Ontimp

Absolutely, it’s definitely one of the major areas work on the Matrix standard is needed.

There is an MSC (= a spec change proposal) from September 2025 where the folks at Element proposed a solution for how to do this going forward: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/3414?ref=element.io

This blog article explains it more clearly: https://element.io/blog/hiding-room-metadata-from-servers/

Wire wrote that article in summer last year to prevent the German IT-Planning Council from adopting Matrix as the communications layer for its consolidated interfederal government-to-citizen messaging infrastructure in the public administration.

So be aware that, to my knowledge, this article is not a good-faith tech blog post but part of public affairs campaign / lobbying attempt.

Would be neat to have meta data encrypted in Matrix, but it’s not a deal breaker for most use cases imo.

Which client do you refer to regarding the bad UX, Element Web?

Matrix is just the protocol. There are a bunch of different clients though that all implement Matrix but are made by different people: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

There is a difference between funding of the Matrix foundation and the matrix.org instance vs. funding for the companies working in the ecosystem. The Matrix foundation has been struggling financially, yes. But the companies using and contributing to the Matrix standard are doing quite well from what I know - though they should probably cough up a little more money to find the overhead and the public matrix infrastructure imo

Correction they are actually moving away from the Matrix federation scheme in favor of their own federation mechanism to simplify the internal architecture (but they are still supporting Matrix financially apparently :)

Rocket.chat uses Matrix though, too. It’s not only Matrix but it makes use of Matrix federation among other things and they built their own Matrix server implementation in TypeScript last year

This is the most recent update report on the ECB’s ongoing work to establish a rulebook: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/timeline/profuse/shared/pdf/ecb.derdgp251030_RDG_progress_report_October_25.en.pdf?d978acf24c059027f1372a4f42155ac9

Turns out it’s a pretty massive undertaking that could tank the economy if you get it wrong, so I can see how it might take a few more years

The EUDI Wallets have/had that as a requirement in their spec but it has been heavily criticized, no idea if it will persist though

I have high hopes for the Digital Euro.

To have a digital payment medium that is issued by the central bank and can be exchanged without fees as a 1:1 digital equipment of cash would be amazing and go beyond just replacing American credit card providers.

Adopting the American obsession with ‘free-speech’ is not helpful imo.

For one, the term itself has become a right-wing dog-whistle that essentially means that billionaires can publicly say fucked up stuff without pushback by civil society, courts, etc. Their freedom of speech entails complete freedom from consequences for that speech.

Also, there is no such thing as free speech in a society of such structurally unequal footing. There are many, many reasonable and kind people all over the world speaking freely in daily life. But their reach is naturally limited to their local community.

They are being drowned out, however, by individuals such as Musk and Trump who have immense reach on both linear and social media and both actually own their own social media platforms. If they exercise their free speech, they sway international politics, the stock market, and slowly derode our shared sense of moral decency.

There is no free speech without independent and pluralistic media, rule of law and a liberal civil society.

So if you’re concerned about free speech, you should rage against centralized social media, consolidated media conglomerates, overexerted courts and public bureaucracies, and the general sense of despair and hopelessness that causes the public to become apolitical - and certainly don’t put your hope in the help of subversive far-right tinktanks financed by American fascists.

Also, on that note, you can be sure that those right-wing think tanks will not only promote ‘free speech’, whatever that means. They will fight European integration and the EU, social security, liberal democracy, LGBTQ rights, etc.

There is a humanist middle ground between domestic state censorship on the one hand and capture of the media and political agenda by American tech-giants on the other. Both can lead to totalitarianism.

I for one would be more concerned about the increasingly fascist foreign power seeking to meddle with political discourse and sovereignty in the EU.

Not only the EC! Look at the talks from the last Matrix conference; France uses a Matrix-based messenger as the default messenger for its public service (Tchap), Element is included in the German OpenDeks suit and the Bundeswehr’s bwMessenger and the TI-Messenger also use Matrix. Its also used in Sweden, and as far as I know a bunch of other counties are testing Matrix for public sector communications, too (Belgium, Romania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, UK, etc.)

This won’t happen. It’s a deeply unpopular policy and the German Institute for Economics just told them in a friendly town to kill the idea before they choke on it. It was just a dumb suggestion with little bearing in reality

I wouldn’t want to input my personal data on the self-hosted website of some random person.

Also, frequently there are official petition websites for national and European bodies, predominantly parliaments, that will actually force parliaments to discuss the issue instead of just screaming into the void.