Comment on What are your opinions on Matrix?
dngray@lemmy.one 11 months agoFor instance my phone number isn’t tied to my Matrix account
It isn’t for anyone using any client unless they optionally decide to provide it.
They talk of Matrix being centralized but that only really applies if you use the Matrix home server, there are many alternatives
Indeed: joinmatrix.org/servers/ and that’s not even getting started on the private ones or unlisted ones.
is it betetr than Discord for privacy and security ?
100% Discord has no privacy no encryption, the company sees absolutely everything.
Discord is clsoed source so nobody knows what it gives up or does in the background
That doesn’t necessarily impact privacy, and we know exactly what it does in the background based on their privacy policy.
No closed source program can be trusted over a FOSS option
I would say be careful here, because something is open source doesn’t necessarily mean anyone cares about what the code is actually doing. In the case of Matrix it is a very active project with a lot of community engagement and a well thought out specification so that everyone can “get up to speed”. That is extremely important. Nobody is going to sift through a tarball of source code “it’s open source”, if the development is not. It’s also totally possible for a patched version to be running in production that doesn’t reflect the source code.
That is why it’s very important not to confuse FOSS with privacy.
PublicLewdness@burggit.moe 11 months ago
You can say how FOSS programs don’t equate to privacy because people may not catch things or be watching but with closed source options nobody gets to audit the code at all outside the project. How is that better for privacy ? FOSS at least gives us a chance at privacy.
dngray@lemmy.one 11 months ago
If the audits are public and they are actually funded with proper scope that may very well be better than some very small project nobody can be bothered looking at.