Is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY!
Should you lean into it harder than you absolutely can tolerate? Probably not.
Let’s face it; there’s always going to be friction until we change how companies behave.
Yes.
savedyouaclick
Well, the obvious answer to nearly all those broad questions is: “It depends…”
But I mean what “work” and “effort”? I mean using Matrix isn’t exactly hard… You need to install an App, register for an account, think of a password and log in… That’s pretty much the same complexity as with Facebook or Discord?!
Surely issueing big tech companies a blank cheque for your life is easy. And you get free services in return. But I don’t think using privacy respecting services and even Linux to do your office stuff is substancially more difficult than giving away all your data.
I think the “difficult” part for a lot of people has to do with the network effect. There is more friction to using Matrix over Discord because all of their friends use Discord (as an example). Of course, this wouldn’t apply to everything but it is definitely something that has an effect.
I think I can agree with that. For me it’s a bit the other way around. My friends aren’t on Discord. But the network effect is kind of hard to overcome. I’d say you can learn about privacy and new (to you) software and protocols by spending two or three evenings of your life. But convincing all your friends so it becomes any fun is considerably harder. I’d just name the actual issue, then. Otherwise people confuse it with Linux or Signal/Matrix/whatever being harder to operate.
It’s one of those things where some changes can be pretty easy with minimal fuss and they work essentially the same, switching away from Chrome for example.
But some things are very involved and take a lot of work, and experience will suffer because features will be missing or the alternatives are buggier. Trying to switch to Matrix instead of Discord and Telegram for example was something I gave up on really quickly, it’s just not there yet for me.
Lemmy is kind of in the middle for me, usability is generally as good as reddit, but instances are often slow or down so comments/replies don’t post properly, images will load slowly, videos often not at all.
