So, Bandwagon is great at broadcasting, and it works well as something like a Fediverse RSS reader, too.
But right now it sucks at DMs and notifications. Call it an artifact of my original newbie-ness with social networks.
That’s getting fixed sooner than later - coincidentally with the work on the E2EE project. In the next month or so, this will be the UX for all private messages (encrypted or not)