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

Wed Jun 26 10:36:31 CEST 2019

Yes, I've seen quite a few deployments of Rocket.chat, the entire Hyperledger project congregates on one, as does the Sovrin project (a public good network providing Self-Sovereign Identity), maybe unsurprisingly as it is strongly linked to Hyperledger Indy.

Regarding Matrix, as others have mentioned it is only the protocol. Riot is the main (and from what I can tell overwhelmingly used) client, but it is not the only one. The GNOME desktop environment has its own, Fractal, which is coming into its own. It doesn't have E2E encryption yet, which means I can't use it on a daily basis, but it is pretty nice otherwise. It's not based on "webtech" as John was calling it.

Julian, thanks for pointing just how bad and unashamedly data-mining the Discord ToS are. I hadn't realised.

Peter: xmpp was (and is) great in many ways, and I'm still connected to it on a daily basis. 
Unfortunately, while you are right that there are multiple compatible implementations of both server and client, which is a great thing, the whole XEP (XMPP Extension Proposals) mess meant it was really hard to have a modern chat experience (text, inline images, video, sound) in any reliable way, as support for XEP varied a lot between clients. I mean, Pidgin never got support for inline images, AFAICT.

But at some point, it's not simply about technical merit, it's also about excitement and momentum, and I find what matrix and Riot may lack (in user experience, currently) it makes up in those.

I understand there's a new, entirely reworked version of Riot in the works, which should make a big difference in terms of UX.

> I just got linked a long post on privacy and security in Matrix:
> https://gist.github.com/maxidorius/5736fd09c9194b7a6dc03b6b8d7220d0

Thanks Petter for sharing that criticism of how much meta/data is shared with Riot's makers New Vector. To me they have always been transparent about the fact the default identity server is not decentralised and that they host it, promising to find a good way to make it decentralised in the future. But I'm not sure I'd quite thought through how much data and metadata that represents.
There also seems to be quite a lot of "developer drama" (not a fan of the term) in the matrix ecosystem. I honestly can't tell how much is warranted and how much comes with having a large project, quickly rising in popularity and working on something as universal as conversing.

Lastly, thanks a lot Aryt for that FT article. It might just be the right one (I'll check with someone who has a FT subscription today)

Oh and when you say:
> I read that Riot.im was down in April due to a Matrix hack.
> https://www.zdnet.com/article/matrix-hack-forces-servers-offline-user-credentials-leaked/

It was a matrix.org (the service, the first/main server) breach, not matrix (the protocol) hack/vulnerability. The similar naming makes it confusing.

axel

On 25 June 2019 21:24:55 BST, David Stodolsky <dss at socialinformatics.org> wrote:
>One developer group (Cardano and also Hyperledger Indy?) decided that
>Rocket Chat
>
>https://rocket.chat
>
>was superior to Riot, but it was close.
>
>
>From:
>Danie van der Merwe (in response to a comment on G+. He now posts on
>MeWe)
>mentioned you in a comment on Danie van der Merwe's post.
>+David Stodolsky <https://plus.google.com/100110805083696791816> yep
>Rocket.chat is also good - nice UI
>
>
>https://medium.com/ignation/time-to-replace-slack-who-will-w
>in-mattermost-or-riot-matrix-a090e9cdc219
>
><https://plus.google.com/_/notifications/emlink?emr=04712348056802630381&emid=CJCghMuj3t4CFdKhAgodKQsNPg&path=%2F112580063909169692065&dt=1542555646715&ub=STREAM_AT_REPLY>
>Danie van der Merwe
>*Time to replace Slack! Who will win, MatterMost or Riot/Matrix?*
>
>
>dss
>
>
>On 25 June 2019 at 19:50:56, Doug Schuler
>(douglas at publicsphereproject.org)
>wrote:
>
>We need a consumer reports for this type of information!  Thanks
>everybody.
>
>— Doug
>
>On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 9:51 AM Rory Byrne <rory at secfirst.org> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>> > > >
>>>> > > > --
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>>
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>--
>Douglas Schuler
>douglas at publicsphereproject.org
>Twitter: @doug_schuler
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>
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>
>dss at socialinformatics.org                Tel./Viber +45 3095 4070

-- 
axel simon
mail / matrix: axelsimon at axelsimon.net 
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