Hi folks - I’m the project lead for Matrix.org; only just found this, so sorry for the delay. Quick answers on my side:
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@eagle: The current plan is not to use Riot on the Librem5 but a dedicated native client (Riot has no native linux clients). In terms of the privacy policy for Riot:
- It only applies to users on the matrix-org (or hypothetical riot-im) homeserver. The whole point of Matrix is that you can run the client against whatever server you like, and be beholden to that server’s policy. For instance, for the Librem5 the plan is to for Purism to supply their own default homeserver for their users, with whatever privacy policy Purism desires.
- Agreed that the policy is too large and scary, although in practice all it does is to spell out (in gratuitious detail) the data which you share by using Matrix at all; forbid illegality and abuse; and give the right to optionally use analytics in the apps to help us see what features people are using and how much.
- The reason the policy is so large and doesn’t have a TL;DR is that it was provided by the corporate overlords who used to fund Matrix and Riot. As of July we no longer work for them, and the policy has yet to be updated to reflect the new setup (which is now an independent startup). When we do this in the near future we intend to make it much clearer and less scary, as well as make it clearer that, again, it only applies to people using the default matrix.org homeserver.
- With this all in mind, I’m not sure I agree that Matrix is “a privacy problem”.
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@shagreen: Riot/Android should let you find users fine without giving access to your contacts; since July[1] it implements the ‘user search’ API which lets you query your server for all the users you have rooms in common with or who are in publicly visible rooms. Now, if you still can’t find the user, then you either enter their email address or phone number. Finally, you also have the option of searching your contacts, but only if you give permission. So we’re hardly mandating it
- cgelinek: It should be a no-brainer that improving the app’s UX (to avoid confusion like @shagreen’s above) is as important if not more so than working on deeper infrastructure work like decentralised identity/reputation. You’re right that E2E is still being polished, but we’re working on this as fast as we can and the support of the Librem5 project helps substantially with this. In terms of it being “early days” - it may still be beta right now but it’s still the most advanced decentralised end-to-end encryption solution out there, plus the first to have a public audit of its core crypto. In terms of permissions: I believe that all of the perms you’ve quoted for the Android app are these days prompted incrementally (in Android M and later) as you use the features which require them; we spent ages[2] getting this right.
- ruff I’m sure you’ll be able to delete the default dialler/messaging app if you so desire.