this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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askchapo
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Messaging particularly benefits from a smooth UX and I think matrix has accepted certain trade offs for the aspects it's strong in.
I'm not an engineer or programmer so I'm ignorant, but I use Delta Chat as a Whatsapp replacement and its 500x less friction than Matrix when it comes to usability but also security. Everything is encrypted by default and it leaks much less metadata. I don't know what it is about their encryption implementation, but everything works in Delta, so I'm left to wonder what is their problem that they can't get a handle on this and also implement basic features people have asked for for years? When they do put them in, they make boneheaded decisions like defaulting to your camera on for Video Calls and no option to change defaults for on/off. Zoom has been sitting right there to copy these things from. If Signal is encrypted in any meaningful capacity and not backdoored, it also doesn't have any of the encryption issues Matrix users seem to run into.
Right that's the vibe I have too. I've heard deltachat is a decent replacement for self-hosted messaging.
Edit: after reading more about deltachat, it seems like it is pretty well suited to being Hexbear's main messenger instead of matrix, no? It is almost a Signal replacement where I don't need a phone number to sign up.
I might give it a go, but it sounds like it isn't a replacement for a heavy duty messenger like Discord/Slack, unforuntately.
I would say it's more of an instant messenger replacement for something like Signal or WhatsApp. I migrated all my family to it from Signal. I mostly brought it up to mention that it really seems like the Matrix developers are bad at their jobs when other apps are out there that don't have the UI and encryption problems Matrix has.