full transparency:
whatever appeared to be the source of this information has been removed for some reason:
https://pressreleases.responsesource.com/news/103000/decentralised-matrix-network-hits-60-million-users-sets-sights-on-100-million/
actually, Matthew (the main Matrix dude) clarified this:
the >60M users (actual figure is 64M) is based on the phone-home reporting to matrix.org that synapse optionally does
the graph looks like this:
Screenshot 2022-07-14 at 10.58.51.png
of these, around 30M are natively on Matrix (the others are bridged in from other platforms)
and of those about 14M are long-term matrix users
And that is just the servers that have phone-home reporting turned on. So there is potentially more.
Yeah, usage figures for privacy-leaning services like this are always going to be very off because I presume most heavy users will not enable this sort of telemetry.
I set up my own Matrix server using the ansible playbook last week. It was surprisingly straightforward and I’ve been really impressed by how well the bridges to apps like Signal, WhatsApp, and FB messenger work.
I’m going to have to give this a try. I’ve been trying to get some of the bridges installed and working without much success :(
I hope it helps! I'm still a selfhosting newb and I found the documentation to be pretty easy to follow.
Bridges to other apps?
Does this provide 1 interface to multiple chat apps?
Yep i think so. Yet to try. Also i do recommend the Ansible installer scripts.
Yeah. Matrix bridges basically work as clients to WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/... and relay messages for you. If you have one person on multiple apps, they will be added as Person@Whatsapp, Person@Signal etc. So you can decide on which app to send the message.
This is really cool
I should self host this, would be nice to have one interface for discord, WhatsApp and signal
Matrix is also really good for business use as it has good E2E encryption keeping communication safe. I have ours setup with SAML so it also benefits from 2FA which is otherwise not supported.
how do they know if there's 60m users if it's truly decentralized?
see my other post
want to know the truth? Whatever appeared to be the "source" of this info is now removed for some reason
and now I am wondering whether I should delete OP or leave it up.even though it might be misinfo, I will leave it up because transparency.
feel free to downvote me into oblivion
Although the actual value of 60m is in question, you can measure the growth of matix by the number of users in servers federated with the server that the matrix team serves. Its decentralized but federation allows different servers to communicate with one another, and as people join and host more servers I think the growth would be visible from the largest federated network. Although, Im not certain if users is shared information or not, but if you share the actual chat messages (they do) they could measure users that way. This is all speculation, Im not a federation pro.
Opt-in reporting for self-hosts, plus those are stats from the public matrix.org ecosystem they host for the public. There's plenty more self-hosted instances that opt-out for reporting.
I set up Dendrite the other day just to check it out, neat project. I don’t really have a use for it as there’s much of a chance to move my groups of discord atm but maybe one day
Started testing matrix servers selfhosted long time ago. Synapse bloated really fast and the bridges did not work really well. I know they are better now especially when I see commercial projects like beeper.
I wait for dendrite come out of beta for my next attempt.
Improving the demand? Shouldn't it be "Supplying the demand"?
I found that part of the title strange as well. No idea how to word that in a better way. Post title is just a copy of article title.
Increasing maybe.
The fact that the network exists doesn't really increase demand for decentralized communication. The network exists to provide a solution for that demand.
Supplying the supply for the demand!
IMO they're too busy fixing bugs and improving the ecosystem to notice a typo in the title lol. :P
I tried setting up a synapse server last week, but think I had an issue with my nginx conf and couldn't connect. Giving it another try this weekend.
If you didn't use it last time, I'd heavily recommend the Matrix Docker Ansible Playbook - works fantastic!
I've never heard of Matrix before. Am I understanding correctly, that I can self-host a Matrix server through which I can forward all FB Messenger chats to a separate app like Element, and thus delete FB's software from my phone?
Yep, that's what I'm doing too. Also Google Chat. Also nice to have almost all my chats in one window on the desktop too
Thanks! Guess I know what I'm doing tonight.
All those behind matrix.org and Element are great people!
A webapp with mobile support is necessary, that's why all big webchats with thousands of users are still on IRC. Also, when talking about webchats, having the users registered before is not a thing: can you imagine communities such as chat gratis where people are used to join, look what's going on, type and then register if they like, to switch to matrix when the clients pretend you to register even before looking what's going inside a room?
Someone didn't look at guest/anonymous accounts then
For context: (Numbers pulled from various google search results and rounded aggressively)
Web users: 5 billion
Facebook: 3 bill
TikTok: 1 bill
Email: 4 bill
Spotify: 300 mill
Lemmy: 30,000
Isnt discord around 350m or something?
Also those slack numbers are so bad, you'd think they'd be 10x that with covid. Not surprised either though, slack sucks but its kinda the defacto enterprise/corporate solution.
Matrix should have built an XMPP client instead of inventing their own incompatible protocol.
First, Matrix is the protocol, not a client at all. Second, XMPP is not end to end encrypted, and so cannot support the very core of how Matrix works. And third, XMPP never really took off, this resolves a lot of its issues and is clearly more popular.
And Matrix ist REST (HTTP). You can pass proxies. It works better with nonpersistent connections. Then there is federation. You can run your own server and don't worry that you cannot talk to other people using other servers.
They only need real voice comms, and not through the janky jitsi integration. Something like Revolt chat but built with with matrix.
Edit: like in Discord
Do you mean rooms (like in Discord or Teamspeak) or just normal voice calls?
Because the latter is already working. And surprisingly well, as I found out a few days ago with a friend.
I wish bridges/puppets had the ability to do voice/video calls, it's not even on the roadmap for mautrix/facebook
Indeed, I use this all the time to talk to my family after I managed to get them off Skype. It works really well.
Actually, it's video calling I'm talking about, but I imagine voice calling is the same but just without the video part.
I do run my own server though, not sure how matrix.org handles it with their much higher load.
Hmm AFAIK the voice call without the janky jitsu is only working for private chats and not for group chats, isn't it?
They're working on it.
Element Call
Oh thats awesome. I'm looking forward to being able to test this. Thanks for sharing
Ah kk. Yeah I’ve used it for private chats only so far. But the quality was much better than expected.
Just like Discord.
something like Element's Video Rooms ?
Woah, end to end encrypted voice chat. Sign me up and RIP to the VOIP companies out there
It's coming. It's called Element Call.
Will it have support for something like rooms where people can drop in and out?
Yep!
(It will use Element Call once that's out of beta)
I hope they also add good noise canceling. Discord uses Krisp and it works very well.