Created an account on Stoat and Matrix. So far I prefer Stoat as it’s easier and more intuitive to use.

I agree, but sometimes certain VPN’s can be blocked if they are often used by bots, such as free VPN’s. Just thought I’d ask to see if I could narrow down what could be happening (since it works fine on my end, even with a VPN).

I’ve had very consistant issues with messages not decrypting on Matrix with Megolm, and it’s known for leaking a lot of metadata. I’m also not a fan of the Matrix foundation heavily courting law enforcement and getting funded by Israel. I know it’s open-source, but combined with the problems I’ve faced using, the fact that the self-hosting side mostly targets enterprise use, and the heavy resource usage of Matrix when self-hosting, I personally think XMPP is the better option currently.

OMEMO is structured similarly to Signal’s encryption. It probably doesn’t scale up super well to like, 10,000+ users, but OMEMO can be turned off for super large channels where encryption might not be needed, and turned on for smaller groups where privacy is desired or between friends.

the Matrix foundation heavily courting law enforcement and getting funded by Israel

Try taking your head out of your arse for five seconds and bring minimal evidence when you make accusations like that lol

It probably doesn’t scale up super well to like, 10,000+ users

So you’re confirming my point, you could have refrained from making a fool of yourself

Stoat is centralized and has no e2ee

Not sure why you’re responding with that amount of hostility, I don’t feel I did anything to warrant it?

Matrix’s creation and development for the first 3 years was funded by Amdocs, as evidenced on the Matrix.org website itself:

How is Matrix[.]org funded? For the first three years of Matrix’s development (2014-2017), most of the core contributors worked for Amdocs, who paid for them to work fulltime on Matrix. In July 2017, Amdocs considered the project to be sufficiently successful that it could now self-support and so stopped funding. The majority of the core team is now employed by Element, an independent company set up to hire the team and support Matrix’s development. Other contributors are funded by their own employers or donate their own time to the project.

Amdocs is a telecom company that was founded in Israel, and later went on to run much of the US’s telecom infrastructure. It has long been suspected to be involved in espionage for the Israeli government.

One of their revenue streams is providing their services to law enforcement, as they admit to here, which I’m not particularly comfortable with, personally.

So you’re confirming my point

When I say 10,000+, I mean it may not scale to encrypting that amount of people in a single room, not that the service itself cannot scale beyond that. Due to its distributed nature, it can avoid being bogged down by having many thousands of users, but if 10,000 people all tried to go into a single encrypted room where all those messages would have to be sent all at once, that room would, I assume, bog down. That’s an insanely unlikely situation to ever occur, as any public server that could grow to that size would not have encryption turned on anyway (and Discord itself, the thing we’re trying to replace, doesn’t have any encryption at all).

Because I know exactly who I’m dealing with here, that’s gross misinformation.

Congrats you’ve found where it was founded, now it’s an independent non-profit. What’s wrong with you?
https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths

Then you’re mixing out Element with Matrix, alleging they provide services to law enforcement. Not the same thing my friend, if you have a problem with Element, fine, then get another client. What’s the problem?

You’re just proving my point again on scalability, get off the keyboard lol

You’re response amounts to “Okay, so what if it was created and funded by an Israeli company known for espionage? They spun it off into a non-profit, which somehow removes any connection between those two things now.”

As to Element, they are, in their own words, made up of ex-Matrix Staff.

They’re legally distinct entities if that matters, but they’re still from the same likely compromised institution.

If you like Matrix and find absolutely nothing concerning about the connections of the two most influential entities in that space, than by all means, carry on.

For myself, I’ll stick with XMPP or Deltachat.

They spun it off into a non-profit, which somehow removes any connection between those two things now

Yes, by definition, but we can keep going.

[BIG PICTURE TO PROVE NOTHING]

You can’t reject the Matrix Foundation because it’s a non-profit. There is no credible evidence that Israel (government or intelligence agencies) funds or controls Matrix as a protocol.

If you like Matrix and find absolutely nothing concerning about the connections of the two most influential entities in that space, than by all means, carry on.

If you write a client that uses a protocol to communicate over the internet, you better stick to that protocol, no? I mean, think about it for a second? What’s wrong with youuuu? lol

It’s easier to use. Besides Matrix e2ee is opt-out, and lots of public room disabled that.

Stoat isn’t perfect, but it is the best replacement. It is open source and the developers work on a volunteer basis.

I was talking with a friend about this when they announced age verification. He seemed pretty optimistic that this would hopefully bring back forums/irc/vent servers or anything self hostable, but I’m not to sure. I’m sure all of us here knew what was going on with this, but I’m sure the average person still doesnt care as much and will continue to trade away privacy for convenience. We all have family and friends who come to when something like this happens, but continue to use services afterwards. Seems like we will continue to be a fun club of like minded people here on fedi stuff with most people staying with what they know.

Sorry for the rant

Thank god. I was getting worried for a second

He seemed pretty optimistic that this would hopefully bring back forums/irc/vent servers or anything self hostable

He’s naive as hell, especially if he thinks that the average person is willing to self-host fuck-all.

This’ll drive some of the more privacy-conscious users somewhere else, but some might not have an option depending on what they use it for, and many software projects etc. use Discord for support (“I just won’t use that software!” is an idiot’s answer to that, because again, you might not have a choice). LGBT+ folks will probably be more spooked, but even they might not have a choice.

The average user won’t give a flying fuck

Stoat is missing video calls and screen sharing, both of which Movim has while still being federated and encrypted.

I think he was half joking and half thinking of communities hes on that are more tech savvy. I’m also a little bit younger than him and interact with people younger than me, and I think theres a disconnect there.

Yes, I miss vent and irc but most people never used text or voice chat until it was centralized and braindead easy to use. I would like to go back to something like that, but most people never used it in the first place (compared to active users now) and probably have no interest in learning/setting it up.

As an early 30 something guy, I don’t see most people my age hopping ship to something like Matrix or older comm software because of the learning curve vs Discord. Younger people even less based on my personal experience.