Posted by mtlynch 7 hours ago
Ask HN: How did you convince family and friends to join your XMPP/Matrix server?
Whenever XMPP or Matrix threads pop up on HN, several commenters casually mention their "friends and family XMPP (or Matrix) server."
How did you convince friends and family to move away from SMS/WhatsApp and replace it with a niche messaging app?
My family and friends aren't hardcore nerdy, but they're more tech-savvy than average. Their needs in messaging are mainly pragmatic: they want ease of use, reliability, and fun features. They don't care that much about privacy, decentralization, or extensibility (though I care about those things a lot).
I've been experimenting with self-hosting XMPP and Matrix servers and clients in the past week, and the UX is even worse than I expected. It seems like all the clients either imitate Slack, imitate Discord, or imitate hot garbage. I haven't seen any that try to be a simple, friendly replacement for SMS. I'm a software developer who uses computers all day, and I find the UX for most of the clients incredibly hard to use.
The only angle I could see to pitch XMPP/Matrix to people for non-philosophical reasons are that there's a more consistent experience across iOS/Android. The biggest shortcoming I think is visible to regular users is that there's feature degradation and missing information when iOS users have SMS conversations with Android users, especially in group chats.
For people who have successfully won family and friends to XMPP or Matrix, what was your pitch? What do you recommend others do to make XMPP or Matrix an attractive experience for a regular person?
My pitch was simply that I will no longer be using surveillance capitalism products on principle, and I am willing to explain more to anyone interested or help anyone switch. Then I stopped using said services.
This is a lifestyle choice and those that love you will respect it just the same as if you went vegan or something. You do not need permission from others to make an choice about what you are or are not comfortable consuming in your life.
Talked to some people via intentional phone calls or in person visits and the ones that really want to have async communication with me signed up for matrix one by one. Now my family and inlaws are all on matrix with no algorithms or spies in the mix.
There are a number of former friends that are only comfortable communicating online with well known product brands even if they are being spied on and exploited. That is unfortunate, but it is a quick filter to see who actually respects your values and values real communication with you specifically, and who just wants an easy audience for their shitposts and conspiracy memes.
Never, ever utter the term “XMPP server” to them.
Try vibe coding your own app that your family and friends would install, and have this as the background communication layer.
Good luck!
Forget normal people. How are you convincing techies to use this. Obviously there are other open source E2E encrypted chat programs that are half decent, but i never understand how people are convinced to use matrix of all things.
I think that was 5 or 6 years ago, and I'm convinced the clients have somehow gotten worse. That may just be perception though.
I haven't bothered looking for new clients though since the 'vibe-coding era' has begun, maybe something else has come along.
Have you ever seen Plaid's TOS? They literally say you give them permission to spy on your entire financial/banking life for THIRTY yes 30 YEARS!! If you click accept on their usually required tos for whatever financial service you are using that no one reads. What do you think they do with that info? Well if you have seen the rise in prices its not due to inflation it is things like dynamic pricing and the salesperson knowing to the penny how much money you can spend TODAY. You tell the car dealer for instance you can only afford 50k but they know for a fact you have 55K, they are not budging and neither is any other dealer because they all have the same info.
That is just one example, and yes I understand that inflation is a factor but inflation did not raise prices 400% all across the board everywhere. Thats why its confusing when you see the governement saying inflation is bad but not terrible. They are not lying...precisely. They of course are not doing anything about regulating the price gouging and one sided "value extraction" or the open collusion of corporations through obvious third party sacrificial entities.