I want to setup a matrix instance to help increase friends and family’s privacy. Is there much value in creating my own instance?
I’m a beginner to linux and coding, but am good at following the steps on a video tutorial.
Alternatively i could get everyone to sign up on a preexisting instance + download the element app.
Thanks for sharing your opinions !
Matrix is basically over-engineered for a chat protocol. It uses a very complex git like distributed database with high CPU and RAM demanding merging operation to ensure a consistent state between the participant servers. In addition this data-structure means that a lot of the meta-data (room-state) can never be erased and gets replicated on every server connecting.
XMPP on the other hand is specifically optimized to be highly scalable (proven to work with billions of users) and tries to minimizes the metadata data-sharing between servers (although that could still be improved).