Hello fellow c/privacy members.
I’m not new to privacy related things but I had a hard time persuading my family members and friends to switch to Matrix/Element. It is a reponse to UK’s Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act that may soon in effect.
While it is just a preperation and planning in case those actually became law, I already face resistance from them. When I ask them would they switch, their first reaction is “Why one more app?” then follows with “That’s cumbersome.” or “I don’t want to learn a new app.” and suggest something more popular like Line, Telegram or Discord. Sometimes they would “Install WhatsApp because X is on there and he/she won’t install one more app just for you.”
What can I do to persuade them to use a new platform? Thanks in advance.
EDIT: I think I should elebroate more of what Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act does[1]. As far as I understand, OSB will break E2EE by require scanning data on client device, like CSAM but much more generic. IPA requires companies to submit security funcition to the government for approval before releasing, and disable such feature upon request. Apple[2], Single[3] and WhatsApp made the announancment of exiting the UK market totally or partically if two were signed into law.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/thenextweb.com/news/uk-investigatory-powers-act-default-surveillance-devices-privacy
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2023/07/21/apple-threatens-to-pull-facetime-and-imessage-from-the-uk
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20230809125823/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65301510#2023-08-09T12:57:48+00:00
I’ve been using Matrix/Element for around three years. I have there my family, a couple of friends and a couple of services that use it for alert, information. I host a non-federated server on a VPS in Germany. My approach has been simple: do you want to chat with me? Use Matrix. Otherwise, call me or send me emails.
If privacy is important for you, then make it a priority.
i tried and i failed. not because my friends didn’t want to switch, but because the software is hillariously bad. problems with the encryption left and right, smaller instances having downtimes multiple times a week (what’s the use of a federated service if anyone only uses the same one server?), buggy clients - after a few months we shut it down and moved to threema for groupchats.
If they don’t want to then don’t continue trying to persuade them. Chances are they don’t care about privacy anyway, and even if they do, everyone has their own personal preferences.
I’m planning to use Conduit[1] which is written in Rust instead of Synapse. I belive this will consume less resources but have no idea will it run smooth or not.
Afaik conduit is even more beta than denderite, personally I would not use it after seeing how buggy experience friends had with it
This paragraph is why you won’t convince friends and family to use Matrix. It’s still too technical for non-technical people.
I agree it is technical. However, considering if the laws are in effect, there might not be a secure option, let alone private. It means that all conversations might be under government’s watch. That’s why I’m looking for a self hostable option, that can make sure data is in my control.
I am open to considering alternatives, but the foundation of the plan is based on the assumption that apps commonly used for secure and private conversations, such as Signal, may become insufficiently secure and private due to potential future laws or the possibility of exiting the UK market. The preferred criteria for the chosen app are that it is open source, audited, or ideally, both.
I can’t confirm this. For me it runs smooth and without bugs. Calls with Element are sometimes better than calls with my mobile carrier.
But I don’t have the technical knowledge to understand why a backend in python is a bad thing. Maybe your experience with Matrix is biased because of this knowledge?
when did you experience this?
loading the web client also takes a lot of time (1-2 minutes) for me, but everything else is ok. even that is because of an API design problem, and they are already working to replace that bad decision
Definetely check out SimpleX Chat before you try to convince them about Matrix. SimpleX is actually the best when it comes to privacy and especially metadata-protection, which I heard Matrix handles especially badly.
Also, on SimpleX you have no permanent user identifiers at all and users only use (optionally) self-hostable servers to forward messages, not to register an account there.
