Thanks. It’s slightly worse than I thought. I’m kinda limited to communication with my small peer group, so I don’t notice that other user classes exist.
Matrix works a little like email, but instantaneous and secure:
You need to register an account at a provider
Whatever your provider is, you can talk to people using other providers
In the same way you can use Outlook or Thunderbird with the same email account, you can use different Matrix apps for the same Matrix account.
Several apps exist, but we’re going to go with Element for the sake of simplicity, as it’s among the most fully-featured Matrix apps on the market.
Once you are more comfortable with the basics and if you want to use another app, head to the clients section of this website.
A switch to what? To nothing?
Self hosting Matrix comes to mind. With deployment automation it’s reasonably painless.
You are severally over-estimating the computer skills of the general population. Here is some data on that.
Thanks. It’s slightly worse than I thought. I’m kinda limited to communication with my small peer group, so I don’t notice that other user classes exist.
Is that like a decentralised WhatsApp?
WhatsApp runs on unfederated XMPP; why not just run your own decentralized XMPP node?
How difficult is that to a complete amateur?
https://joinjabber.org/
Its more similar to discord.
It’s a federated communication protocol and open source implementation thereof, including servers and clients.
https://matrix.org/docs/chat_basics/matrix-for-im/
What is it?
Matrix works a little like email, but instantaneous and secure:
You need to register an account at a provider Whatever your provider is, you can talk to people using other providers In the same way you can use Outlook or Thunderbird with the same email account, you can use different Matrix apps for the same Matrix account. Several apps exist, but we’re going to go with Element for the sake of simplicity, as it’s among the most fully-featured Matrix apps on the market.
Once you are more comfortable with the basics and if you want to use another app, head to the clients section of this website.
Signal would be the best choice, imho. Next best would be SimpleX for android or iOS. The desktop version is currently not great.