I always liked the concept of Matrix, and still actively use it, but there's some serious jank. Synapse is generally bloated and not fun to run an instance, Dendrite is perpetually in Beta, and the clients themselves range from adequate to awful. The default Element client on Android is so broken for me that I'm forced to use Element X, because I can't even log in with Element.

It's disappointing, but there's a ton of issues that aren't so easy to resolve. New Vector and the Element Foundation are basically two separate entities that have some kind of hard split between them, neither of which seems to have the money necessary to support comprehensive development. The protocol is said to be bloated and overtly complex, and trying to develop a client or a server implementation is something of a nightmare.

I want to see Matrix succeed, I think a lot of people see the potential of what it could be. I'm not sure it'll ever get there.

The protocol is bloated to hell so third-party clients stand no chance, and the foundation spends more time bikeshedding or pissing away money than they do developing. It's a doomed project.

I agree with all this. The thing which caused me to uninstall was suddenly being pushed lots of abusive message with disturbing contents.

When I complained about it, Matrix told me that my public complaints were hurting the ecosystem and I should be quiet.

I just want a self-hostable open-source alternative to the shitty closed-source IM systems I'm forced to use

I'm sticking with Matrix for now, hopefully some of the issues I've had will get ironed out

From an outsiders perspective, element has never worked for me and never been stable enough to get anywhere close to discord. Joining servers is buggy AF and Element X is severely hobbied on mobile.

I've been refusing to use discord for about 6-8 months and am often invites to join various discords by IRL friends and online communities. I wish Matrix / Element was a viable alternative but I've never been able to get it working for anythung other than DMs, and I'm already happy with Signal for that honestly.

As a non developer I want to be sensitive to the amount of work involves, and the number of cooks in the kitchen, but the fact that we don't have a FOSS- federated slack / discord killer app is leaving so much interaction on the table.

I've heard of Revolt but it doesn't seem to be there with encryption

I am glad someone can admit it failed and we have to learn from this. I am just wondering what it takes to succeed.

i want 90s era icq and 2000s era msn back :(

https://github.com/matrix-construct/tuwunel

Plug for tuwunnel.

Easy to set up, and just works. I can't share any of the OP's annoyances - everything is fast. Admittedly, I don't really use the web client. Just the Android app from F-Droid and the linux AUR package element-desktop.

I tried it, joined a couple rooms. Wanted to leave those public rooms but I kept getting notifications of rooms I already left.

Very wonky experience, so I dropped it and I use deltaChat now for my Tech-aware contacts

Self hosted matrix works great. /thread

The thing is... What alternatives are there? Signal can't be trusted (on the very same website there is an article about it). I'm not using closed source alternatives, Simplex is kinda shady too tbh and I'm not even sure I could get anyone to use it.

I don't like Matrix/Element either but sadly its the best open source chat solution we have.

For me Matrix is fine, I can use IRC, Whatsapp and Discord with it. But Element is not my cup of tea, especially with Firefox as it doesn't play any videos other users are sharing. The same videos work fine with Cinny.

XMPP is still an option

Shit, I had such high hopes.