[Arathorn]

if you’re talking about the matrix.org homeserver’s room directory - these rooms are strictly against our terms of use (section 6 of https://matrix.org/legal/terms-and-conditions/) and we shut them down, and these days have even frozen the roomdir to stop them appearing.

if you’re talking about the wider network - yes, there’s a subset of abusive users… just like on the web, or the internet, or email, etc. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about; it comes with the territory of being an open network where anyone can participate.

My experience of Matrix is more that it’s full of FOSS projects like Mozilla, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, GNOME, KDE etc… as well as lots of government users. But ymmv. If you are still seeing abusive rooms as a matter of course, please route details to [e-mail], where we do actually act on them (if they are on servers we control)

[jcul]

Wow, yeah the parent comment is shocking to me. For me matrix is OSS discussions, like a modern IRC (not that IRC is gone, a lot of matrix rooms bridge to IRC).

Though I suppose if you search for other stuff you can find it.

Though it strikes me as a little odd, I never really associated matrix with anonymity, more with federation, end to end encryption, self hosting.

Perhaps hosting matrix servers as tor hidden services could serve that purpose.

[Gormo]

It's a bit strange to even criticize these services for the existence of abusive users. The underlying problem is that abusive people exist in real life: it goes without saying that they'll show up in any context that's accessible to the general public.

Complaining that bad people are using Matrix is about as meaningful as complaining that bad people are driving on the highways or are filling their bathtubs with from the local water supply.