Maybe relay operators should read it too. Spam can be handled at the client or at the relay. I find him rather distasteful and disrespectful however for shitting on open source developers for creating something that isn't good enough for him. They didn't blame him where he calls it "victim blaming," they gave him practical advice he didn't want to hear. He shouldn't use matrix if he doesn't like it, but also he shouldn't go shitting on them. Constructive feedback, rational assessment, that's all fine. But the moral opprobrium and implicit entitlement to imaginary features stinks of leftie to me. Just sayin'. Any good libertarian would pull the source code and fix it. He didn't really think through the idea he hints at, that "a stranger shouldn't be able to bombard users with multiple notifications." Imagine that policy was adopted and coded. Then a stranger could setup 100 sock puppet accounts and still do it anyways. Imagine then there was some gatekeeping to who was allowed to join in order to solve that problem. Now the situation is even worse, don't you think? Or maybe strangers aren't allowed to contact you at all. That's fine, and should be a personal choice since that has an obvious down side. There doesn't really exist a perfect solution to this problem. I've written about the options available before I won't rehash them here.

I agree the 'web of trust' is a powerful tool for spam filtering. For some people, they only want replies from people N-degrees away from them. In fact for most people that is probably true. 61 people that I follow also follow you, meaning you get a WoT score of 61 in my book. That's quite high. If I get a note from someone with a 0, especially if they say they are someone that I follow, I know they are an imposter. It's a powerful tool. And I agree with Terence that matrix ain't so hot. I'm expect he thought it was hot, and then became disappointed, and now is refusing to own his own emotions. And the real complaint is could make is against those people who wrongly told him it was hot.