Conduit Beta – Matrix chat server
This looks wonderful and very important. In 1995, when I started working with the Internet  I believed that it was going to bring freedom and equality - to allow anyone (big or small, rich or poor) to communicate with the rest of the world. It never crossed my mind the Internet would become the primary tool for corrupt governments and enterprises to censor and spy on us.<p>In 2015 the number of users who use messaging overtook the number of users who use social media. “Messaging is the one thing people do more than anything else on their phone… this is where it’s happening. And it’s a once in a generation opportunity to build it,” said David Marcus, VP of Messaging Products. I&#x27;ve been building Messenger apps and using Google&#x27;s conversational AI engine, Dialogflow, to listen to and respond to messages and sometimes I feel like I&#x27;m selling my soul.<p>By 2020 AI-powered insights businesses stole $1.2 trillion for their less-informed peers according to Forrester Research. &quot;… by understanding customers more deeply and using that insight to steal them from their competition.&quot; &quot;Customer service and support is the most augmented business process with AI ... sales and marketing are high on the priority list,&quot; says Gartner. All this is centred around messaging, the channel where your customers spend their time.<p>The reason I said all this is to stress how important messaging is to both businesses and individuals. I believe that messaging is the next generation of the internet. In the last few weeks, Facebook has been shown to secretly censor links sent on Messenger and Apple,  as a first step to listen to our messages, announced they are going to save our children from paedophiles.<p>I am as worried as any parent about protecting my children, from pedos and crazy people who will use secure messaging to organise terrorist attacks. But I&#x27;m more worried that my children will grow up in a world without freedom of speech and privacy. I am worried that they will live in a world where they are frightened to speak their mind because they understand that everything they say is being permanently recorded. I am worried that someday, for what they said, they may be penalised by a corrupt government, corporation or an AI.<p>For me, the Matrix (since it sends encrypted messages directly from person to person) is one of the most important technologies that may allow my kids to grow up in a world where humans are free and safe to speak freely. The First Amendment says &quot;Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble...&quot; These laws have been bent and broken and will continue to be, so that the people who break them can silence their opposition, to remain in control.  It&#x27;s very sad that most people in the US are not fighting to keep the very foundations that their country was built on alive.<p>I&#x27;d like to thank the developers of Conduit and the Matrix for their efforts to keep freedom and privacy in our world. Conduit with its small footprint is a great step forward. I hope someday it will enable anyone and everyone who owns a phone to provide the infrastructure needed to communicate freely. In the meantime, I will install it on my Raspberry Pi. I suppose I should volunteer to help you guys in some way and put action to my words. I am not an engineer but if you are interested in assistance with your strategy, marketing, design, UI, website, or messaging feel free to reach out to @t0c:matrix.org I will have a look on GitHub anyway and find something to do.