This is a huge win for open chat protocols, and we really need an open protocol for chat communication to become a standard. The fact that most of the popular chat platforms are proprietary is a travesty. It’s especially painful nowadays where a lot of chat apps are implemented using Electron making them rather hefty in terms of resource usage. Having to run both Slack and Discord for example is pretty taxing. This problem wouldn’t exist using open protocols.
I'm old enough to remember the days when you could use a single client to communicate over many networks. Proprietary protocols are the reason that's not possible anymore, and I sincerely hope that every single company peddling them goes out of business.
Discord exists because people are killed, stalked, and otherwise harassed from IP exposure. That's its 'be safe' purpose.
It's not simply a chat service. You also have proxied video calls and VoIP. That in itself is far more expensive and resource heavy than decentralized hosters can do at scale.
It's not about proprietary protocols, it's that we already had decentralized solutions that cant protect it's users. Centralization is a requirement at that point if you want it to be popular and scale.
Once again, it's a completely separate issue. You can have a centralized service that also uses an open protocol that people can make custom clients for. Furthermore, people use stuff like Tor for anonymity with decentralized systems. Trusting a central system to keep your information private is a risk of itself.
I'm old enough to remember the days when you could use a single client to communicate over many networks. Proprietary protocols are the reason that's not possible anymore, and I sincerely hope that every single company peddling them goes out of business.