Have you tried WhatsApp? There are weird non moderated groups of children, organised crime and much more. It's a fucking weird and dangerous place to be around IMO.

not perfect? yes

terrible? no way

Every time I use it, it has some huge box over a third of the page saying I must "verify sessions".

It's incredibly slow to propagate messages.

Initial set up is very confusing and offers far too many choices.

I've never worked out how to find rooms. Regularly someone will give me a room name and I can't find it or join it.

Their entire service went down (did someone say "decentralised"?) a few months ago.

> Every time I use it, it has some huge box over a third of the page saying I must "verify sessions".

do you use element web on the phone?

> It's incredibly slow to propagate messages.

was

> Initial set up is very confusing and offers far too many choices.

thing of the past, currently there are two choices, in the future there will be only one

> I've never worked out how to find rooms. Regularly someone will give me a room name and I can't find it or join it.

let someone invite you to the room or share a link

> Their entire service went down (did someone say "decentralised"?) a few months ago.

afaik only matrix.org went down

> afaik only matrix.org went down

correct; the rest of the network was unaffected - it was just one instance (albeit the biggest one). https://matrix.org/blog/2025/10/post-mortem.