Matrix aims to be for everyone, not just those with a (hyper)focus on privacy. From my perspective as project lead, the primary goal is more to open up communication so that users have control and that there is an open platform to build on, much like the Web, but for communication - rather than being locked into Facebook/Google/AT&T or whoever. A very desirable side-effect of that is that you get better privacy.
You can see this spelt out in our project manifesto at https://matrix.org/foundation, which says that we believe:
* People should have full control over their own communication.
* People should not be locked into centralised communication silos, but instead be free to pick who they choose to host their communication without limiting who they can reach.
* The ability to converse securely and privately is a basic human right.
* Communication should be available to everyone as a free and open, unencumbered, standard and global network.
You'll note that privacy is in there, but it's not the only thing that guides the project.
> Matrix has been promising better privacy (and e2e encryption) for some time but maybe this isn't actually where matrix is heading?
I assume this is ironic, when commenting on a blogpost talking about how we're improving privacy considerations. Meanwhile, E2E is going great guns, as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20315096.
> And it's not like a better technical solution for the address book doesn't exist!!
What do you have in mind? The only one I'm aware of is Signal's SGX stuff (https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/), but there you swap out trust in whoever runs your identity server for trust in Intel, which doesn't necessarily seem like an obvious win.