agree - it needs better immune responses, healthier community in some real ways

Matrix should rightly die. Its a terrible protocol in so many aspects.

As a counter, Mastodon federation is pretty sweet.

I have yet to learn about a federated alternative which is better than Matrix or at least on the same level

XMPP just works and has matured substantially in the last 5years or so. You may or may not like it, but that's all I've been using/needing for a decade, and because of that, I ended up onboarding a bunch of tech-illiterate friends and family members along the way. It just works for them, too.

I "need"/want more, Cross Signing, completely autonomous servers, not contacting 3rd party servers as a client, easy access to e2ee msgs including fresh sessions, non-centralized rooms, e2ee video conferencing, to name to most important aspects.

it's too bad running a mastodon instance is also a nightmare

GoToSocial and snac2 are both much simpler. https://gotosocial.org/ https://comam.es/snac-doc/

pleroma has em all beat

Lol. Mastodon is terrible, be the tech as it may. At least there's content I care about on Matrix, although Discord is still king.