@u_tamtam “most centralized decentralized network” that award goes to Bluesky.
I myself use Matrix via FluffyChat on mobile, iamb on desktop, the Fedora project’s server, and chat with a bunch of self-hosted servers. Obviously Element’s products have the highest profile, they are a company and they pay for advertising. But don’t discount the community-developed clients, servers, and instances. They are all fantastic. If anything, this showcases the strength of open protocols and open source: Element can go ahead and make their for-profit, closed-source server, but that doesn’t impede the community’s independence one bit. Yes, matrix.org is quite centralized but the reality is I can have encrypted conversations with matrix.org users without a matrix.org account and that is a story of success.
@hperrin @tatterdemalion email aliases are a ubiquitous feature, GMail and Outlook both support "plus" aliases e.g.
username+alias@gmail.comis treated as equivalent tousername@gmail.com.Though I prefer simplelogin.io or addy.io, both of which are email alias providers that connect with an existing email inbox (instead of having to create a whole new email account). I like how these are open-source. Port87 claims to have a "patented spam filter"—the whole concept of software patents doesn't click with me.