I haven't looked into it a whole lot, but it's been some time and I am still desperate for a viable Discord replacement that's "easy" to get my closest circle of friends to use.

I haven't looked into it a whole lot, but it's been some time and I am still desperate for a viable Discord replacement that's "easy" to get my closest circle of friends to use.
It's decent! Element is the most 'discord-ish' client, and it works fine on my phone, so I'd say the only barrier now is that federation is kinda boring; people don't like having to keep track of instances. Direct them to a big one I guess? There's probably a list somewhere. I'm on bark.lgbt!
element (and forks thereof) have improved a bunch, but matrix still does matrix things occasionally. and while it's still a neat protocol, id rather stick with signal these days, esp with the new usernames. still has better UX and beginner-friendlyness than matrix imo
I haven't used it myself but I've heard complaints that sometimes has issues with message delivery. No idea how common this issue is though