This is a pretty decent critique of the Matrix protocol ecosystem, and comports with my experiences. Many of the complaints are addressed in various MSCs but the sheer volume of those is absurd and I can't tell which are being prioritized since it seems almost like there are only two or three people active on their various GitHub projects. Arathorn chimes in here on HN to try to explain and/or provide PR spin, and turt2live seems to be the only one on GitHub assigning issues to themselves.

I really want to like Matrix and I have been running decently sized non-federated servers for close to 6 years now, but it still feels like a mess. I wish I knew how to help them fix the biggest issues, but I'm not the guy. All I can do is complain (though I try to do so constructively).

For me the biggest issues as of today are the onboarding experience, convincing users that it's better than Discord, and trying to navigate the mess of "bridging" and "appservices" both for myself and for the less technically inclined users.

This lines up with some of my own critiques as well. Good writeup overall.