Neither Try Matrix Now or Clients mention that there are other homeservers than Matrix.org

[Mikaela]

I think that currently a new user is going to either of those pages and doesn't learn that Matrix.org isn't the only possible homeserver and it will lead to everyone suffering.

• The user suffers, because they are unable to decrypt messages from users not using Matrix.org (which the people inviting them probably weren't using).
• Matrix.org suffers as I understand it to be overpopulated and it will have yet another user draining resources.

I think the current situation is also promoting centralization unintentionally.

This issue came to my mind as I was discussing federated chat protocols elsewhere and we were wondering which are the best links for that and the links that came up were https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now/, https://matrix.org/clients/ and https://xmpp.org/getting-started/ where the last instead has links to public server lists.

[aaronraimist]

I mean I agree with what you said about centralization but encryption shouldn’t have anything to do with it. Encryption works perfectly fine across multiple homeservers?

[Mikaela]

I have been seeing complaints by matrix.org or other users about not being able to decrypt each other on megolm test and another room recently and it has been explained by the user being on matrix.org. I don't know how factual that reason is for unable to decrypt though.

[Mikaela]

Sorry, I was told that the encryption issue is actually element-hq/element-web#2996.

[thibaultamartin]

This should now be fixed with the new website. Please reopen if you think this information is missing somewhere