Discord's not going away, but I looked at setting up a self hosted matrix server last night and had it up with an element client in 20 minutes with docker compose. I don't think I'll do a discord<->matrix bridge (since it requires extra stuff on the discord side and I think you lose encryption, which isn't that important), but if you have buddies who you want to keep in contact with, it's not a bad solution

I explored but am avoiding big, public channels because there honestly isn't that much chatting going on in the ones that I found

You should try XMPP with a Slidge gateway… it uses a lot less resources (CPU, RAM, & storage) on your server. The clients are lighter weight too.

I haven't touched XMPP for over 10 years, how's screen sharing and file sharing over XMPP doing?

I never managed to get file sharing working on my self hosted discord instance. Needing to setup DNS entries and subdomains for every little feature got tiresome and I gave up.

Also the default of "save all shared files on the server" didn't sit well with me.

But xmpp is so damn complicated I am 100% sure I am misunderstanding everything and doing something wrong.

Almost all clients support file sharing. The Movim client <https://mov.im/> supports screen sharing. It should be noted that both Jitsi & Zoom use XMPP for the roster/chat/handshaking as well; so if you set up a Jitsi server for calls & such, you would already have a working XMPP server on your server that could be co-opted.

I already cancelled my account. This is a deal breaker.

Related, select key discussions this week:

Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945663

Discord just killed anonymity

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996067

Welcoming Discord users amidst the challenge of Age Verification

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46995046

Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982421

Will this actually be implemented worldwide, and not be easily bypassed with some ai generated images? I'm skeptical that anything ever happens tbh.

I’m in Australia and I was able to bypass it using a picture of my drivers license with a picture from https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ and some light image editing to change the details.

There is the option to scan your face but that requires you to move your head around.