Beside from Discord not being open-source and forcing me to disclose my personal information to them when I log in through some glorified proxy, using discord t

Beside from Discord not being open-source and forcing me to disclose my personal information to them when I log in through some glorified proxy, using discord to engage with the community is a bad idea. Here are my reasons to use alternatives (of course, I have no say in what you should use). 1. A centralized platform like discord can kill your community engagement plan whenever they want (you own nothing, and they don't owe you anything). 2. You don't really get a "closed community" as they collect your messages in plain text[1] 3. There are better alternatives that won't spy on you and has better accessibility[2][3][4] If the alternatives make one think that no one uses them, it is because the projects are promoting discord in the first place. If more FOSS projects start using an alternative (matrix, for example), more users will be hesitant to use discord. I have more reasons, like Discord community usually end up in less meaningful discussion, have significantly less searchability, and visibility than a forum has -- but they are not really a big problem in a closed community. And if the project wants a place to have civilized discussion, engagement, and visibility, it is far easier and better to host a forum like discourse[5] than using a chat based system. [1] https://discord.com/privacy#3 https://discord.com/privacy#3 [2] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-11-29-announcing-the-chat.sr.ht-public-beta/ https://sourcehut.org/blog/2021-11-29-announcing-the-chat.sr... [3] https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/ (is much more reliable than in the past) [4] https://zulip.com/ https://zulip.com/ [5] https://www.discourse.org/ https://www.discourse.org/ (a forum)