A Week in Matrix
A technical account detailing the challenges of managing Matrix spaces, specifically regarding unintended chat permissions and complex moderation policy room interactions. The author describes troubleshooting user bans and the technical hurdles of navigating decentralized moderation lists.
Why it matters
Highlights the ongoing usability and moderation challenges in decentralized communication protocols like Matrix as they scale.
A user accidentally writes in the room of a Matrix space, resulting in every member of that space getting a notification. Matrix spaces are just regular rooms, and the fallback for old clients which don't support spaces is to render them as completely regular chat rooms. On the other side, new clients that do support spaces have very confusing UI when people start chatting in them, because that's not supposed to happen. (Yet, most clients don't adjust the room permissions in spaces to disallow people to chat in there. That would be too easy.)
I figure out how to get Element Web to display the space as a regular room in order to inspect it (it's in the devtools), give myself admin permissions and adjust the room's permissions to disallow chatting in the space room.
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