I wouldn’t call it a shit show, they were first in E2E encrypted collaborative messaging platforms and get all the hits. Moderation turned out to be incompatible with E2E encryption. People kicked out of channels can still decrypt because keys revocation hasn’t been made.

Matrix server is a resource hog and a mess, and the protocol has never took off to spark alternative implementations.

Encryption doesn’t scale well for big channels.

They got many things right, but got crippled by many things they couldn’t possibly predict.

The entire concept of it is a shit show. It's the prime example of anti user design.

It's a functional system, with the entire concept of user friendly design and non power user being ignored.

It's made by power users and engineers for power users and engineers. It's fantastic for what it is.