I’m still not entirely sure what problem Sup is trying to solve. Matrix already exists. Matrix supports E2EE through the signal protocol, as well as native federation, and it bridges to almost any existing chat service. Matrix is inherently less secure, overall, than Signal, but I don’t see how Sup would fix this either – for that I’ll have to wait and see. As for using one’s fedi account to sign-in, that’s mostly just up to supporting OAuth, and not some feature that would be unique to the app.
It’s harder to maintain security due to more complexity of federated systems and Matrix does not have as much global security community looking at it as Signal has.
I guess that’s a fair assessment. A counter argument on that statement could be safer due to the smaller user base since it is not as on the radar. Or that the various implementations could be more secure since there are multiple choices in server deployments in a few different languages even. That being said synapse is definitely the most dominant by a wide margin.
What I don’t like with Matrix is the load it puts on the server. It basically copies 100% of a room content to any server having one or more users registered in the room.
So if you’re on a small server, and one user decides to join a 10k+ large room, your server may collapse under the load as it tries to stay in sync with the room’s activity. This is deterrent to self-hosting or family/club/small party servers.
XMPP, on the other hand, has proven to be highly scalable, has E2EE, federation and some bridging services.
The only thing XMPP does NOT have is a single reference multiplatform client with all basic features for 2023 (1:1 chat, chat rooms, voice/video 1:1, and voice/video conference) than anyone can use without wondering if the features-set is the same as the persons you’re talking to.
And while we’re there: I’m not even sure I want a messaging account linked to any of my Fediverse accounts…
Room replication is not as big of a deal for server as it seems. But as server admin I can say Synapse is terrible at garbage collection, the database keeps growing and growing if you don’t make your special scripts to clean it.
What I don’t like with Matrix is the load it puts on the server. It basically copies 100% of a room content to any server having one or more users registered in the room.
Retroactively?? I’m sure that one could configure this to not be the case… no?
So if you’re on a small server, and one user decides to join a 10k+ large room, your server may collapse under the load as it tries to stay in sync with the room’s activity.
“Collapse” meaning what, exactly? Do you mean run out of storage from the volume of content, or that processing all the messages is too taxing?
XMPP, on the other hand, has proven to be highly scalable
How does it scale differently than Matrix?
I’m not even sure I want a messaging account linked to any of my Fediverse accounts…
“Collapse” meaning what, exactly? Do you mean run out of storage from the volume of content, or that processing all the messages is too taxing?
Years back, I setup a Synapse’s server on my personal server (Yunohost). At some point, I joined the “big” Matrix room. Bad idea: RAM and CPU usage went through the roof. I had to kill the server but even that took forever as the system was struggling with the load.
Last comment is from less than one year ago. I was told things should be better with newer servers (Dendrite, Conduit, etc.), but I’ve not tried these yet. They’re still in development.
How does it scale differently than Matrix?
The Matrix protocol is a replication system: your server will have to process all events in the room one or more users attend(s) to. There is a benefit to this: you can’t shut down a room by shutting down any server: all the other ones are just as “primary” as the original. Drawback: your humble personal server is now on the hook.
XMPP rooms are more conventional: a room is located on one server. That’s an “old” model, but it scales.
That’s for the host. For other attendees, it’s much lower.
I don’t think I atteld any public room out there with 3k users, so I can’t report my first hand experience, this is the best I found. But I never had to check for load issue on a small server (running Metronome and many more services).
Out of curiosity, why do you say this?
I don’t use the Fediverse the way I engage with individual people. If I want a closer relation with someone, I don’t want to be bound to yet-another-messenging system, let alone on multiple accounts
And another reason is I may not want to be bothered by people I don’t know, regardless how much I could appreciate reading and/or exchanging with them in the Fediverse.
Ignoring or declining requests from strangers can leave a lot to interpretation and then frustration. Remove the button and no one is tempted to press it the be disappointed with the outcome. Less drama.
“Collapse” meaning what, exactly? Do you mean run out of storage from the volume of content, or that processing all the messages is too taxing?
Years back, I setup a Synapse’s server on my personal server (Yunohost). At some point, I joined the “big” Matrix room. Bad idea: RAM and CPU usage went through the roof. I had to kill the server but even that took forever as the system was struggling with the load.
It appears that issue is closed as per this comment:
This should hopefully be significantly improved in the upcoming v1.36.0 release. I’m going to close this for now, if people still see issues after updating then feel free to make a new issue.
So pehaps this issue that you are describing is now fixed?
How does it scale differently than Matrix?
[…] XMPP rooms are more conventional: a room is located on one server. That’s an “old” model, but it scales. […]
This only scales so long as the single server is able to keep up with all of the requests. In the replication, as you have described, all the instances sort of act like load balancers – they spread the individual requests, and concentrate them into single links between the instances.
And another reason is I may not want to be bothered by people I don’t know, regardless how much I could appreciate reading and/or exchanging with them in the Fediverse.
I think I see what you are getting at with this. Would it be like, for example, if your Lemmy account is also tied to Matrix, then someone on Lemmy could send you a request to talk on Matrix? Granted this could already be assumed to occur if one uses the same username for all of their accounts, but it could possbily be more of an issue if it was more directly integrated. That being said, I’m not sure how realistic this scenario would be since the Matrix protocol is completely independent of Activity Pub. The only connection between accounts that I can think of is OAuth.
I TOO LIKE TO ENGAGE IN HUMAN INTERACTION SUCH AS CONVERSATION AND HUMOR. GRANT ME ENTRY TO YOUR DOMICILE OR I SHALL ENTER FORCEFULLY IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY WITHIN 64,000 MILLISECONDS
PLEASED TO MEET YOU FELLOW NORMAL HUMAN LET’S ENGAGE IN NATURAL DIALOGUE I WILL START WHAT’S YOUR SOCIAL INSURANCE NUMBER
THAT WAS A JOKE BECAUSE I ALREADY HAVE YOUR SOCIAL INSURANCE NUMBER NOW I HAVE USED HUMOUR TO LOWER YOUR SOCIAL DEFENSES PLEASE LET ME SEE YOUR DNA WE ARE FRIENDS
MY SENSORS HAVE INDICATED THAT YOU ARE OF SUITABLE AGE FOR HUMAN MATING RITUALS. PLEASE EVALUATE MY HUMAN INSEMINATION SHAFT AND DECIDE IF IT IS DESIRABLE TO YOU.
You don’t access any Fediverse project with the same user and I never claimed there is a Fediverse service that Matrix has a OAuth option for, just that it’s just OAuth and can be implemented easily to basically everything, there are no shared accounts between Fediverse services and there are barly any Fediverse projects with OAuth implementations between each other ether, Pixelfed recently added Mastodon OAuth but even that’s a relatively new feature.
Well, the obvious dissatvantages are that Activipub isn’t made for chat applications and doesn’t support proper encryption yet (heavily WIP but veey far from implemented)
It would be nice to have something Fedi to replace Signal, now that Signal dropped SMS support and seem to be trying to become the next WhatsApp/Discord.
If you’re looking for the lemmy model of open source software on federated servers and you only have to trust the server admin, you’re looking for Matrix. If you want to try something newer and more trustless, check out SimpleX!
I mean, I would if I knew anyone that wanted to chat on it. TBH Telegram is good enough for me privacy wise. Signal if your paranoid. Discord is public chat in my mind. Slack for getting stuff done at work. Matrix / Element if I feel like going back to IRC level weirdness.
Dropping SMS support made it almost completely unusable with most of my contacts, but also they’re trying to become a social media company, as if we needed another one of those.
I don't understand how most of this works I suppose, but I remember reading one of the problems with DMs in Mastodon and Lemmy is that they aren't actually private due to the way federation works, so I wonder how encryption is going to work in Sup.
I get a kick out of it when I get a dumbass captcha like that and the stupid fucking robot tells me I did it wrong. Like, the whole point is that I know how to answer them and you don’t.
I loved Trillian for being a messaging app that just integrated gchat, msn, ICQ, etc. I miss a unified messenger so much. I think it died when SMS became mainstream.
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