>> modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from,
>> distribute,
>> perform, and display Your Content in connection with operating and
>> providing the
>> Service."
>>
>>     https://discordapp.com/terms
>>
>> Discord are actually even worse than Slack as regards our basic rights
>> online,
>> which is itself quite an achievement. Not sure I can think of a worse
>> partner
>> for mass team chat!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Julian
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 12:14 PM Petter Ericson <pettter at acc.umu.se>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > > On 24 juni, 2019 - axel simon wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 10:17:02PM -0700, Yosem Companys wrote:
>> > > > > Discord: what Facebook is trying to become.
>> > > > >
>> > >
>> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/how-discord-went-mainstream-influencers/584671/
>> > > > >
>> > > > > Why to switch from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox.
>> > > > >
>> > >
>> https://www.siliconvalley.com/2019/06/21/google-chrome-has-become-surveillance-software-its-time-to-switch/
>> > > > >
>> > > >
>> > > > Hi,
>> > > > Discord is interesting in that it's popular and offers people the
>> > > possibility to have their own community (which they call "server", I
>> > > believe), but there's nothing free and open source about it.
>> > >
>> > > As of this writing, Discord has, as if to prove this point, been
>> globally
>> > > unavailable due to Cloudflare issues.
>> > >
>> > > > Matrix, and its main client Riot, are much more interesting to me
>> > > currently, as they are (ambitiously) trying to solve multiple
>> problems at
>> > > once: a modern chat system, with voice and video and file sharing,
>> with
>> > > end-to-end cryptography, while maintaining a decentralised network
>> > > architecture so that anyone can run their own instance, join and
>> federate
>> > > with the rest.
>> > >
>> > > Well, to harp on about long lost battles - XMPP did it first. I firmly
>> > > believe that if all the effort spent on Matrix clients had instead
>> been put
>> > > into improving XMPP, then it would far surpass the current standards
>> of
>> > > both. Even so, XMPP is the protocol with several independent and
>> mutually
>> > > compatible server _and_ client implementations, as well a
>> well-established
>> > > protocol (and protocol extension process).
>> > >
>> > > > Current versions of Riot might not be entirely as slick as Discord,
>> but
>> > > they are getting better and they are very usable.
>> > > > Incidently, Matrix has bridges to connect to other chat network (and
>> > > ideally, bridge them together, hence the name), and can bridge to
>> Discord.
>> > > So there's a possibility of getting everyone to play nice with each
>> other.
>> > >
>> > > Bridging has, time and again, shown itself to be a Much Harder Problem
>> > > than may be apparent, with massive amounts of boring corner cases and
>> > > exceptions. We'll see.
>> > > >
>> > > > Regarding Firefox vs. Chrome, Firefox has been the only browser
>> (with
>> > > any relevant market share) that isn't the product of a for profit
>> company
>> > > for a while. While Mozilla have made questionable descisions at time
>> (and
>> > > outright mistakes at others), that alone should be a strong argument
>> to
>> > > consider where one gets their browser from. I recall reading a
>> statement in
>> > > an article around Chrome's release about 10 years ago by then-CEO Eric
>> > > Schmidt explaining that at the end of the day, if you want to be able
>> to
>> > > really control and see what users are doing, you need your own
>> browser.
>> > > This was when people couldn't quite understand why Google would build
>> its
>> > > own browser when Firefox had manage to end the Internet Explorer dead
>> lock
>> > > and they had a good relationship.
>> > > > That passage really stayed with me (and if anyone were to find it,
>> I'd
>> > > be very greatful, I can't seem to do so).
>> > > >
>> > > > So yes, it's not that surprising that, when push comes to shove, the
>> > > engineering teams working on Chrome have to bow to the business
>> priorities
>> > > of Google, the world's (more or less) biggest advertisement company.
>> > >
>> > > I'm in complete agreement.
>> > >
>> > > > Cheers,
>> > > >
>> > > > axel
>> > > >
>> > > > --
>> > > > axel simon
>> > > > mail/matrix: axelsimon at axelsimon.net
>> > > > twitter: @axelsimon
>> > > >
>> > > > --
>> > > > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
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>> > > lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org.
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > > Petter Ericson (pettter at acc.umu.se)
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major
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>>
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>>
>> --
>> Julian Oliver
>> https://julianoliver.com
>> https://criticalengineering.org
>> PGP https://julianoliver.com/key.asc
>> Beware the auto-complete life
>>
>>
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