Matrix is not ready for non-technical people. Way too much stuff to consider as a user. It's similar to PGP a technology that will probably never go mainstream.

I used to believe the same as you about the usability of Matrix, but then I discovered the Fluffy Chat matrix client. It aims and looks to be as simple to use as WhatsApp or Telegram. Check it out if you haven't seen it: https://fluffychat.im/en/

Is there? I'm definitely the kind of person who wants to set up my own server and bridges for it at some point, but when I tried Matrix for the first time last week I just created an account at matrix.org, installed a quite polished client and just started chatting.

Last time I tried matrix, and mind you that was over 3 years ago. Was with riot.im and trying to use the e2e encryption. The major surprise was not being able to suddenly decrypt older chat messages when OpenBSD changed the User-Agent string for Chromium which as I understand was used to establish the device identity. This is not something non-technical people can or want to diagnose.

It's significantly better now! They've done a lot in the last 3 years, and during that timeframe was when cross signing and e2ee DMs became default. It's not perfect, but it's by far the best I've found for my priorities, and I think it's much more reasonable for regular people now. And if not now, hopefully soon! As a sibling mentioned, some of the alternative clients are also getting good.

The iOS client (Element) is garbage unless they fixed it in the last month. I suspect that’s what they’re referring to.

Comparing Element to PGP is ridiculous.