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Perfectly cloning the Microsoft Teams experience (europe.pub)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (16 children)

I like element but it's not nearly as lightweight and user-friendly as I would like it to be.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (15 children)

    I assume we talk about the desktop client here.

    lightweight

    my brother in Christ, Discord and Teams both need like 2x the RAM so don't talk to me about that.

    user-friendly

    Idk left side has contacts and groups, right side chat. What exactly is not user-friendly there?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (14 children)

    my brother in Christ, Discord and Teams both need like 2x the RAM so don’t talk to me about that.

    I don't compare a hot-dog to a pile of dog poo and say "it's good food".

    Idk left side has contacts and groups, right side chat. What exactly is not user-friendly there?

    • slow to load up
    • long sync times
    • high battery drain for mobile users
    • room concept, as opposed to contact chats
    • electron app sucks donkeyballs - wastes lots of screen space where no chat is displayed
    • options way too hard to find at times (like how to add existing rooms to a space)
    • no online/offline status of contacts
    • trust model with device verification is unintuitive for non-techie users (admitted this one has improved with the emojis years ago and with cross-device certification)

    I could probably find a bunch of more reasons if I thought longer about it. These are all issues that don't keep me from using the app, but they are severe enough that I can't convince non-techie friends to use element as a messenger. For matrix, there are superior messengers for sure, albeit those are then limited in functionality.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

    I'm gonna pile a few on (I've mentioned them elsewhere in this thread, but..)

    • Those aforementioned "rooms?" Element took the ability to search them away but you could still join if you knew the room addr (search may be back now), why? Because of the HUGE CP spam problem those rooms had (have?). I'm not pushing an app that could possibly show my mom that shit.

    • Onboarding is atrocious, I had to set it up for everyone I tried it with myself, the normies cannot figure it out. "They should get good,” yeah I agree, but they aren't gonna, so your move.

    • It pisses metadata to any server you federate with. If you self host a contained ecosystem, maybe, but if you federate with matrix.org (as you almost have to do), the ex AMDOCs employees who started it as an AMDOCs project before breaking off to form The Matrix Foundation get more info than I'm comfortable with considering their history of spying on telecommunications.

    Ok I admit some of that isn't UI issues.. still bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

    yeah, the other person trying to refute my points is wilfully ignorantly defending bad features / UI and protocol decisions. They completely failed to notice that I personally am okay with the app, but was quoting reasons why it is not good for non tech-savvy or at least free and open source motivated users.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (10 children)

    Yeah they should be fighting me lmao (not that I want to), I'm not ok with the app. It's dogshit and so is the linux electron app, both barely work and break themselves all the time, the UI is overly complicated (even for some of the features I do like, like having three different passes [pass, recovery, and idr the third I had] was actually pretty sweet, but my less techy friends had issues, one lost his whole acct, yes he's dumb but that ain't changing, still love him lol). Even if another app actually worked (and last I saw ALL lack feature parity with Element) Matrix itself is still a metadata pissing AMDOCs (Israeli company, spied on US telcom, for those unaware) originated protocol, honestly I'm out on that alone.

    I'm a Delta Chat supremacist lmao, down with Matrix.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (9 children)

    I did some basic reading on the Amdocs links, and it appears Matthew and Amandine did not directly go there, but their previously employers were acquired by Amdocs, and their teams integrated with the new company. Considering they left that arrangement in 2017, I am inclined to kinda still trust them that matrix is designed to be private. Do you have any links on the "metadata pissing" thingie? As far as I am informed to date, matrix did not send communication metadata for any given room to federated servers outside those servers who have users in the room?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (8 children)

    I'll try to find a link to the metadata issues, but for now I'll just say it's senders, receivers, timestamps, and room "joins" I think. Also reactions and read receipts aren't encrypted for sure.

    Sure, "only the various server admins get the metadata," but when you don't trust the admins of the largest and "default" server? That's an issue. Also nothing stops [insert group that worries you] from spinning up a server to collect metadata, unless as I said you host your own separated server without any federation.

    As for the AMDOCs connection, this is enough for me to be out, make your own decisions:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)

    The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications",[6] by Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape. Amdocs then funded most of the development work from 2014 to October 2017.[7]

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    To be far, I find Matthew quite approachable from the official Matrix channels, so far he's given me no reason to be suspicious - and Israel in 2017 was not nearly as bad as today's Israel. Although yes, secure communications technologies from there shouldn't be trusted even from 20 years ago. However, I'd say the matrix protocol is more complex than "but it's from Israel".

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (6 children)

    Yeah, but then plenty of spies are personable, you'd never suspect Anna Chapman was actually Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko until she gets arrested. Actually they almost have to be somewhat personable or they can't do their jobs.

    Though in 2017 Epstein was in full swing (I know, Mossad still denies involvement, but I don't trust them and Jizzlane's dad was one of their top agents until they killed him), the AMDOCs spying scandals go back to at least 2002, NSO Group released Pegasus in 2011, that same company (NSO) is made up of veterans of Israeli Intelligence Corps SIGINT unit 8200 which was founded in 1952 (also known as the "Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps"). I don't trust Israel now, 10y ago, 20y ago, doesn't matter, I'm tired of surveillance no matter who is driving.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    I'd also rather have a completely independent messaging protcol, preferably simple - and I am using XMPP for that reason - for almost all developments it'll have to be a tradeoff, sadly :/

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    Same here, I'm using Delta Chat. Honestly it's pretty great and has all the features I need from a chat app, and it's decentralized and resilient allowing for multi-relay set-ups. It's not a discord replacement, though.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    no replacement, but discord is so awful due to centralised, unencrypted data hoarding, that I don't miss it

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Yeah I honestly never used it myself, but people seem to want a direct feature replacement without the privacy issues and to be fair Matrix is closer to fitting that bill than Delta Chat. I personally don't need that, so Delta works for me (but even if I did need it, I still can't trust Matrix).

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    yeah matrix is closer to discord - then again most gamers (discord is mostly gamers, isn't it?) are totally lost anyways because they still use microslop's fascist OS

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Very true. Though tbf some people use it for other stuff, it's gaming related but the flash cart for my GBC is just made by some Aussie and he runs his tech support on his discord server (kinda like how GrapheneOS does with their Matrix room.) That's the unfortunate part to me, I'd rather both be a phpBB forum lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    I don't compare a hot-dog to a pile of dog poo and say "it's good food".

    Then what is your definition of lightweight? A command line chat app?

    slow to load up

    literally loads within 3s

    long sync times

    maybe if you didn't open it for a year yes, otherwise it's in the sub-second area

    high battery drain for mobile users

    Mine is <1% for the last day. If you don't setup proper push messaging which then requires the app to constantly wake up - yeah than it might be a problem.

    room concept, as opposed to contact chats

    How exactly is this a problem?

    electron app sucks

    Teams is also using Electron Microslop Edition

    options way too hard to find at times (like how to add existing rooms to a space)

    Just go into the settings and you will find 99%

    Moving a room to a space has nothing to do with options and is a very uncommon task.

    no online/offline status of contacts

    ok guess you last used Element 5+ years ago?

    trust model with device verification is unintuitive for non-techie users

    Yeah e.g. Whatsapp and Signal have the exact same problems expect when you keep some (sometimes not encrypted) backup somewhere.

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