What is Matrix?

Matrix is a federated, decentralized realtime chat platform - think like Discord or Slack but interoperable with other “instances” (aka “servers”) the same way email interoperates with other providers. You can create “spaces” (similar to Discord’s “Servers” or Slack’s “Workspace”) or standalone rooms. You can make rooms public or private, and you can chat with anyone from any other instance you wish. Direct messages are encrypted by default, but public rooms are not.

The New Oil offers our own self-hosted Matrix instance as a privacy-friendly alternative to mainstream services like Slack and Discord. We don’t collect data about you or serve you ads. You can view our privacy policy here. If you’d like to help support our work and keep this instance going, please consider supporting us here.

Getting Started

1. Pick a client.

2. You can select a public instance from this list. Our server is currently not accepting registrations as we will be migrating to a new hosting provider.

3. Go forth and find your community!

Disclaimers

No instance can be held responsible for the users or content of other instances. In other words, I am unable to ban or remove users from another instance. If you see a malicious user on the matrix.thenewoil.org instance, please report them in the client or contact me here.

Matrix does not include any meaningful moderation tools by default. There are some limited tools that should suffice for small communities that you can learn more about here. For larger communities, we recommend the Draupnir bot. It is well maintained, the developer is extremely helpful and responsive, and it contains a number of powerful features to help protect your community. It can be easily hosted on even the simplest of hardware - such as a Raspberry Pi. If you are unable to or uncomfortable attempting to host your own Draupnir bot, we recommend using the Draupnir4All project. Alternately you can use the Spam Police bot, but this bot is limited to blocking only known spammers and scammers.