For whatever reason I’ve never been a huge chatroom person, but the recently renewed conversation over Discord’s identity verification system has got me thinking once again about free, open, and community-run alternatives–with Matrix being the one that I think stands out the most.
For those who aren’t familiar, for better or worse Matrix isn’t a 1:1 clone of Discord (like you mostly see with Stoat or Fluxer), but an open protocol for federated messaging and voice chat. Instead of a centralized service run by any one company or group, Matrix is a lot like email or “the fediverse”: a network of different servers, run by different people, communicating with each other using a single protocol and visualized through various apps (like Element or FluffyChat).
But for as much as Matrix feels like the fediverse in spirit, to me it also feels very separate from the fediverse, like it’s not a part of the “same conversation”, so to speak. The ethos is similar. The background is similar. The mission is similar. But, despite that, I feel like I don’t see as much overlap between fediverse communities and matrix communities as I would expect.
Maybe it’s purely because of the near-ubiquity of Reddit and Discord in modern net culture, but it seems pretty common to see Reddit communities that advertise links to Discord communities. Whereas it seems a lot more rare for “threadiverse” communities to advertise links to Matrix communities. Which leads me to my question…
What do you all think of Matrix?
Have you been aware of it? Have you tried it?
Are you an active Discord user? Are you an active Matrix user? If so, what do you like/dislike about it? If not, why not?
Broadly speaking, do you think there is value in what Matrix is doing? How do you see it fitting in with the rest of the Fediverse?
Speaking to my own feelings… While I don’t think Discord is the most problematic part of the modern internet, I do think that it’s only a matter of time before the de-facto centralization of so many internet communities behind one corporate gatekeeper becomes a bigger problem.
I do think Matrix is a little bit complicated (though, like the fediverse, part of that is just the nature of the complexity of running a federated internet service) and it has some rough edges.
Search is lackluster and discoverability of communities is pretty low, though arguably the same is true for Discord even if it isn’t as much of a problem due to just how popular Discord is.
I also think that Discord is significantly better at being community-oriented, with features like being able to schedule events that aren’t available in Matrix’s “spaces”.
At some point, I can only assume that Discord will (at best) go down the path of profit-driven enshittification and corporate corruption OR (at worst) fall off into obscurity taking a large chunk of internet community/history with it. Discord’s recent age (read: identity) verification is troubling, especially in the current climate of political corruption and corporate mass surveillance.
So to me, it is worth investing some time and effort into building free, open and defederated alternatives, and I hope that things like Matrix are ultimately more successful over time.