Speed was a big thing. Switching channels could take a few seconds to over a minute to load, on good hardware.
The biggest issue, and a huge glaring oversight imo, is that users can create their own channels, encrypt them, and instance owners have no way to know what goes on in there. Some of the channel names alone were enough to make your skin crawl.
Oh, and you want to ban somebody? Cool, just ban them individually from every channel, because there is no global instance-wide ban. Moderation is horrendous.
It’s an unpopular opinion but I completely agree. I’ve tried Matrix, not only could I not get more than 2% of my community to try it, but it’s horribly unintuitive and limited for server owners. Shut it down after a few months.
I have a rocket chat server going now, some similar issues, but at least it has more control than Matrix. Still only a fraction of my Discord and Telegram user base has joined, but it’s similar enough that people are at least willing to try.
FOSS alone is not enough, the wider public doesn’t care, they just want something easy and convenient.
Hosted my own, was basically trying to move a large group off telegram and onto my own servers.
I did use Mjolnir for a while, but that was a hassle in and of itself as well. Nothing was intuitive.