Gitlab and Element's website structure is different. element.io is the site for the managed product, so even their "on-premise" installer is meant to be used in a commercial relationship. For install docs you'd probably have to purchase their product (which isn't available freely).
TLDR, check out the project, run `yarn install`, then edit the config file, then `yarn build`.
And, yes, that is all there is to it. It's significantly simpler to deploy than GitLab.
Finally, you keep mentioning self-hosting; you _can_ just use a non-self hosted application like the downloadable version of Element, SchildiChat, Fluffychat, or any other client.
No reason to bring hosting into the mix for the client, if that's causing concern.
This is NPR One, no? That's why I've been using it - it gives you a nice steady stream of NPR's programming and outside podcasts, randomly sampled at first, which in time starts preferring your favored content (which it learns by you "liking" content).
Matrix[1] is trying to solve that issue, I'd highly recommend looking into it. I actually pipe most of my various "chat" networks (including WhatsApp) into it via bridges[2].
As you said, we in Europe are kind of forced to have WA installed, but at least you don't have to use it as your primary client if you don't want to. You can even deploy it to an Android VM and go completely headless, if you feel the need.
An incognito browser would ignore all client-side cookies, so the Slack web client would not try to - say - resume a previous user's session or re-use any previously saved data.
Likewise, incognito mode will also ignore most cached web content, meaning all assets on the Slack web app will get loaded again from scratch. This "clean state" start could, theoretically, get around issues with old - potentially incorrect/outdated - assets being loaded, even though that really shouldn't happen under most circumstances.
I feel like all of these apps (with special emphasis on Telegram and Signal) have almost the exact same UX and features of WhatsApp... beyond adoption numbers.
It was pretty straight forward to install/set up? There are some requirements to be able to federate, namely having a domain and associated certs for encryption, but otherwise nothing stood out as overtly obtuse/difficult.
You have to either make a venv for a binary or just install a package, then reverse proxy 2 ports from your http daemon, and finally also hook things up to your Postgres database. After all that it's just a matter of configuring your homeserver's config (which is large, but you can easily get support via the community for any poorly documented options)
The documentation could definitely be improved, though.
Yes, correct. Ironsource is an advertisement/UA company that doesn't offer any "toolbar". What you're angry at (and rightly so) is the fact that their network was used to offer malware/adware. As per the first article you linked:
> IronSource is likely to blame third party "partners" for most or all of the defects we have listed, but our analysis indicates that IronSource is importantly responsible.
Also from the second link:
> That’s not to say that IronSource is necessarily aware that a publisher (pay-per-install) is redirecting visitors to sites that impersonate Google Chrome.
This is a clear failure on Ironsource's part to secure their network, but it isn't evidence of any malitious intent on their part.
> This is just a spam piece from the spam company ironsource.
It's their job to deliver ads. And ad mediation. And UA.
> They try to put their spam-bundleware-crapware-search-bar into everything.
They don't have a "spam-bundleware-crapware-search-bar". You're frustrated at specific advertisements on an advertisement network/the security of the network as a whole.
> And this is just another article trying to convince app developers to make yet another spam app with spam bundle-ware
s/yet another spam app with spam bundle-ware/a mobile application utilizing advertisements/
I'm not saying anything about the quality of Ironsource as a network, but lets not make them out to be the boogeyman. They are, at worst, inept.