By “shared” servers I mean hosters like https://tchncs.de/en/ who offer a bunch of services (they do a great job at it by the way) including Matrix and Lemmy.
I’m thinking of moving my close family to a Matrix chat over there, but I guess long term they might have to implement the ChatControl scanning.
This whole thing is just stupid.
By the way, if you are using Gmail for Email, have files stored on GDrive, OneDrive (Documents are by default in OneDrive on Windows) or iCloud, use Messenger, Whatsapp, Skype, Snapchat, Xbox or Instagram to communicate, your files and messages are already being scanned for the last 5 years, since 2021.
ChatControl was already voluntary, and the products I mentioned villingly joined and are already doing it. For most of the people suddenly complaining, not much actually changes. They could do something about it for the past 5 years - not use the apps that do it, but “I don’t want to install another chat apps, I have everyone on messenger” have been forcing people like me to choose between privacy and having a way how to contact friends and familly. And I’m 90% sure that most of them vouldn’t switch even if this new law did not pass.
Anyway, if you haven’t already, look up “Matrix ansible project”, it’s an extremely easy way how to set up a server, with awesome guides and actually a very robust implementation. It will save you a lot of time. I"m just paying 6$ a month for Hetzner cloud, and setting it up took like an hour tops.
Self-hosted open source solutions will always be an alternative, the major problem is that they will soon ban side-loading of apps to phones, so you won’t be able to install a FOSS messenger that connects to your solution, or a browser that doesn’t scan you, unless you have something like GrapheneOS.
I’m glad I just got it installed!
just install LineageOS or but a fairphone or vollaphone or shiftphone or furyphone with it preinstalled. or get a linux handheld device like the comet or pinephone or precursor et al
there is no using exploitative tech without financially running off a cliff. sooner you change the better
Good point about LineageOS. I’m just afraid of bricking the devices.
Hopefully this announcement will still push people to FOSS messengers.
I personally moved most of my data from Google and Microsoft around 2 years ago. Sure, they still have the data until 2021, but there’s no time machine, we can only act on the present.
My main issue with Matrix is the onboarding process. I just tried myself with two accounts, one on Fluffychat, the other on ElementX, the verification process is buggy (didn’t work the first time, I had to restart the apps for it to work), and even after you verify, ElementX will still show FluffyChat messages with a red warning because “this message has been sent from a device not verified by the sender”, while there is no way to verify the device on FluffyChat.
And I had to use FluffyChat as multi-account is still not available in Element X.
Anyway, I just set up DeltaChat on my girlfriend’s phone, we’ll try in out in the coming days. I keep an eye on second-hand Pixels with GrapheneOS, but one step at a time.
To be honest, I’m only using Matrix for the bridges into every other service, so I can talk to people on messenger, signal, telegram, discord and whatsapp through a single app, the Matrix client, so I at least don’t have spyware on my phone, even though they’ll get my messages. And E2E encryption doesn’t apply in that case, so I never had to deal with it.
With self-hosted solution, your main advantage is that you can simply create the accounts on the server side, and don’t need any verification. After the first login, it usually asks for every new device, that you have to confirm the session on a device that’s already confirmed, but I never had issues with that.
But I don’t have experience with actuall Matrix to Matrix communication, I just used the bridges. Haven’t tried DeltaChat yet, but tbh I’ve just given up convincing people to switch and am glad I can at least have the bridges working, so I never have to login or use any apps or websites of FB/Discord/whatever.