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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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Same reason why people use Google products when they could use something else (and note very often that they can't): it's more convenient because Google products are better. Because Google has the clout to make them better and bury the competition even more. which is the very definition of monopolistic anti-competitiveness.
Element is garbage in my experience. It's just not very user friendly, it's slow, it's bloated (and no wonder, it's a React application) and it's not very stable on the desktop. I tried my best to like it but I just can't: it's awful. And unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that's the best Matrix client out there.
I'm sure the Element people are trying their hardest and I don't fault them. But I'm pretty sure they don't have the resources to make it better, unlike Discord. So people staying on Discord is a self-perpetuating prophecy, until someone commits the resources to make Matrix an easy, fast and attractive proposition.
I use element for work and don't have many complaints. I miss the gifs because I'm a dork but don't find it bloated, garbage, or unstable. I have more complaints about discord to be honest.
Well maybe not that unstable if I'm honest. But super, SUPER slow to sync up for sure. As for bloated, I suggest you check its memory usage: it's quite obscene for what is essentially just a chat client.
You sound like you haven't used matrix in a while. I use it daily. It isn't super slow to sync.
When leading a chunk of the privacy community you could really use cryptpad (for online documents) and such alternatives.
Good alternatives do exist, and they're perfectly fine. Unless huge rounded corners and empty spaces on the UI are a requirement, though..
In some cases it's fine, though, like youtube has pretty good proxy services (for now...) that are basically effortless to use for viewing videos. Until a usable alternative emerges.
About Element: yes it's garbage because the backend's API design was.. not good. End of the year they are finalizing an API that works much better, and let's clients not to waste resources. There's a new element app for android that takes advantage of it, and I can tell from experience, it's usable now even on a throttled mobile connection when you have not opened it in a long time (weeks). They will also fix the web client.