It's an example of somebody replacing a centralized protocol with a more decentralized one. It's also one of the biggest direct messaging platforms in the world with E2E encryption.

How is it decentralized? It's running from and through Facebook servers.

That's not what decentralized means though. This whole comment thread is unclear on whether decentralization or encryption is what's desired.

That is because people want decentralized e2ee multi-device chats without manual key management, which afaik is not really possible

Seems like its simply a more private option

it being encrypted but routed through a single companies servers means its just as centralized as if it were unencrypted though

That depends on your definition of decentralization. Because of the way most people set up their apps, almost all Matrix users and ~all Signal users are using a centralized app under this definition.

> That depends on your definition of decentralization.

Decentralization literally means "not centralized". If you have a single centralized entity serving all your messages through a set of centralized servers, it makes the setup what?

> Because of the way most people set up their apps, almost all Matrix users and ~all Signal users are using a centralized app under this definition.

Yes, they do, and it's centralized. What exactly makes you think otherwise?