Around 2.7 billion people are frontline workers - that’s about 80 percent of the world’s working population. It covers a huge range of roles, spanning in-home support, hospitality, agriculture, logistics, construction, emergency services and much more. Being on the frontline means that people are often operating from a mobile device. So it’s easy to understand why 53% of frontline workers end up using unapproved consumer-grade messaging apps at work.

Our team has been working hard behind the scenes on a dedicated enterprise installer for on-premise deployments of Element - and now it’s ready for launch! Many of our larger customers (especially those in areas such as public sector, telco, utilities and education) have strict compliance obligations that necessitate them hosting data on-premise. We’re committed to ensuring anyone can deploy Element on-premise securely, swiftly and without compromises.

Trying to keep track of several conversations in one timeline at once can often feel (and look) like long division! Cross-talk, replies, and reactions make your timeline feel disjointed and messy. It’s less than ideal, especially if you use Element to enhance your productivity. Threads help you separate conversations from the main timeline.

A couple of weeks ago the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Europe agreed on the main guidelines for the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA is legislation aiming to create a more competitive digital market in Europe by mandating competition-friendly practices from the ‘gatekeepers’ i.e. the largest tech companies (see below for full definition).

The final text will probably be available around mid-May and voted for in early July, but the latest version we have seen lists the following.

On Thursday, March 24th, the EU Parliament held its last debate on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and decided how strongly to bring Big Tech to heel. The EU’s intentions to ‘ensure fair and open digital markets’ have always been good, but there have been many points in the negotiations where the outcome could have been toothless - in particular around the interoperability obligation.

Amandine Le Pape, COO at Element, explains how Element is funding moderation tooling and development for all of Matrix. Moderation of online information is topical for two completely unrelated reasons: Let’s face it, the traditional approach to moderation is fundamentally broken. It’s neither scalable nor compatible with the idea of interoperable communication. Something has to change.

Hopefully in-person meet-ups will prove much easier in 2022 - but, there’s still a need for video calls, so let’s face it, they’re here to stay. This makes it really exciting to present Element Call: the world’s first decentralised voice and video conferencing app powered entirely by Matrix!

The EU’s next discussion on the Digital Markets Act (DMA) will take place soon and interoperability for online communications (messaging apps, collaboration tools and social media platforms) will be at the heart of it. Interoperability was one of the key features of the DMA when it was first advertised, as it’s completely aligned with the fundamental goals of the act.

Location sharing can be seen in both a positive and negative light. Great in the sense that it provides an extra layer of safety and convenience to users. Ever tried finding your friends at a festival without location sharing? Impossible. A lone worker who wants the comfort of those back at base knowing where they are? Yes please. But, of course, it can also be a massive invasion of privacy and yet another opportunity for data mining and more ******* adverts.