Obviously it’s not smart to switch to a Cloudflare-plagued network like that of Matrix if your goal is to escape US tech giants. For strictly internal use on self-hosted instances, sure. But as soon as a matrix room becomes open public Cloudflare rears its ugly head.

Zulip and SimpleX are probably better options. Certainly IRC is a better option so long as the channel has no Matrix gateway. SimpleX is also free of Cloudflare.

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[–] 5 points 9 months ago (1 child)

Why do you need Cloudflare for Matrix?

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    You don’t. But you don’t get to make that decision for everyone you talk to. People /erroneously/ think they do, so it has become impossible to participate in a public discussion without Cloudflare in the loop.

    FOSDEM 2026 demonstrates this embarrassment. Every single FOSDEM talk this year has a link to matrix.to (Cloudflare). Even if your own account is CF-independent, the rest of the crowd who you correspond with is not. You cannot isolate yourself from Cloudflare and also participate in FOSDEM rooms. That’s not ETS.

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