Why does this community, which is privacy oriented, use Discord rather than Matrix?
Why does this community, which is privacy oriented, use Discord rather than Matrix?
On the side bar it lists the following:
- [Matrix/Element]Dead
- Discord
"Discord" is an active link, but the Matrix link is completely inactive. Not only is it inactive (which could have be excused as a broken link), but it is also manually labeled as "Dead", as if there is no intention of making it work. How can a community that is focused on privacy willingly favor a service that is privacy non-respecting when a perfectly functional privacy-respecting alternative exists?
It's the timeless debate between accessibility and exclusivity. Do you want more people in your community by compromising some values? Or would you rather be a hardliner but never reach those people?
Most of the time you have to pick somewhere on that spectrum. It's a question of pragmatism and utilitarianism.
Does it do more good for lots of people to be slightly more privacy-aware, or is it better to have a very small portion of the population that are super privacy-aware?
You have to decide, and the debate rages on all the time.
Lazyness and convenience, as always.
I've used the Discord bridge before; it works pretty well, and allows Matrix users to practice better (identity & tracking) privacy if they want. There is none, in Discord.
It does require (a) the Discord community admin to allow the bridge, and (b) some playing with configuration of the bridge to get banning working.
The biggest issue with Matrix is how privacy-respecting it is. Any public forum with anonymous account creation is subject to spam bots, and requires more work by admins. The biggest complaint about the bridge, and why so many Discord admins do not allow it, is because it greatly increases the spam they have to deal with. Kicking and blocking do work fine through the bridge, but it's still a distraction requiring constant vigilance.
Matrix needs better admin tools (where have we heard that before?) Mjolnir is good, but the freely hosted instance was shut down a year or so ago, so it's not available to casual users. And taking on running a service just for a community bridge is a silly requirement.
My points are, that it's not an either-or, but that it requires work. It's a question of commitment, not possibility. c/privacy could have a Matrix-first, privacy-friendly approach and still offer Discord for privacy casuals; it's just harder.
People who dislike discord and want a good alternative besides matrix should check out revolt.chat <3
"discussing privacy on discord" that should be a joke anyways i created privacy@conference.jabbers.one so join if you want
Because this community (along with all privacy subreddits/communities) are a fucking meme.
Because privacy and convenience are two extreme opposites and you can only go so far in the privacy direction before you start losing everything. Discord just works a million times better as a public forum/community than Matrix and is much more easily accessible to everyone.
There is a limit. I am privacy conscious but I still use all Google Services for example, because they actually provide me with a better web, work, mobile and entertainment experiences. Similarly, I prefer Discord for big communities with channels, server bots and topics, over Matrix.
Edit: all those people saying we can't be privacy conscious and use Google Services at the same time: yes you can. Their services literally make my life better so I will keep using them, but I keep what I share with them to the absolute minimum. I go into their settings and disable everything I can about tracking and ads personalization (even if they still track me, I do my best not to be). You can surely still be privacy conscious using non-private products. Being extremist is not how you convince average joes to think about privacy, nor by telling them to give up all they use for unknown (for them) alternatives.
Some shocking answers here 🤷♂️
It's the same issue with a lot of open-source software projects. Many use proprietary/closed-source services to communicate with users or develop the software itself. It's quite ironic, really. 🤦♂️
Here is your answer, and it was asked 3 months ago. This includes all the context surrounding it, and why there has been no Matrix chatroom ever since. Linking for relevance, same content is below. https://lemmy.ml/comment/1632728
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(JUNE 2022) LEMMY RCMP THREAT FIASCO REVISIT
There was a recent incident from late April 2023 (a month ago) where Daniel Micay claimed he has faced a swatting attempt (attempt to raid house and murder), and a certain CP and gore spammer flooded GrapheneOS chatrooms with this type of nasty troll content, but in one month, he has NOT provided any evidence. Moreover, he claimed Royal Canadian Metropolitan Police (RCMP) is investigating this matter, and then proceeded to lockdown the GrapheneOS Off-Topic Matrix chatroom (place of claimed incident) for sometime.
Micay's claims are still unproven two months later. Moreover, his accusations against and harassment of Louis Rossmann sparked a lot of anger among the non delusional people that left behind and condemned GrapheneOS after this.
This faux threatening using Canadian police's credentials reminded me of a very similar incident that I faced at Lemmy from two moderators (akc3n from GrapheneOS and dngray from PrivacyGuides) on behalf of Micay. I am the moderator of c/privacy at Lemmy, and this was their failed attempt at trying to rage bait me into reacting hastily, causing administration to revoke my moderation powers, so that GrapheneOS trolls could make Lemmy their next place of habitat, something I protect Lemmy from.
During this incident, due to the chaos that the tag team of GrapheneOS and PrivacyGuides (remember they still have shared moderator after Tommy?) caused, one Lemmy administrator warned me, because they got scared about the name of police being involved. Tommy_Tran/Privsec_dev proceeded to get me banned from Lemmy c/privacy's Matrix chatroom by tag teaming with dngray (PrivacyGuides moderator) to bait the moderator of that Matrix chatroom in believing I was the troll. Tommy took over soon enough and changed the room into some Windows/GrapheneOS Security crap, and later the moderator of Matrix chatroom itself moved off of Lemmy.ml (Lemmy's main instance) onto Lemmy.ca (coincidentally a Canadian instance). I do not know if these Canadians are friends or just fellow countrymen, but what they did was insanely evil. (Instances are like separate websites that can still operate like they are the same forum/website.)
Screenshot of c/privacy Matrix room takeover and trolling behind my back, knowing what they have pulled off: https://i.imgur.com/PoTiANo.jpg
Want to know who the person who pulled it off, is? https://lemmy.ml/u/Yayannick, still a moderator of this sublemmy, right now, who mains lemmy.ca and has been inactive here since the past year. His real ID is https://lemmy.ca/u/Kokomheart, and this is the untold story of how lemmy.ca was built atop of leeching off of lemmy.ml, the main instance.
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Lemmy.one instance is PrivacyGuides' instance today, in case anyone wants to stay away from it. The same thieves that stole PrivacyToolsIO's $17,500 donations, and went unchecked.
Same reason why people use Google products when they could use something else (and note very often that they can't): it's more convenient because Google products are better. Because Google has the clout to make them better and bury the competition even more. which is the very definition of monopolistic anti-competitiveness.
Element is garbage in my experience. It's just not very user friendly, it's slow, it's bloated (and no wonder, it's a React application) and it's not very stable on the desktop. I tried my best to like it but I just can't: it's awful. And unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that's the best Matrix client out there.
I'm sure the Element people are trying their hardest and I don't fault them. But I'm pretty sure they don't have the resources to make it better, unlike Discord. So people staying on Discord is a self-perpetuating prophecy, until someone commits the resources to make Matrix an easy, fast and attractive proposition.
I think normies are flooding in
Discord is just the preferred platform for that sort of group-based text comms. It's better both in a technical sense (more feature-rich and more reliable), and a UX sense, for a majority of users. It's also free to set up a server, which gives it a huge boost to usability. Matrix has a long way to go if they want to compete.
Another person who thinks Discord is the equivalent of PRISM for China because Tencent helped with funding them? You're welcome to go work for them. They mostly live in Sanfranciso and got a whoping ~5% of their startup money from Tencent.
As a light reminder, Discord has been blocked in China since... 2018?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord
https://discord.com/open-source
https://venturebeat.com/games/hammer-chisel-pivots-to-voice-comm-app-for-multiplayer-mobile-games/
