Element sadly collects metadata.
Element is just a matrix client, and it doesnt collect data itself. What is relevant is choosing appropiate instance, which dont require you to use email etc
Could be argued that Lemmy does too. I realise the use case is different but the risk feels similar. You can sign up with a anonymous username, your phone number isn’t exposed and some Matrix instances don’t even require an email (and if they do you can use an anonymising service). Its not great, I agree, but its also not that bad either.
My issue with Element X (and the reason I’m still using Element) is that X doesn’t (yet) support Spaces. Again, not a huge issue, but annoying enough to stop me switching.
SchildiChat Next, which is based on Element X, has implemented spaces.
I’m not sure about which metadata is collected by Element, but it might be possible to correlate data, for example through fingerprinting. So it might be possible to know who the parties communicating with each other are and when and with whom they have communicated with, even though they did not provide phone/email.
With Signal, as far as I know and they claim, that is not possible. The only data Signal has is your phone number, when you’ve signed up and when you last logged in.
So with my limited knowledge I’d say Signal is much more private for personal communication. Especially if you’re not tech savvy and take additional measures.
And Lemmy is a social message board. There is no expectation of privacy here.
Lemmy isn’t trying to be the paragon of security, but a totally open discussion thingy lol. It’s like saying there is lower security in public speeches.
Which is why I said I was aware the use case is different. I’m also not sure Element is trying to be a paragon of security. As I understand it, their focus is on privacy.
Over the past five years, I’ve worked hard to persuade my friends and family to drop WhatsApp and switch to Signal. I don’t want to ask them to change platforms again—especially since Signal is open-source, and there’s currently no compelling reason for me to abandon it.
Because XMPP is not an open standard I guess…
I recently used matrix as a replacement for me and my gf. And I was really surprised on how easy it is to setup and do video calls. Still need to figure out the puppeting thing for whatsapp and Im golden
Wasn’t matrix developed by Amdocs initially? which has ties to the Israeli intelligence infrastructure?
This combined with the collection of metadata would be a redflag for me.
Isn’t Element janky and bloated?
A group of mine is currently dismissing migrating to Matrix. Among the arguments, it’s said to be more popular than our current messenging protocol, but it’s also said to be a drain on battery.
I saw one comparison saying the official Matrix client on Android drain battery 10x faster than some well written XMPP clients. So I’m not going to migrate for now. May reconsider once Matrix clients reduce battery usage significantly.
I don’t think they will, I think you’re supposed to use unified push instead.
Not necessarily. Conversations have reasonable battery usage without using Google’s push messaging system (GCM). They rely instead on XMPP protocol features and client optimisations to limit battery usage.
I’ve been using Matrix for a couple of years and I’ve noticed to problem with battery drain. My kids use SchildiChat, I used to use Element but recently switched to Element X which is nicer, I think.
