The need to setup bridges negates the privacy benefits, it breaks the opportunistic E2EE when copies of all messages are sent to e.g. Telegram servers that stores them effectively in plaintext. When the main goal is to invite people to some platform, bridges are a shortcut to allow some people to join, but until everyone joins and the bridge can be removed, there's no improvement.
Interestingly, people don't really consider the privacy aspect. Average users claim they don't want another messaging app, but somehow they find the willpower to jump from facebook to instagram to snapchat to tiktok to wine to telegram to periscope to kik.
My peers use have an inside joke of "stickers > human rights" which describes what motivates people. Matrix or be it any other client, needs an exclusive throw-in feature that appeals to masses, basically something that combines sharing everything like they used to on social media, something that feeds their narcissism (likes etc.), and something that's fun (think tiktok videos). Signal doesn't have it, at least yet. Matrix most certainly doesn't have it. Telegram has some of it.
The usability needs to be intuitive and thought thoroughly, and it needs to make managing (social) life easier. We've already seen this with personal could in e.g. Signal's "note to self", or Telegram's polls -feature (I'm hesitant to consider it a feature since it's inherently non-private method to share opinions to Telegram developers about something: group chats are never E2EE).
My perception of Matrix is that it fails to deliver the stuff listed above, as well as life management, ease of use, moving responsibility of hosting to some trusted peer, and even security agility and default security feel off. The only thing that makes Matrix stand out is the ideological "decentralization means no individual has control over communication" which doesn't resonate with privacy-minded users who care about E2EE-by-default-for-everything, nor to average users who don't hesitate for a second to jump from TikTok to FlobbordSocial that allows them to share videos of their Plumbus X if it gives them social acceptance and likes, i.e. dopamine spikes. These people consider apps fads that come and go, they don't really consider long-term availability because they're always looking for the new shiny thing to fill their internal void. They know they can always call/text/whatsapp their friends if Flobbord suddenly seizes to exist.