@Fragglemuppet I've written a guide for it at https://joinmatrix.org. For most people Element is enough, but other client options exist. Accessibility is a bit of an issue. It is quite a technical platform given its focus on certain principles, even more so than the ActivityPub Fediverse, but I'm willing to answer any questions you may have.

@Profpatsch Key verification should not be a prerequisite for DMs. Consider having your sender disable the default setting "Never send encrypted messages to unverified sessions from this session" (in User Settings => Security & Privacy); it is not enabled by default but is worded weirdly so some people enable it out of confusion.

@ChristinWhite For rooms try https://matrix.to/#/#matrixunited-space:matrix.org or https://the-apothecary.club. For homeservers see https://servers.joinmatrix.org/servers.json or https://web.archive.org/web/20241015043454/https://servers.joinmatrix.org/ for now while I try to bring the site back. Most public homeservers are EU-based; for you I'd suggest catgirl.cloud.

@olap Almost no public room is encrypted (and Element advises you against encrypting it), while DMs are indeed mostly e2ee. Native calls are p2p (TURN/STUN) but calling between more than 2 people natively (Element Call) still haven't been fully rolled out yet. @BigG Matrix is a good platform to chat socially, but if your focus is one-to-one and care about absolute secrecy then Signal is a better fit (as Matrix has metadata issues). Also see https://joinmatrix.org.

@micr0 That you're lonely (given the Japanese text)?

@risottobias SEO and moderation is probably the make & break of listboards, the former very much outranks the latter. On Discord, listboards are fundamentally ad businesses.

@Jaxseven You can look at https://web.archive.org/web/20241015043454/https://servers.joinmatrix.org/ for now while I try to bring the site back. I can also give more specific recommendations if you provide more criteria.

@Katos https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy allows you to deploy any of the four major homeserver implementations, plus peripheries like bridges, using Docker. As for the exact choice... if you want to stay safe with feature support, use Synapse; if you want to go out and try things, use conduwuit.

An anonymous good samaritan just emailed me a backup of the Matrix homeserver list's data file, which is actually later than my own backup, which was accidentally left on my laptop for debugging... Well, guess if I ever run a server again, I should back up important things at least on my laptop... (Still no response from Oracle on the suspension...)

@kurohana Assume you mean rooms (since I see that you're selfhosting). There's ⁨https://matrixrooms.info⁩ which is a collection of room directories of various homeservers, though it is quite unfiltered. I've written some recommendations in ⁨https://joinmatrix.org/guide/popular-rooms/⁩ as well.