Comment on Give your Matrix account a Discord UI with Commet
Shayeta@feddit.org 2 days agoMessage metadata - such as sender, recipient, device ID, and timestamps - is not encrypted at the transport layer, and in many cases remains visible to the homeserver
Ontimp@feddit.org 2 days ago
Inside info as I work in the vicinity:
Wire wrote that article in summer last year to prevent the German IT-Planning Council from adopting Matrix as the communications layer for its consolidated interfederal government-to-citizen messaging infrastructure in the public administration.
So be aware that this article is not a good-faith tech blog post but part of public affairs campaign / lobbying attempt.
Would be near to have meta data encrypted in Matrix, but it’s not a deal breaker for most use cases imo.
Shayeta@feddit.org 2 days ago
Agreed, but metadata not being encrypted remains a fact. Sure, metadata of a single message might not mean much, but when combined with metadata of many messages from many users you can find out a lot about a person and their habits. Especially when cross-referencing with other data sources (social media of other users, phone location, etc.).
youtube.com/watch?v=tL8_caB35Pg
Ontimp@feddit.org 2 days ago
Absolutely, it’s definitely one of the major areas work on the Matrix standard is needed.
There is an MSC (= a spec change proposal) from September 2025 where the folks at Element proposed a solution for how to do this going forward: element.io/…/hiding-room-metadata-from-servers/
Shayeta@feddit.org 2 days ago
Thank you very much for these links. I really like the ideas Matrix + Element, and I think they have the best shot of making something very usable. Hopefully this gets implemented one day and I can actually make the switch!