Darnell (Seize The Day)

Props to @jgbarah@floss.social for highlighting this Matrix blog post in his timeline!

Matrix co-founder @Matthew@mastodon.matrix.org (Matthew Hodges) typed a very lengthly post highlighting the platforms mountains, valleys & pits on their journey towards greatness in 2022.

On Top Of The World

On one hand, the network has doubled in size (44.1M to 80.3M visible matrix IDs). The wider world is having a grand awakening to the importance of decentralisation thanks to the situation at Twitter. We’ve seen an amazing number of major new players entering the Matrix ecosystem[.] (Matrix Blog)

This is great news! While this is still a fraction when compared to Telegram’s 700 million users, I believe Matrix could be one of the largest decentralized chat/VoIP/video conferencing application on Earth!

News like this makes one feel like they are living on top of the world upon a mystical mountain!

While Matrix’s growth should be celebrated, there is a pending problem that will send any elated emotions crashing down towards a sober reality.

Valley of Concern

In short: folks love the amazing decentralised encrypted comms utopia of Matrix. But organisations also love that they can use it without having to pay anyone to develop or maintain it. This is completely unsustainable, and Element is now literally unable to fund the entirety of the Matrix Foundation on behalf of everyone else – and has had to lay off some of the folks working on the core team as a result. (Matrix Blog)

Basically what is happening is large (multi-billion dollar) corporations & (multi-trillion dollar) governments are using Matrix for free but not contributing anything back.

According to a prior Matrix blog post, 90% of the code committed to Matrix is coming from Element employees (note: Element is Managed Matrix hosting by the creators of Matrix).

Element also spends $400,000 per month to help keep the Matrix foundation alive, while support from generous donor is $6,000 per month. I think I might have some ideas how Matrix could increase donations, but I will perfect those ideas later on.

Into The Abyss

I think this is an area of concern that really surprised me.

2022 saw a real uptick in spam and abuse across Matrix, and there have been some valiant attempts to improve our moderation tooling over the course of the year. Unfortunately it hasn’t come together as rapidly as we might have hoped, however, and we’ve seen several large communities give up on Matrix and move back to Discord thanks in part to needing better anti-abuse mechanisms.

In 2023 we’re resetting our trust & safety work, with Mjolnir dev returning to its original development team, and we’ll be working as tactically as possible to ensure that all communities on Matrix can easily block abuse using whatever mechanisms they need. (Matrix Blog)

Oddly Matrix does not list the communities they are referring to here (racial, religious, etcetera), but it seems trolls & spammers have entered the Matrix en mass.

I am not sure what anti-spam/troll/hater tools Matrix can develop, but I think they should look at how these digital irritations are countered at Discord & Telegram, the latter which is gaining traction amongst Africans (continental & diaspora).

Pending Solutions‽

I do have a few ideas on how Matrix can address the latter two issues (I will post it here or at Darnell.tv), but for now this info has been an eye opener & I think it’s cool that Hodges is open about the challenges facing Matrix right now.

👨🏾‍💻 by @darnell@darnellclayton.com 🔛 @darnell@darnell.day 📧 darnell@darnell.day

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