from Hacker News

Shutting down the Matrix bridge to Libera chat

by feanaro on 11/28/23, 9:58 PM with 157 comments

• by jmbwell on 11/28/23, 10:28 PM

  This seems like an inevitable progression of the de-portaling in July:

  https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/

  I wonder whether the July move prompted users to find other ways to connect to Libera.chat besides Matrix, killing usage of the bridge, leading us here.

  Thanks to those involved for the efforts while they could be sustained!

• by georgyo on 11/28/23, 11:06 PM

  After the deportling, I just stopped communicating with IRC, but there is a lot of lost there. One of my communities was basically split in half. Ah well...

  The user drop is quite noticable here: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php

  After that you can see Libre.Chat is actually growing in users again and at a very consistent pace.

• by broodbucket on 11/28/23, 10:24 PM

  I've been using heisenbridge[0] to do my Matrix to IRC bridging and I like it. Not a broader solution to the problem since most people don't want to run their own services, but it works well for me and is no different to a bouncer for IRC servers, noone knows it's actually Matrix on the other side.

  [0]: https://github.com/hifi/heisenbridge

• by k8svet on 11/29/23, 6:49 AM

  I'm so incredibly conflicted about whether to keep investing time and energy and hope around Matrix. I normally have good tech intuition and matrix is in this weird spot. I think the vision and direction and attitudes are amazing but they keep fking up badly.

  I'm embarrassed at the thought that I would "soon" soft nudge my friends and family to matrix, years ago. With the state of synapse, matrix.org, and the project in general, I wouldn't consider trying that for another 12-18 months. Or more.

  This current news just gives me more pause about leadership and vision. This is a huge "oopsie" to put it nicely. It feels like a massive loss for matrix (bad first impressions, negative impact on network effects, etc) and will undoubtedly be something that matrix detractors will point to for years.

  I normally keep quiet about this and just huff more copium because I WANT matrix to succeed, but I wish using Element and matrix as it exists didn't make me feel so ... Idk. Normally by now a tech project with this transcripts hits a steady state but man, the protocol is lacking, element web is just passable at the most generous. Element on Android, I won't even speak about, refer to where I want element to succeed.

  To balance this out - Element x has been pleasantly satisfying lately. I'm curious if the team is deliberately taking a different strategy. New Element is working on basically the intersection of what I think are going to be foundational future "stuff" but seem almost to eager. Meanwhile element x is missing for feature but is, still after months of using it, "blazingly fast".

• by INTPenis on 11/28/23, 10:33 PM

  Some channels on libera have been awful, a ton of [m] names, and long repetitive messages converted from matrix.

  I know I might be using a dying medium but I enjoy IRC the way it is.

• by superkuh on 11/28/23, 11:33 PM

  That's an interesting perspective. For another try reading the multiple attempts the libera team made to accommodate the slow progress and security holes on the Matrix side before the decision was made to close the the bridge permanently.

  Updates on the matrix<>IRC bridge (Jun 7th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-irc-bridge-updates

  Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 3rd) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling

  Delays in Disabling Matrix Portalling (July 28th) https://libera.chat/news/deportalling-delay

  Temporarily disabling the Matrix Bridge (August 5th) https://libera.chat/news/temporarily-disabling-the-matrix-br...

  Matrix Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospective (August 10th) https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospectiv...

  It was sad to see a few matrix people drop away but most of the activity and users were/are on the IRC side. And of the active matrix users I considered friends most just decided to connect to IRC using a real client. Much like Slack started off with an IRC bridge to bootstrap itself with IRC communities the Riot.im/Element.io corporation no longer feels the need to maintain the bootstrapping and does not allocate resources for it.

• by Laaas on 11/28/23, 10:28 PM

  The explanation seems a bit vague. What were the concrete issues at hand?

• by xwowsersx on 11/28/23, 10:48 PM

  What communities are y'all in that are only or primarily on Matrix? I haven't seemed to find myself in any yet, but perhaps I'm missing out

• by shp0ngle on 11/28/23, 10:26 PM

  What were the "issues" that are not named?

• by diamondfist25 on 11/28/23, 10:53 PM

  On the side note, are there anyone whose only using matrix for all the social media apps bridges?

  I’ve been mucking away for months trying to integrate all social media apps together, and these bridges are obscure and hard to customize/configure for n00bs.

  Soon, I can do away with the 10+ apps and just use 1

• by carterschonwald on 11/28/23, 11:43 PM

  One thing that Libera and its predecessors have that is impossible with element and discord and slack is: multiple overlapping communities on the same platform.

  Maybe matrix/element has that, but I’m not very adept at finding it I guess. Old time original freenode had so many communities.

• by NewJazz on 11/28/23, 10:19 PM

  Matrix has a long way to go to compete with IRC and XMPP... Godspeed.

• by sitzkrieg on 11/28/23, 10:34 PM

  thank goodness, endless garbage noise

• by j3s on 11/29/23, 1:06 AM

  soju + senpai is by far the best IRC experience & it’s not even close

• by colesantiago on 11/28/23, 10:14 PM

  Huh?

  Wasn't anybody using the Matrix bridge to Libera Chat IRC?

  Seems like IRC is really dead and only used by a very tiny small minority of people.

• by badrabbit on 11/28/23, 10:38 PM

  The whole thing with freenode-> libera and now this has been a shitshow to say the least. I am glad some communities are moving to discord where things are stable and reliable. Instead of implementing proper registration process for example, libera bans ip addresses from tor and vpns unless you auth first and you have to register with an email and an ip they like. I have many criticisms of matrix/element but in this case it looks like yet another libera complaint that is at issue, not really matrix's fault I think.

  The only thing I'll say about matrix is they have a lot of cool features but a smooth/fast experience like discord is the only thing they are missing to compete there but aside from philosophy I see no reason to avoid discord unless I want to operare a server instance. To me it's like webmail, I don't care if gmail or proronmail are opensource as much as I care about their security and reliability. I mean, I gotta applaud all the folks that worked on matrix clients, but there is still much left to be desired, I wish I could help in some way.