What are other potential downsides with bridging and relaying messages from and to other platforms using Matrix?

Questions
1

Title

I’ve been thinking about this as a way to bridge (no pun intended) the gap for others to switch platforms.

Downsides that I’m fully aware are:

  • Matrix Metadata issues (mitigated by anyways the server will be hosted by you/behalf of you as public bots won’t work anyways)
  • Feeds into stubborn people who refuse to switch instead of using it as an opportunity to switch

The plan also is to limit into E2EE platforms where the integrity of data and metadata protection remains

It’s also the only way it seems we can get interoperability with these services even if not the most ideal.

What do you think?

2

Hope you are aware of the following

Additionally, we collect data associated with each of your sessions, specifically:

  • When it was created

  • When it finished (so we retain ‘finished’ sessions)

  • When it was last active

  • The last seen IP for it

  • the user agent we saw when it got created

  • which client you used

Now let’s focus on your question.

Interoperability doesn’t make sense, as you would need to adapt to the protocols and procedures of the platform you want to bridge.

You stated the following as reason for interoperability

I think each person should decide for themselves if they prefer privacy and security or not. Interoperability does not make sense as this doesn’t change their preferences or their will to use another platform.

Ultimately I do not recommend bridging to any other communication service and I’d rather inform people about the possible consequences or threats.

3

hard disagree

first this will be hosted on a local server, matrix metadata issue doesn’t matter as I said. And what you have shared is that what I stated, metadata issues. I didnt ask to be specific of which when it is aware

also people dont realize this but the protocol is mature enough most things do work well, see the roadmap.md for each mautrix bridge

and people dont care enough about the threats/consequences if they use things like whatsapp at this point that is the itended audience, it is a matter of opening a door for transitioning (that is towards signal) [and thats why its locally hosted]

4

The thing is bridge does kind of address your primary intention (reliability aside), but the message and metadata sent from and to other platform are still being collected, monitized and weaponized.

Also self hosting a bridge server seems a big attack surface that is likely to be too big a risk compared to potential privacy gain here.

However if you can aet up a bridge for ALL contacts you care about, and help them to switch to signal (that also involves their close contacts), that could work over time, it is just too much a hussle for me.

5

so say from whatsapp and messenger? I’m not exactly concerned about them due to the E2EE nature, all the metadata they’re ever gonna get is this “relay” user, E2EE adds privacy here as it helps become siubject to each metadata protection, if the messages were fully revealed then that’s a problem and outright ineffective of the goal of “subject to each metadata’s protections” which is why I avoid discord and others like it

also I remind, it is local, not on a server and it is not federated in any way, for an attack to happen it needs to access it locally. (the matrix server), unless you are reffering to something else

agreed on the last one and already did setup bridges just trying to clean the mistake I’ve made I suppose.

6

From what I’ve seen, there are very few changes between what you could’ve send manually and what the matrix bridge sends on the bridged network, but those are still easily detectable. e2ee seemed like a pain to setup, but ig that’s just a skill issue. If your server is laggy, it will be a pain to follow active discussions, as the messages will come in batches. Other than that, It mostly works.

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