> But until any of these new age apps/platforms support federation and decentralized communication, there's not much use for the masses to look for servers run

> But until any of these new age apps/platforms support federation and decentralized communication, there's not much use for the masses to look for servers run by specific people. Have you not heard of https://matrix.org https://matrix.org? 100% open source server + client(s), decentralized, federated, easy to stand up your own server, end-to-end encryption, bridges to tons of other networks (IRC, telegram, slack, mattermost, etc), full history sync even when you log in from new devices, read receipts (even for individual users in group chats). They're by far (in my opinion) the most feature-rich of the "new-age" communication systems. I've been running my own homeserver for over a year now and I can't recommend it highly enough.