For whatever reason I've never been a huge chatroom person, but the recently renewed conversation over Discord's identity verification system has got me thinking once again about free, open, and community-run alternatives--with Matrix being the one that I think stands out the most.
For those who aren't familiar, for better or worse Matrix isn't a 1:1 clone of Discord (like you mostly see with Stoat or Fluxer), but an open protocol for federated messaging and voice chat. Instead of a centralized service run by any one company or group, Matrix is a lot like email or "the fediverse": a network of different servers, run by different people, communicating with each other using a single protocol and visualized through various apps (like Element or FluffyChat).
But for as much as Matrix feels like the fediverse in spirit, to me it also feels very separate from the fediverse, like it's not a part of the "same conversation", so to speak. The ethos is similar. The background is similar. The mission is similar. But, despite that, I feel like I don't see as much overlap between fediverse communities and matrix communities as I would expect.
Maybe it's purely because of the near-ubiquity of Reddit and Discord in modern net culture, but it seems pretty common to see Reddit communities that advertise links to Discord communities. Whereas it seems a lot more rare for "threadiverse" communities to advertise links to Matrix communities. Which leads me to my question...
What do you all think of Matrix?
Have you been aware of it? Have you tried it?
Are you an active Discord user? Are you an active Matrix user? If so, what do you like/dislike about it? If not, why not?
Broadly speaking, do you think there is value in what Matrix is doing? How do you see it fitting in with the rest of the Fediverse?
Matrix is a good idea in principle and the 2.0 protocol (as well as the implementation) is in very good shape. Sadly Element is the most feature complete client for using it and frankly: it's trash. Both desktop and app, X and non-X. It's buggy, unreliable and unpolished. It certainly has gotten better, seeing how they went from borderline unusable to at least the core stuff working, but they move incredibly slow. If you think Signal is moving slow, you haven't waited for Element features (to properly work) yet.
I personally find Fluffy Chat to be more enjoyable, but tbf I basically have to use it, because I need to use multiple accounts. Element just straight up doesn't support that for whatever reason - I don't think any other client either. It comes with its own set of issues and shortcomings however. There simply is no app that supports everything and works flawlessly at the same time. To stick with my Signal comparison: Signal just works. It self-explanatory and you need to do next to nothing for it to work. This is not the experience you can expect from Matrix in general, because the way the protocol works makes everything more complicated.
The only major alternative I know is XMPP, which in my experience next to no one uses. I have very limited experience with it, but 'Conversations' seemed fantastic on the surface. Much, much simpler and cleaner than anything Matrix. But again, couldn't actually test it, because no one uses it lol
Commet supports multiple accounts.
sable also supports multiple accounts. element x too, but its hidden in labs