Is Presence Fixed Yet?
Not at all. But you can help!
Presence is notoriously one of the most “broken” features in the Matrix protocol. Even with efforts to improve server implementations1, almost every major public Matrix deployment disables federated presence, citing performance concerns2.
Current Matrix presence is fundamentally flawed: Users receive presence data for all users they share rooms with, even if the two users have never interacted or spoken otherwise. Additionally, presence EDUs sent over federation have short TTLs and require regular retransmission, resulting in write amplification which prevents current presence from being enabled on major public deployments where it matters most.
A group of community members including maintainers of the Continuwuity homeserver began work on a set of proposals to dramatically reduce presence’s footprint on federation traffic and improve privacy UX for end users. This work, dubbed “Presence v2,” currently consists of four proposals which will improve presence by improving batching behavior, and most importantly, only sharing presence with interested parties.
If you are interested in helping improve Presence for the Matrix community, please join us in #presence-v2:zirco.dev.
The Proposals
- 🚧 Selective Presence, reducing load by only sharing presence with interested parties
- Status: Internal Draft
- How you can help: Join #presence-v2:zirco.dev and participate in discussion about Selective Presence.
- 🚧 Incremental Presence, reducing load by increasing presence TTLs and providing batching behavior
- Status: Concept
- 🔲 Sliding Sync Extension: Presence, reducing client-server sync traffic for users not regularly viewed
- Status: Concept
- 🔲 Fetchable Presence, allowing users to publish presence data without pushing to every possible user
- Status: Concept
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