Interoperability and decentralization have been major themes in tech this year, driven in large part by mounting regulation, societal and industrial pressure, and the hype trains that arecryptocurrencies. An open standards-based communication protocol called Matrix is helping to bring interoperability to another part of our digital lives: messaging.
The number of people on the Matrix network doubled this year, according to Matthew Hodgson, one of Matrix's co- creators.
Mainstream consumer platforms may now be taking notice of the activity that has been done in enterprise communications.
Some sleuthing from engineer and app researcher Jane Manchun Wong unearthed evidence that the site is experimenting with Matrix for its chat feature. The company is looking at a number of ways to improve conversations on the site and is testing a number of options.
A closer look at Matrix gives us some idea of how we got here.
There is a view from above hands holding a mobile phone.
Anyone who has ever sent an email will not consider what network, service provider, or messaging client their intended recipient uses. The main reason is that people can text each other and email each other, even if they don't have an internet connection.
That wasn't the case in the past. You couldn't send mail on the same network in the early days of electronic mail. People couldn't message their friends on a different mobile network if they were on the same network. Europe and Asia led the charge on interoperability, and by the start of the millennium the big North American telecommunications companies realized they could make a lot of money by allowing consumers to message their friends on rival networks. For everyone, it was a win-win.
The modern communication tools of today are not nearly as friendly with one another as they were in the past. When they realize that all their friends are using the same app, they'll hit a brick wall. Either way, it's iMessage. Or something similar. You get the picture, right?
The enterprise realm is also affected by this trend. If you have to use Microsoft Teams for your work, good luck sending a message to your friend across town, and if you have to useSalesforce Chatter for your sales team, good luck sending a message to them.
This is something that has been going on for a long time, but the issue of interoperability in the online messaging sphere is going to be a hot topic in 2022. The US and Europe both have plans to force online platforms to be compatible.
Mastodon shot past 2 million users off the back of the chaos at Twitter, thanks in part to the arrival of Musk. Mastodon is powered by the open ActivityPub protocol and is built around the idea of a fediverse network of connected server that allows different ActivityPub-powered services to communicate with each other. The photo-hosting platform and community should also adopt ActivityPub after Don MacAskill, the CEO of the photo-hosting platform, asked his followers on social media if they should.
There was a quiet but growing movement in this direction, driven by enterprises and governments seeking to avoid vendor lock-in and gain greater control of their data stack.
Matthew and Amandine are co- creators of the Matrix.
Amandine Le Pape left the company to focus on growing Matrix as an independent open source project after she and her husband, Hodgson, spearheaded the creation of Matrix. They sought to commercialise Matrix through a company called NewVector, which developed a Matrix hosting service and an alternative app called Riot. The Matrix.org Foundation was created by Le Pape and Hodgson in order to protect intellectual property, manage donations, and push the protocol forward.
The flagship commercial implementation of Matrix was rebranded as Element a little more than two years ago and is used by a host of organizations looking for a federated alternative to the big-name incumbents.
Customers can access the usual cross-platform features of a team collaboration product, such as group messaging and voice and video chat, if they choose to use Element.
The image is called "element in action".
Ensuring they remain in control of their full data stack is one of the reasons why companies host Element on their own infrastructure.
Big Tech is being forced to pay attention to data sovereignty due to a growing array of regulations in Europe.
The regulatory push has helped the Matrix protocol. Last year, the agency responsible for digitalizing Germany's health care system revealed that it was transitioning to Matrix, meaning that the 150,000 individual entities that constitute the health care industry such as hospitals, clinics, and insurance companies, could communicate with each other regardless of what Matrix-based app they
The French government uses the Tchap team collaboration platform as well as the German armed forces.
The pendulum has swung towards decentralization for a while. We are now seeing serious use of Matrix-based communications across or within the French, German, U.K., Swedish, Finnish and U.S governments, as well as the likes of NATO and adjacent organisation.
In May, it was revealed that the open source enterprise messaging platform would be moving to the Matrix protocol. This was a major coup for the Matrix movement, as it shows that there are 12 million users across major organizations.
The value of a messaging platform depends on its ability to connect with other platforms, according to a Rocket.chat spokesman. It took a lot of effort to connect Rocket.chat with other platforms. When we communicate with each other, we shouldn't have to worry about what client we use.
The image is from rocket.chat.
Traditional consumer and enterprise social networks and team collaboration tools have taken a different path.
The network effect is where a product's value is tied to the number of users on it. People want to be where their friends and work colleagues are, which inevitably means sticking with a social network they don't like, or using multiple different apps at the same time.
There is a new breed of business that is aware of the growing demand for something that isn't locked in.
The goal of the company is not to force people to use the service. We want to enable organizations to collaborate securely and connect with other organizations and individuals across the platforms of their choice.
The Matrix protocol supports non-native interoperability through a technique called Bridging, which allows non-Matrix apps to work together. A subscription product called Element One allows users to pay $5 per month to bring all their friends together into a single interface regardless of what app they use.
There are different messaging apps that can be brought together.
This is enabled by the tech companies. The terms of use are usually restrictive with regards to how they can be used by competing apps.
From a perspective of "is this allowed?", bridge sits in a grey area. With the world's regulatory eyes focused on Big Tech's stranglehold on online communications, the companies probably don't enforce all their T&Cs too rigorously.
The DMA came into force in Europe last month, though it won't officially become applicable until next May, and it has provisions for interoperability and data transfer. The Big Tech "gatekeepers" of the world will probably support the new regulations at that point. Smaller third-parties are allowed to communicate with Big Tech brethren through the use of openAPIs. We can probably expect some deliberate heel-dragging and hurdles along the way, though, as this doesn't necessarily mean that such APIs will be easy to use with clear documentation.
The Facebook and WhatsApp applications are on a phone.
Even though popular messaging apps don't allow organizations to easily manage any of their messaging data, they are still widely used in government and enterprise use cases. In July, the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office called for a government review into the risks of private correspondence channels such as personal email accounts, noting that they lacked "clear controls" and could lead to the loss of important information.
The U.K. information commissioner said in a statement that he understood the value of instant communication, especially during the Pandemic where officials were forced to make quick decisions. Although not against the law, the price of using these methods must not result in a lack of transparency. Public officials should be able to show their work for both reasons. Trust in those decisions is secured by learning from the past.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission settled with 16 Wall Street firms for over $1 billion for failing to properly record their use of private messaging apps.
The chair of the SEC said that finance depends on trust. Market integrity has been preserved by record keeping since the 1930's. As technology changes, it is even more important that registrants conduct their communications in a manner that is appropriate for business matters.
Keeping an accurate paper trail and making sure politicians and businesses are held accountable for their actions is the name of the game. There are a lot of questions surrounding privacy, security, and the broader user experience that have to be answered by every company over a certain size.
The image is called "elephant in the room."
Europe's new interoperability regulations come with a number of pitfalls, one of them being the hurdles they will create for end-to-end encryption, which is impossible.
One of the selling points for the big technology companies is end-to-end encryption. Making this work between different platforms built by different companies is not easy, and many experts on the subject say that it is not possible to enforce a truly secure messaging infrastructure that doesn't compromise encryption.
End-to-end encryption can be controlled by the company. If billions of messages are being sent between different applications, it is not possible forWhatsApp to know what is happening to them.
No one service deploys their encryption the same way. He said that end-to-end platforms have to communicate in the same language.
In a post published earlier this year, the Matrix Foundation suggested that all the big gatekeepers switch to the same Decentralized end-to-end protocol.
The 2020 acquisition of Gitter, a developer-focused community and chat platform purchased from GitLab, is an example of this point. The native Matrix was introduced to Gitter within two months of the deal being closed.
One that could cause all manner of chaos is the proposition of coordinating such a transition. According to Alec Muffett, the same standard protocol would lead to no practical difference between different services.
Imagine a world where the two messaging services would have to work together. Muffett asked about the story in a question and answer. What are the features that need to be presented on the other side? Conflict in function would be reconciled.
This is why the Matrix Foundation proposed other potential solutions, such as adopting a TLS certificate -style warning, where the user is alert to the fact that their cross- service conversation is not fully protected. This is similar to how the Messages app works. It would bring unnecessary complexity to the mix.
There is a lot of user interface research that explains that security-pop-up-warnings are not understood and not taken seriously. There is a lot of research to back this up.
The Matrix Foundation's proposal is to convert communication traffic between encryption languages in a bridge, though this would mean having to break the encryption and re-encrypt the traffic.
The Matrix iMessage bridge could be used to run client-side on the Mac, or it could be used to bridge between the apps on the phone itself. They could be run server-side on hardware controlled by the user in a way that ensures that the re-encryption happens in as secure an environment as possible.
Regardless of how a solution proposes to reconcile this, breaking cipher is not ideal. A robust solution for addressing the real encryption issues introduced by enforced interoperability isn't currently available.
The upsides of the new EU regulations are more important than the negatives, according to the man.
The benefits of mandating open are outweighing the risks that someone is going to run a vulnerable large-scale bridge and undermine everyone's E2EE.
The Matrix protocol is well-known for its presence in the messaging realm, but it has other potential applications as well. The third room is a metaverse platform built on matrix. This is contrary to a future metaverse that could be controlled by a few companies.
The flagship poster-child of a Matrix-powered world is Element. The company has secured some big-name customers already such as Mozilla, which is using Element as a fully-managed service, and it has also signed a $18 million four-year deal with another company. In addition, it has strategic backers, including the parent company of the website, which invested $4.6 million in the company back in 2020.
It is in the right place at the right time, as the world seeks an exit route from Big Tech with at least a little regulation. The downside of centralized control has been highlighted by a number of companies, including Twitter.
The situation at Twitter has been amazing in helping users discover that we are entering a golden age of decentralization. The halo effect of users discovering Matrix as a way to regain their independence over real-time communications such as messaging and VoIP is growing.
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