this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
82 points (93.6% liked)
Asklemmy
44192 readers
1337 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Matrix does definitely not have the same reliability as WhatsApp or Signal. I've used it for around 3 years now with a group of tech savvy friends.
It's still a regular occurrence that we get cannot decrypt errors, sometimes the app doesn't show new messages in the chat but they are visible in the preview, also the app can be soooo slow.
Also, I know it's not user error. If you check the Matrix development and follow their blog posts they already acknowledged the issues and are working on fixes. But for now it's just wishful thinking when one calls them reliable alternatives for mainstream use. I'm not hating and will keep using the project because I truly think they are doing amazing work.
I have had about three whatsapp outages in the last year I used it regularly. They have been regional/global outages, visible on outage tracking websites. I have had zero outages with matrix (bar one that I have caused myself by misconfiguring and the server restarting).
Depending on the time you have used matrix you will have a lot earlier experiences than I do. Yes, sometimes I cant figure out why something is not working but the service itself runs like clockwork.
The issue here is perspective. Whatsapp is proprietary software which runs on company servers. Matrix is a mostly community/non profit led effort and just doesnt have the manpower or money to develop in high speed. For that matter, the protocol is in its infancy.
Its just unrealistic to say whatsapp is „more reliable“.
I don‘t think you understand my point. Let me be a bit more high level. It's not about the three major outages WhatsApp had this year for like 30 mins. or whatever.
A perfectly set up Matrix server with more than enough resources allocated has issues decrypting messages when there's a few hundred people and that's without federation. This is still happening to today, fully updated server and clients.
As I said, I know they are working with a lot less resources than Meta. But at the moment the implementation doesn't even do the most basic thing, deliver messages reliably. I know their new encryption library is supposed to do a better job but it's just the cold hard truth that it's not up there with the big messengers yet. Denying that doesn't do the project any good.
I got your point before but thanks for elaborating. The hundreds of people on an unfederated server arent my concern. The thousands of people I and others are talking to on a daily basis are my concern.
There are usecases where matrix apparently doesnt work well but I havent seen them. I absolutely wasnt able to decrypt a message or two but that is explainable by the sheer amount of devices and clients I have. One was always able to decrypt stuff.
The point you are making stands on sand because you‘re saying matrix isnt up to snuff to whatsapp. I‘m saying if you count its situation it is ten times better at least.
I‘m fine to just disagree with you and walk away but I‘m not gonna pretend whatsapp is some godsend. Its a billion dollar project that is shockingly bad for the resources put in and matrix (and probably xmpp) is unbelievably good considering the resources and nature of the service.
Last I heard whatsapp was owned by Meta. I have an account for one vendor in Mexico for work. And I’m sure sucked as much web info I could offer in exchange.