VS

I have tried both and still use both. They both have their own pros and cons. For a summary I will list them below:-

MATRIX

(Pros)

• It has many clients and a good enough compatibility between them. Some of them lack video or calling but it is what it is. Element is the most popular and has most of the features.
• encrypted chats for both personal and group chats.
• threads and spaces (they are like a collection of rooms.
• more customization features
• also didn’t know where to mention this but this is what Lemmy instances recommend for messaging instead of direct Lemmy message feature because Lemmy and fediverse has a whole lacks good encrypted direct messaging protocol due to activity pub. Even tho I put mine in my Lemmy profile it doesn’t show up anywhere for some reason

(Cons)

• metadata leaks
• many of the rooms I joined are not encrypted by default and that just sucks because if you are using a private messaging platform use the thing that makes it private. Gosh rolls my eyes
• Major Con: everyone in the rooms you joined or chatted personally with will know of you change anything in your profile it may be your display name or avatar. All the people will get a subtext about that perticular change.
• heavy to selfhost and harder to moderate.

Matrix is modern compared to something like xmpp/jabber so these things can be fixed in the future. The recent release of matrix 2.0 is encouraging to see as it addresses a lot of these issues and fixes a lot of security vulnerabilities.

XMPP/Jabber

(Pros)

• lightweight and e2e through omemo or pgp
• Doesn’t need a email to register
• has most of the features like stickers, gifs, calling(some of them do I’ll get to that) and reactions.
• easy to selfhost and memory efficient
• stood the test of time (basically its very old and rigid)

(Cons)

• inconsistent feature set between clients. Unlike matrix element, there is no client which has all the features. This makes it so that one client works with one feature and another one just doesn’t have it. Even if two clients have that feature they don’t work with each other for some reason. e2ee messaging is the only feature that every client has afaik.
• bad design and ugly old looking (depends on the client but most of them don’t look that good imo)
• less customization compared to matrix. The only thing you can change is the name and account profile image.
• omemo encryption is off by default and pgp is only available in some clients

I may have missed some things but I am not really an expert as you can see.

What is better? What do you use personally? Do you think all messaging sucks and irc is better or should we all return to e-mail as foretold by our elders let me know. Personally both of them succ balls and I prefer to use signal as it has usernames now which fixes my only gripe with it. Your input will be greatly appreciated!!