Giving Up on Element and Matrix.org
Matrix, the open standard behind the Element chat client, is drawing both praise for its openness and criticism for its complexity, performance issues, and unstable user experience. Commenters cite slow and buggy official clients, confusing encryption and presence features, and a constantly shifting roadmap (Synapse vs. Dendrite, Element vs. Element X, Jitsi vs. Element Call) as reasons for abandoning the platform or hesitating to adopt it, especially in corporate settings. Project maintainers acknowledge missteps and funding constraints, argue that many problems stem from infrastructure or ecosystem gaps rather than the protocol itself, and contend that newer components like Element X and the Rust SDK will eventually resolve many of the pain points.
Ecosystem & Adoption
- Matrix is seen as the de‑facto place for many FOSS and Fediverse/ActivityPub projects; Discord/Slack more common for general OSS.
- Some see this as a reason to “stick it out”; others argue Matrix’s weaknesses are now actively pushing them back to XMPP or proprietary tools.
Client UX: Element vs Element X
- Broad agreement that “classic” Element is slow, buggy, and has poor encryption UX.
- Element X is widely reported as faster and more pleasant, but criticized for missing key features (threads, spaces, search, some inter‑client calling) and rough edges.
- Some users find Element X itself clunky/buggy; others say it’s the first Matrix client they’re actually happy with.
- Frustration that there are effectively two bad choices: fast but incomplete vs full‑featured but sluggish.
Protocol Complexity & Spec Process
- Commenters highlight the huge number of Matrix spec change proposals (MSCs) and a growing backlog, comparing unfavorably to earlier criticism of XMPP’s extension sprawl.
- Others argue this is just how an evolving spec works, not a flaw in itself; backlog is blamed on underfunded spec work.
Server Reliability, Federation & Self‑Hosting
- A major matrix.org outage (broken rooms) traced to corrupted Postgres indexes; recovery took weeks and caused state/federation anomalies.
- Some report chronic issues: images not delivering or loading, media auth misconfigurations, odd invite failures, unexplained blacklisting, and high admin overhead.
- Project maintainers insist federation should not drop messages except under extreme misconfiguration/corruption and ask for concrete bug reports.
Governance, Funding & Priorities
- Several users describe interactions with the Matrix/Element team as arrogant or dismissive (“pay or accept it”), especially around large architectural changes (auth, calling, Element X).
- The project lead counters that both the Foundation and Element are underfunded, forced to prioritize paying government/enterprise work and can’t maintain old and new stacks in parallel.
- Some see Matrix’s multi‑language stack and repeated rewrites as “architecture astronaut” behavior; maintainers frame it as converging on a common Rust core.
Security, Privacy & Trust & Safety
- Complaints include flaky E2EE (lost keys/history), poor bot encryption support, and UX that encourages logging in on random web clients.
- Strong accusations that Matrix is “not really privacy‑focused” are labeled as FUD by others, who point to open source and ongoing CVE work.
- CSAM/abuse on the public matrix.org server is acknowledged as a serious, hard problem; proposals range from better hash‑based filtering to restricting uploads to paying users.
Alternatives & Trade‑offs
- XMPP (Conversations, Gajim, Monal, ejabberd) is the main suggested alternative: simpler, mature, easier to self‑host, but weaker on group UX and feature‑parity.
- Other options mentioned: Zulip (excellent for threaded, geeky workflows), Delta Chat (promising but niche), IRC‑based solutions, and Signal (great UX/security but centralized, phone‑tied, hostile to self‑hosting).