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>FOSS solutions lack the UX and care more about the tech than the UX and solving the actual problem.

I read this sentiment all the time here but I am not sure it's true. Element works just fine.

My family has moved from facebook to instant messaging over the years, the great thing about IM vs social media is that all IM is the same so there is no real switching cost platform-to-platform, whether you use whatsapp or matrix or whatever

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Element for me occasionally says it can't decrypt my group chat messages. It doesn't exactly hold your hand through the setup, one of my non techie friends had to ask what to do. Logging in on new devices is needlessly complicated. And if you bridge Element to Slack, all element users have the element logo as their profile picture. A good example of the lack of UX polish in open source.

I agree the Matrix UX is a little rough, but I think it's more than just Element being unpolished. Matrix is solving a hard problem: it's federated, E2E encrypted, bridged to other protocols, and designed to allow multiple clients. It's much easier to have a smooth UX in a monolithic system with no security.

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