I think there's a disconnect between people who use discord as an IM client and people who use discord as a way to find communities. Ive been using discord since like the friends and family alpha, and I've never once joined a server that was larger than "4-12 people I know irl who hate group texts." The way I understand and think about discord is drastically different from somebody who uses it more like a decentralized forum full of hobby or creator driven communities. I'd guess that the latter half is what is being referred to as dangerous for trans folk, but again I cannot confirm as discord is functionally equivalent to like MSN messenger for me

I wouldn't personally call the whole platform unsafe. A lot of big servers, yeah not gonna be too great.

The problem is Discord servers have become too large and too public, that leads to a lot of trolls and bad actors.

To be fair Matrix does lack a lot of features still. Video and voice calls are a mess, there's not the equivelent of voice channels afawk.

For those of us who are plural, there's no plural kit alternative (at least not widely avaliable), the moderation tools and permissions systems are a joke (we should know we used to moderate a whole server and several spaces). The search is really bad or non existent in several clients.

A lot of this is because those behind matrix are more concerned with corporations and their needs than the common user, and keep making really ridiculous and assinine decisions; like keeping matrix.org as open signups until it becomes too big to moderate and they have to start charging people for the privelege of decent performance, instead of what they should have done a long time ago and shutting their doors so as to encourage federation.

Matrix is actually not at all well thought through or accessible, we have never and will never use discord, but we can't deny they have a point.