I think Matrix as a protocol has been pretty ineffective, as their top priority seems to be keeping data permanent and duplicated. Both performance and privacy are at the bottom of their priority list. The one good thing I can say about it is that encryption of message contents is enabled by default in conversations and available in groups, but that's about it - nothing else is, or can be, encrypted. In other words, every participating server knows who is talking to who, and how much, and when, and in what rooms, and what those rooms' names are, and what those rooms' descriptions are, and who moderates them, etc.

Meanwhile, an app like Signal can do none of that, and that's by design.

If you're looking for a privacy oriented messaging system, you'd best look elsewhere.

I'm new to Matrix and found this comment on reddit. How much of it is accurate and does it actually contribute to whether or not the future of the protocol is promising?

There is legitimate skepticism here when so much is at stake.

As an N4 student of Japanese the origin story of Hiragana listed here was quite interesting. However the overall layout/design of the characters and page leaves much to be desired.

as Google retiring for on being Google

Can you learn to construct a grammatically sentence before you decide click the submit button?

Nice revisionist history there.