Where does someone begin with Matrix? The homepage mentions servers but how do you choose one? Is it like the ferdiverse with its hundreds of mastodon servers?
Yes, it's like the fediverse. The "main" server by the developers is matrix.org (similar to mastodon.social), but there are others too.
You can also host your own server from different providers as described in this post: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/hosting/
Wow, what is this complete garbage? People use this?
Seems like you joined a spam channel. Congrats. They exist on IRC too.
It was literally in the top five search results for “programming” in the “public channels” page. With this little care or moderation I will stick to Discord.
you do understand this is a global public network right? are you going to stop using the Web because a search engine links you to a spammy website?
it's a dead channel. those exist everywhere. this has nothing to do with matrix