matrix solves a lot of problems that IRC has and even lets you solve those problems on IRC through the Matrix<->IRC bridge :)
I've been using it as a replacement for my IRC bouncer for a while, barring a bug that prevents support of SSL-only rooms, and it's been wonderful. Great web client on vector.im, pretty decent mobile clients given they are "reference implementations", support for VoIP voice and video chat, coming support for e2e encryption (the DAG just stores encrypted blobs now)
I've long felt that a big piece of my love of IRC was the spontaneous intersections of my communities. I got involved in FOSS and open source because one time a person mentioned there was a LUG chat for the city I was in; that led me in to a long chain of events that ended with me getting involved in the Fedora Project and other FOSS communities. Slack is creating a world where that is simply not possible. One of the big things that this discussion misses is that tribal-intersections that IRC allows opens up a huge door for abuse. Slack "solves" that by siloing you away from the world, but that has always been a lazy and error prone solution.
I feel like Matrix is in a position to move the needle on that. It's got a huge distributed DAG specifically designed for human-metadata like chat and presence and, well, why not put Karma or Reputation on that DAG as well? People have talked of dogecoin and similar as a Whuffie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie) and in my mind Matrix is an interesting platform to build something like that on. I could create a room that requires a certain reputation level to post in, and you'd have to gain reputation in other communities to be allowed to post in to mine. When you realize that Matrix.org 1:1 chats are just "rooms with only two people in them" that becomes a really nice way to solve the spam/abuse issue. Prove to my friends in the public chat that you aren't a shitbag and you can talk to me.
matrix solves a lot of problems that IRC has and even lets you solve those problems on IRC through the Matrix<->IRC bridge :)
I've been using it as a replacement for my IRC bouncer for a while, barring a bug that prevents support of SSL-only rooms, and it's been wonderful. Great web client on vector.im, pretty decent mobile clients given they are "reference implementations", support for VoIP voice and video chat, coming support for e2e encryption (the DAG just stores encrypted blobs now)
I've long felt that a big piece of my love of IRC was the spontaneous intersections of my communities. I got involved in FOSS and open source because one time a person mentioned there was a LUG chat for the city I was in; that led me in to a long chain of events that ended with me getting involved in the Fedora Project and other FOSS communities. Slack is creating a world where that is simply not possible. One of the big things that this discussion misses is that tribal-intersections that IRC allows opens up a huge door for abuse. Slack "solves" that by siloing you away from the world, but that has always been a lazy and error prone solution.
I feel like Matrix is in a position to move the needle on that. It's got a huge distributed DAG specifically designed for human-metadata like chat and presence and, well, why not put Karma or Reputation on that DAG as well? People have talked of dogecoin and similar as a Whuffie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie) and in my mind Matrix is an interesting platform to build something like that on. I could create a room that requires a certain reputation level to post in, and you'd have to gain reputation in other communities to be allowed to post in to mine. When you realize that Matrix.org 1:1 chats are just "rooms with only two people in them" that becomes a really nice way to solve the spam/abuse issue. Prove to my friends in the public chat that you aren't a shitbag and you can talk to me.