> Why would someone use a walled-garden instead of a protocol ?
Because it actually works. I've tried countless of times to use Matrix with different groups of people and every single time there comes a point after a few days where one of the participant can't read messages from another, or can't send messages anymore, etc. And that's was even the case with computer literate people (computer scientists or developers).
So yes, I see your point and in a world where Matrix actually does work and is simple to self-host, your point would be entirely valid. Sadly in real life, setting up a Mattermost instance is easy and it just works, while Matrix, even without the hassle of self-hosting, doesn't.
>Why would someone use a walled-garden instead of a protocol ?
>It's a very similar feeling for Bluesky.
Is this actual wondering on your part, or are you just rhetorically framing these as questions, as a means to express frustration? I mean, it's extremely easy to come up with an answer: they are much better-known platforms, have much larger user bases, and provide simpler and quicker initial access. That's all there is to it. In the case of Bluesky, though, you have to take into account the political stances surrounding how the platform is viewed as well.
> I mean, it's extremely easy to come up with an answer: they are much better-known platforms, have much larger user bases, and provide simpler and quicker initial access.
Can you share your sources for the "much larger user bases" ? It's hard to get the figures, I just googled them for 5 minutes and got contradictory results. Some pages say 30 million daily active users (DAU) for discord, some say 150. Slack seems to be at 30 million.
For Matrix, the official site says "The open network has grown from 80.3M to 115M addressable users." but there was only "250 DAU" in january for matrix.org, the public instance. The French gov's deployment of Matrix says 0,3 million DAU. https://element.io/case-studies/tchap
Could you please recommend a guide for how to set up something like a Slack/Discord replacement with Matrix? Do I understand correctly that this will be self-hosted?
I find it very difficult to get good solid information on actually using Matrix in the ways I use Discord.
I'm with you. but matrix is failing adoption for the same-ish reason as PGP.
You create an account from scratch, means using two (three) centralized services. matrix.org. vertex.org. (and the third is possible your email provider which would be either gmail.com or icloud.com)
Then you get a password, recovery keys, recovery passphrase, session keys. And have to know what to do with them all.
Not sure how it improved on v2, but recently i had friends doing literal PhD on cryptography code having to create a new account because they forgot to save one of those keys when replacing phones.
The reality is that worst case, it should feel like a laptop (username, password (unless using SSO) + recovery key) or a cryptocurrency wallet.
With the v2 crypto, you typically don't have to remember anything - you just scan a QR code to log in.
If you've logged out all of your devices then yes, you need username + password (unless using SSO), and then if you want to recover your encrypted history you need the recovery key.
It's true that the UX historically was awful, but on Element X i believe we've got it right (and Element Web/Desktop will shortly follow).
Self-hosting is possible but optional. You can create rooms/spaces on matrix.org or any other matrix server of your choice. If you want control over your data, you may want to self-host, but if you consider Slack or Discord to be acceptable for your use cases, you can probably use a standard Matrix server without any issues.
You can create a "space" that's pretty close to a Discord server. Spaces include rooms ("channels") or even other spaces. This means you could set up a "Friends of pixelpoet" space with a bunch of channels like on Discord, but also a "pixelpoet Corp" server with in it spaces for "General", "Project Jabberwocky", "HR", and "Janitorial staff", each with their own rooms and ACLs inside of it.
How I would approach your setup: I would create a new space, then create a few rooms in that space (your #general, #games, #offtopic, etc). I'd also maybe add a "video room", which works a bit like Discord's audio/video channels, though not many clients support those yet (I think they're in beta?).
Then, go to the "space home" (as Element calls it), and make sure to check every channel, and set the "mark as recommended" flag, so that people joining the space will be guided to join all of the channels as well. It's possible to join a space but not join all channels, which can be useful for some but is probably pretty awkward for most. People that don't join all channels still can join after the fact, but you probably want everyone in every room by default.
For larger servers, you want need to configure ACLs before letting people in. Do note that unlike on Discord, settings change for a Space do not apply to rooms that are included in it automatically; you may need to manually alter ACLs for every room or find a bot to do it for you. If it's just a space friends or coworkers, you hopefully don't need to bother, though.
Then, to get other people into your "server", invite them to the space, or share a generated link. Just right click the space and pick "invite".
If you like the Discord UX, you might want to try Cinny, a Matrix web client that's pretty much a Discord clone in terms of design. It doesn't support everything Element supports, but it's good enough that I'd be willing to recommend it to others if they're not the ones setting up the server.
For data safety, you can leverage Matrix's encryption feature to end-to-end-encrypt everything even if you're storing your space on another server. This can have some annoying side effects (like people losing access to their old messages when they forget their recovery password, because, well, they're encrypted) and using the feature securely requires a) verifying other people and b) verifying every device you log into with another device or by entering a backup key. This is harder than in other messengers but it's also a more secure design. Could be useful if you don't entirely trust Matrix.org, could also be useful for setting up channels for sharing sensitive documents, but it's probably best for general usability to disable encryption at first. I enable encryption everywhere, but I don't think encryption/decryption is trouble-free enough that I'd be able to convince my friends to fully enable it in chat rooms as well.
It's a walled garden in the way that matter most, which is that if the things inside the wall get back, you can't take your account/social graph and go outside the garden.
It's generally difficult to make people move away from well-established platforms. Would Matrix be a walled garden if it was the leading communications platform?
Exporting all your account data is very easy with Discord, and you can even export entire servers with bots. Doesn't seem like they make it particularly difficult to move away from their platform.
Why would someone use a walled-garden instead of a protocol ?
It's a very similar feeling for Bluesky.