Could somebody smart or at least someone who knows about matrix explain it to me in easy terms? Can I use it to organise better, can I use it to text friends overseas, does it help keep shit I send on discord private, does it make it harder for feds to read texts I send, do I need to bug my friends/family to use it for there to be any point to using it?
do I need to bug my friends/family to use it for there to be any point to using it?
Yes.
Every message you send by text, discord or other proprietarily services that are not end to end encrypted are already being actively intercepted and stored by the NSA and other parties. There is no solution currently or theoretically possible where you can evade surveillance without bugging the people who want to communicate with to switch to encrypted services such as matrix.
matrix still has some holes - like if the NSA sends matrix.org an NSL and taps their servers, they can get information on who you're talking to and how often, etc., even in encrypted channels. it gets better if you run your own matrix server, but the most important piece - the identity server - is really fucking hard to set up and run yourself, and that's the part that won't be solved by the p2p in-browser matrix homeserver that's in the works right now.
so matrix is much, much better than discord/slack/whatever and I wish we'd all switch to it immediately but it's not a perfect solution by any stretch. I'm working on a p2p phone app that solves this identity problem but it's intended for burners and communication with people who are vetted / in the same small, tight-knit affinity groups, not general purpose comms a la discord. for this, I think that p2p matrix I mentioned + an identity server you or someone you trust controls would be the safest option (even over signal, as it has moderation options - and signal leaks the same info as matrix.org).
the vector identity shit + hostile fork clusterfuck makes it so hard to get good info on setting up an identity server
everytime I look at it I wind up at this indecisive point where I can't decide whether to go with the fork or not, mildly triggered by the sea of nerd rage I've had to wade through
@Galli's point, put another way: your comms security is as good as yours or your recipients', whichever's worse