

One of the major draws of discord is the fact that they host the servers for you, for free. Anyone can make an account, click a button, and have a discord server.
Afaik matrix does allow this (haven’t used it personally) but it’s something where I am a bit worried about hosting costs if it reaches a large scale. (Also unsure about how the matrix protocol works precisely, but if defederation is a thing which I feel like it has to be, I can see it leading to huge pains since discords use case is often about being part of a specific communitu, as opposed to twitter or reddit. Being unable to join a groip or see some messsges because of federation issues would be a major headache).
Many countries have restrictions on what you can and cannot post (hate speech being a common one). Turkey in particular has been moving towards autocracy over the last decade or so, so I wouldn’t be surprised (to be clear this is speculation feel free to correct me) if it had restrictions on lgbt issues or political dissent or something.