There is hope! Matrix and its bridge ecosystem are growing and improving. Nova chat (no affiliation) are building their charged service on top of it. IIRC they also contribute to/sponsor the development of them.
The vast majority of the bridge work and maintenance is done single-handedly by tulir. It'd be awesome to see more capable individuals contributing :)
My bet is that having the French and German governments as paying clients will be a game-changer for Matrix. We've moved over to it internally, and I'm federating onto a couple of social channels; using Slack feels like chewing glass now, and if I could interact with my remaining Slack obligations from Element, I would.
Slack can be as hostile as they want, I welcome it in fact, because I want them to be unprofitable, hemorrhaging users, and eventually shut down. Best of all, there's only so much they can do in that department, while keeping all the bot integrations which are their only remaining (and fast eroding) edge.
The vast majority of the bridge work and maintenance is done single-handedly by tulir. It'd be awesome to see more capable individuals contributing :)