RedMatrix also providesbetter privacy mechanisms that is completely in control of the users. As can be seen fromSection 3.1 RedMatrix also ships with a lot of features, is really focused on privacy, andhas a great message distribution mechanism.However, when a hub serves a lot of users it needs to scale out. This has been tested withRedMatrix in a test setup using HAProxy, a set of RedMatrix instances, and a MySQL backend. During the tests no problems were encountered in running such an instance andmagicauthstill worked as expected. However, if the web hosting company experiences scalabilityissues with other back ends, for example with MySQL, it would still be possible to set upanother autonomous node. The web hosting company could ask some of the clients to moveto the new autonomous node, which would not be a problem since RedMatrix supportsnomadic identities. Even without further adjustments on-site by web hosting companies,installing RedMatrix is possible for users as it runs on the ubiquitous LAMP stack. It isalso end-user upgradeable. Given the above, we consider RedMatrix to be the most suitedcandidate that can be provided as a service by web hosting companies.39
However, the message distribution modeland extra features provided by RedMatrix seem to make it most suited as an alternativeto the current social network landscape. The message distribution model of RedMatrix isbetter compared to Friendica’s and Diaspora’s message distribution model, which is quite important in a decentralised solution. RedMatrix, which has been focused from the starton privacy, also supports nomadic identities. This allows users to move their identity be-tween hosts if the user wants to migrate from one host to the other and puts the user in aposition to choose a hub that provides the best services. With the directory server the usercan easier lookup his friends and discover remote content as remote friendships are made on the hub.
To conclude the research, RedMatrix is currently most suited to be provided as an alter-native to the current centralised social networks, which can be provided as a service byhosting companies. It is currently more mature than some of the other implementationsand puts the user back in control of their data.41