The reason Third Room has persisted is because there are enterprise folks willing to pay for it and support the team as a standalone thing - you can see the enterprisey showreel video at the end of the OP. It’s also very useful when fundraising for Element and Matrix to be able to point at an exotic shiny project to show Matrix’s long-term potential - a bit like Beeper have their Beepberry device. You can almost think of it as a marketing tool.
Separately, “the entire Matrix trust & safety team” was not laid off - today there are somewhere between 3 to 5 people working one way or another on T&S (between tooling and operational) on behalf of Matrix at Element. I don’t blame folks who are laid off for feeling aggrieved though, but we categorically did not throw anyone under the bus (or, if we did, it wasn’t intentional).
Separately, “the entire Matrix trust & safety team” was not laid off - today there are somewhere between 3 to 5 people working one way or another on T&S (between tooling and operational) on behalf of Matrix at Element. I don’t blame folks who are laid off for feeling aggrieved though, but we categorically did not throw anyone under the bus (or, if we did, it wasn’t intentional).