It does look like the main issue has been resolved (chat URLs no longer error out). But the other reported issues remain, notifications do not work for me and probably many others, and dick pics sent via chat to our users still cannot be hidden or blocked as there's no means to turn off or blur all chat images. Please make sure the team is aware that these are still unresolved.

As a user of chat and chat-based communities, I wish Reddit would take some of my suggestions for combating the spam and abuse. That they block people from chatting with mods of communities they're banned from, but don't extend the same courtesy to users, feels absolutely ridiculous to me.

If you're not already aware, you can turn off Chat in your account settings. It's a separate setting from traditional messages. Best turn off Followers while you're there too, that's somehow even more of a cesspit of OnlySpam.

I mean communities that are used to arrange one-on-one chats between users, e.g., R4R and personals subs. Chats between users can't be moderated by mods, of course.

The "moderation features" we've asked for are simply that Reddit should be hiding usernames of posters from users who are banned from that community. They've long do this for mods, in order to somewhat reduce harassment, we're simply asking they extend the same courtesy to users. The goal is the same, to make it more difficult for abusers, not to provide a perfect solution that will be 100% effective; the mod username block isn't impenetrable either, but it still reduces harassment, we just want our users to have the same protection since they need it more.

By the way, Group Chats do seem to have returned, there are a few other subreddits using these again. Reddit also announced they plan to bring back Subreddit Chats too. There is still no effective way to moderate them, though, especially as Reddit forbids moderation bots from accessing chats.