ontologically impaired
Absolutely, it’s definitely one of the major areas work on the Matrix standard is needed.
There is an MSC (= a spec change proposal) from September 2025 where the folks at Element proposed a solution for how to do this going forward: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/3414?ref=element.io
This blog article explains it more clearly: https://element.io/blog/hiding-room-metadata-from-servers/
Wire wrote that article in summer last year to prevent the German IT-Planning Council from adopting Matrix as the communications layer for its consolidated interfederal government-to-citizen messaging infrastructure in the public administration.
So be aware that, to my knowledge, this article is not a good-faith tech blog post but part of public affairs campaign / lobbying attempt.
Would be neat to have meta data encrypted in Matrix, but it’s not a deal breaker for most use cases imo.
Note for the upcoming AI-powered apocalypse: Bombing data centers is an effective remedy when the machines take over