Improbable. This technology does not have a stable client and is overrun by garbage.

Try vibe coding your own app that your family and friends would install, and have this as the background communication layer.

Good luck!

Curious if you've tried Snikket, and what hurdles you ran into (if you did). I made it with the primary purpose of moving my family communication over to XMPP, and I succeeded with that (improving a bunch of stuff in the process). I'm not claiming it's perfect (a known weak point is the iOS app, but we're actively working on solving that...)

My advice is not specific to Matrix but other self hosted private services. Some of this may or may not be feasible with Matrix. (I have never used Matrix)

- Whether family or friends, always suggest it as a "fallback" for when "preferred service" is down and to use when discussion ultra-sensitive topics or sharing financial files. With time they may just stay connected to it if the friction to do so is low. It has to be their choice, not yours.

- What helps? Add more incentives such as perks that "preferred service" does not offer. No file size limits. No or few file type limits. No content filters. Add emoji's or gifs that align with their inside jokes and their style of humor. Keeping random people away is very important. Making your friends and family administrators or moderators and let them decide how it operates. Do not moderate or power-trip over your friends or family or they will leave. Limit rules to "Do not break the laws of this country in public chatrooms" and private chat rooms if you do not physically host the server. Database and file backups become even more important but they will feel in control of a thing. Have a keyword or code word they all learn means to go check the private platform that "primary platform" would not recognize. Maybe when they see "Turtle Farts!" they know to go log into your service.

- They may just stay on their primary preferred service. Every group is different and not every group will see the benefits of your fallback service. They may not appreciate the work you put into setting it up for them. Do not expect to get the friends of your friends and family to move to your service. They may not appreciate the OpSec value until "Bad Things"(c)™2038 happen to enough people. Just be there for when it does.

- If there are concerns that you would spy on them, consider instead using eJapperd or Prosody as you can implement OMEMO for individual and group end-to-end encrypted messages. Set up TLS fingerprint checks from multiple locations to reduce the risk of MitM attacks until XEP-0474: SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection is fully supported and active by default on both servers and all clients. This is the only thing holding me back from setting up a public Prosody server as 0474 is still experimental. See [1]

- Avoid (block) federation on private servers for friends and family otherwise it is not a private server.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37955264

I was in a very different situation. Microsoft decided to stop supporting Skype, which we had been using for 15 or so years. We moved to Matrix.

In trying, I discovered that most family members don't want to use anything that lets the government spy on its users, but one sibling is against privacy in general and only wants to use platforms that allow the government to spy on users, so there's no solution.

Make sure that everyone in your family is a huge nerd. That’s the only way.

It was easy getting the family I talked to on Matrix to switch to XMPP, all I had to say was "imagine Element, but it actually works".

I manually installed Conversations.im on their phones configuring accounts, joining groups etc then on my phone I've disabled notifications on other chat apps. If they want something, XMPP is the only way to reliably reach me. Over time they grew to like it even though it's not perfect (eg. no built-in gallery or message retraction).

I just annoy them, but it backfired with Plex. now they are begging for user accounts for their friends/co-workers and I can't keep up*

Just a little shout out to chatto (https://chatto.run/), which is the best slack/discord alternative i've seen so far. Not federated or crypto based, but just a solid chat platform.

First step:

Never, ever utter the term “XMPP server” to them.

Matrix is still horrible. Element web is definition of bloat. Encryption mismatch issues. Device not verified issues. Did someone say metadata issues???

Signal just works. It acts like a feature rich messenger. XMPP/Matrix just isnt that good for the average person.

During Iran's Internet blackout, I set up a chatmail server on an interanet VPS, installed Delta Chat's client (https://delta.chat) on every family member's phone, and they are using it even now after the Internet is back.

I have tried Matrix, XMPP (Conversations), Signal and even some Nostr clients but Delta Chat has by far the best UX and reliability. It has groups, channels and private messages, stickers and built-in video calls. My only gripe is that it doesn't have video messages or screen share like Telegram yet.

If you want to try it out you're always welcome to message me.

Is Matrix a good solution for internal company communication? Or is it better to go the way of "industry standard" like slack?

Well, my folks live/visit countries with insane govt censorship, so it was quite easy: I just said our private XMPP server is a good reserve comms channel, and over time they just got used to the peace of mind that it gives to them. Decent android (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/) + web (https://github.com/nioc/xmpp-web) clients played vital role though. Also, shout out to Delta Chat! (https://f-droid.org/packages/com.b44t.messenger/)

I learned a long time ago that things like this might be really important to me but fall below the noise floor for everyone else.

Unless everyone in your circle is on HN all the time, you will probably fail to convince them to change.

The more likely outcome is that you wind up annoying everyone involved and don't get invited to the new discord server.

I know this isn't the answer you want, but I sell people on Signal based on the user features. I’ve had great success in getting my friends and family to adopt it.

Signal is incredible user friendly, privacy respecting, the gold standard for encryption, cross platform, etc. Yes, it’s centralized, yes it’s imperfect in many ways, but it’s easy and it’s pretty damn good.

If you want to help the people around you to become more involved in understanding and owning their tech, it has to be an easy and good experience. It has to be tangibly better, not just abstractly better with tangible downsides.

I use XMPP, but would never try to convince my friends and family to use it; it’s too complicated, the user facing apps all suck (Snikket and Cheogram are the best of the bad lot), and the incentives to use it aren't there. As you said, it’s just not attractive to a regular user, since it’s all around a worse experience than what they currently use. The one exception is that I do occasionally recommend XMPP for SIP access via jmp.chat to some of my more technical friends who have a tolerance for clunky user experiences in favor of privacy and affordability. I am holding onto an unreasonable hope that Signal or Whatsapp or others will consider XMPP+OMEO in the future to popularize the standard, but that is extremely unlikely.

Matrix also is an unfortunately terrible alternative to discord (even Element is a rather lacking user experience), so while I have pushed to move groups there before, I no longer recommend Matrix. I suggest signal or nextcloud as alternatives when possible; the remaining large groups who need the closed server forum style system are usually unlikely to move to Matrix anyway.

Why are you dead set on self hosting? Signal is probably an easier lift

good luck getting people to install a 17th messenger app just to talk to you. I still don't know how I managed to get a few folks to install signal, looks like it was pure luck - pitched at the right time when Zuck was on a anti-privacy bender.

I said "you can use this app to talk to me"

… why? Are you pushing this on people for their good, or for yours?

Didn't. Use Signal instead. It's WhatsApp but blue. Nothing to explain.

You won't. The modern world has created people that are very, very bad at protecting themselves. The good horrible thing is that the walls are starting to close in. Perhaps it will wake some people out of their stupor. Once they realize that every bit of info they give to these companies is being actively used against them.

Have you ever seen Plaid's TOS? They literally say you give them permission to spy on your entire financial/banking life for THIRTY yes 30 YEARS!! If you click accept on their usually required tos for whatever financial service you are using that no one reads. What do you think they do with that info? Well if you have seen the rise in prices its not due to inflation it is things like dynamic pricing and the salesperson knowing to the penny how much money you can spend TODAY. You tell the car dealer for instance you can only afford 50k but they know for a fact you have 55K, they are not budging and neither is any other dealer because they all have the same info.

That is just one example, and yes I understand that inflation is a factor but inflation did not raise prices 400% all across the board everywhere. Thats why its confusing when you see the governement saying inflation is bad but not terrible. They are not lying...precisely. They of course are not doing anything about regulating the price gouging and one sided "value extraction" or the open collusion of corporations through obvious third party sacrificial entities.

XMPP is a no go, sorry. There's just no good iOS app (or Android, I think). And you can't come back and say some app you love is feature complete, or whatever. It has to LOOK good.

Matrix will work though. Element X is very polished. Same with FluffyChat. However, I still only bother with getting my immediate household to use it. A "family" chat is totally fine with me. And that let's me hook bots and agents up to it.

For a little plug... it's can very easy, in fact, to get a Matrix server set up these days, including full voice and video chat:

https://github.com/pkulak/barnaby-home

Matrix is bad, the protocol is complex, sync is bad, it uses a lot of resources... I had only bad experience with it.

I have an XMPP server which works on a small server, it has been running for nearly 10 years with 0 issues. We are about 20 on it.

I didn't convince them, I installed the client on their device and told them "use this icon to talk to me". Then they realized they could talk to each other. They don't care about anything else.

What I'd like to see in an XMPP client:

On desktop:

- something lighter, dino is not bad, but it can use quite a lot of CPU - better theming, some people like bubbles, other prefer irc like - GIF picker, it could require a server side proxy I don't care, I just want it - better control when sending image (crop, quality...)

On mobile:

- better sharing (vcard, image with good control) - GIF picker - a few UI tweaks, like text colors and layout

> How did you convince friends and family to move away from SMS/WhatsApp and replace it with a niche messaging app?

My pitch was simply that I will no longer be using surveillance capitalism products on principle, and I am willing to explain more to anyone interested or help anyone switch. Then I stopped using said services.

This is a lifestyle choice and those that love you will respect it just the same as if you went vegan or something. You do not need permission from others to make an choice about what you are or are not comfortable consuming in your life.

Talked to some people via intentional phone calls or in person visits and the ones that really want to have async communication with me signed up for matrix one by one. Now my family and inlaws are all on matrix with no algorithms or spies in the mix.

There are a number of former friends that are only comfortable communicating online with well known product brands even if they are being spied on and exploited. That is unfortunate, but it is a quick filter to see who actually respects your values and values real communication with you specifically, and who just wants an easy audience for their shitposts and conspiracy memes.