> It’s also true that decentralised systems are harder to evolve than centralised ones - you can’t just push out a given feature with a single app update, but you have to agree and publish a public spec, support incremental migration, and build governance processes and community dynamics which encourage everyone to implement and upgrade. This is hard, but not impossible: we’ve spent loads of time and money on Matrix’s governance model and spec process to get it right.
For me it seems to largely come down to a juxtaposition between the above risk (owed to Matrix) and the below risk (owed to Signal).
> you end up thoroughly putting all your eggs in one basket, trusting past, present & future Signal to retain its values, stay up and somehow dodge compromise & censorship… despite probably being the single highest value attack target on the ‘net.
Definitely something to think deeply about.
Might I add, as a complete Matrix newcomer, the description of its decentralised model in that article reminds me a bit of IRC in the 90s - except with solid encryption.
It certainly seems to make sense if liberty is one's priority.
