For those interested in self-hosting the home server, I would recommend https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy - the documentation is fantastic and it’s very well maintained.
Oh, and there's no way to prevent receiving these messages. They arrive on the same endpoint as non-presence messages, and you can't signal to the sender to stop sending them.
It seems like everything polls for data, which I see as wasteful. I recently saw they were adding socket support in a recent MSC... hopefully that will help.
For this playbook, use these variables:
matrix_synapse_use_presence: false
matrix_client_element_enable_presence_by_hs_url: {"https://matrix.yourserver.com": false}