 FYI: Matrix has launched https://archive.matrix.org, which makes logs of world-readable Matrix channels indexable by search engines. They made the thing opt-out; the bot (@archive:matrix.org) automatically joins out of nowhere and start archiving. You'd have to ban the bot for it to be removed, which is annoying but OK... if they didn't have a second bot ban evade and do the exact same thing right afterwards under https://staging.archive.matrix.org/ using @archive:gitter.im yesterday. 25 comments | Expand all CWs
It's definitely ban evasion if you tell an organization that you don't want the service that they forced you to use and they still do it anyways, the nuance of it just being a staging server that could have been hidden from the public (or at least used a robots.txt) is irrelevant. I don't make call-out posts at all, but figuring out what this bot that joined out of nowhere that started doing things without our request - who operates it? is it malicious? do we want to keep it? - wasted at least 10 hours (and counting) of volunteers deliberating and debating in a community that I participate in. Why do the volunteer-run communities that trust matrix.org have to clean up the mess by matrix.org? Discord uses announcements when rolling out features. What about XMPP MUCs that bridge with Matrix? Well, they get archived as well...: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-public-archive/issues/47#issuecomment-1574978098 It's seriously a very neat product as a piece of software, it's very cool, but its rollout is just absolutely anti-community and user hostile, if not sometimes dangerous. For clarity, this can affect your channel if "Members only (since the point in time of selecting this option)" or "Anyone" is selected, as far as I know. A moderator* in the channel also has to publish an alias in the room directory of a server that federates with matrix.org to eventually join your room on demand (as soon as someone requests it) and publish the chat logs under that domain.    @n0toose@chaos.social @archive@chaos.social I would rather they allow chatroom to opt-in for that feature rather than force it and expect someone to ban the bot @n0toose it's really hard to not think about matrix/element's friendliness towards cops while reading stuff about this  @n0toose uhh this reminds of those famous IRC archives where I could still read my produced BS and slipups after 5 years. Funny yes, but Google was still kinda of one the “good guys” where the focus was on the search engine. @n0toose I'm confused, it looks like they assume other people want this, while banning the bot from their own channel?   @n0toose I think it's good they do this, now Discord should do the same. That's at least a slight improvement over the discordification of documentation. @Sellerie Yes, that's why they are doing this and I'm a fan of this. However, not everyone is talking in public channels with the expectation that it will be published by a domain with good SEO at a mass scale. I'm a much bigger fan of something like https://libera.irclog.whitequark.org/, which is *opt-in* and has basically all features. @n0toose Although it doesn't archive anything, it makes the history browsable from a website, which is basically an anonymous Matrix client. I still disagree with them not honoring the "world_readable" setting, but describing it as an archive is wrong (but literally named it that, so...). |
Gregory's Server
Sure, anybody can make logs of public channels, but there's a difference between "public" as in making a post about it and "public" as in reaching the front page of an established newspaper or recording conversations in a coffee shop. Or not warning people beforehand, as is the standard with e.g. IRC channels.
It sucks and they just keep making it worse while dismissing concerns or just ignoring them: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-public-archive/issues/47