I like the honesty and expectation setting in this post.
We’d like to give a warm welcome to the massive influx of users currently trying Matrix as an open decentralised alternative to centralised platforms like Discord. We wish we had more time and resources to develop all the features needed for mainstream adoption (see The Road To Mainstream Matrix from last year’s FOSDEM), but we're happy to welcome you anyway!
...we’re painfully aware that none of the Matrix clients available today provide a full drop-in replacement for Discord yet. All the ingredients are there, and the initial goal for the project was always to provide a decentralised, secure, open platform where communities and organisations could communicate together. However, the reality is that the team at Element who originally created Matrix have had to focus on providing deployments for the public sector (see here or here) to be able to pay developers working on Matrix. Some of the key features expected by Discord users have yet to be prioritised (game streaming, push-to-talk, voice channels, custom emoji, extensible presence, richer hierarchical moderation, etc). Meanwhile no other organisation stepped up to focus on the “communication tool for communities” use case and provide a production ready Discord alternative, but clients like Cinny or Commet may feel much closer to Discord. On the other hand, Matrix goes far beyond Discord in other areas: both messages, files and calls are end-to-end-encrypted; we have read receipts; Matrix is an open protocol everyone can extend, and in the end, most Matrix clients are open source; there is nothing stopping developers from starting their own project based on existing ones and adding the missing features themselves. They may even eventually get accepted in the original projects!
Anyway, TL;DR: Welcome to everyone trying Matrix for the first time; please understand that public Matrix servers will also have to uphold age verification laws, as misguided as they might be. However, at least in Matrix you have the opportunity to run your own servers as you wish: we actively encourage you to make your own assessments and seek legal advice where needed.