Throwing your lot in with Discord, Slack, Skype, etc - is a huge mistake. They serve their own interests, not yours. Use open platforms and open protocols or you will inevitably regret it. Your incentives and Discord's incentives are misaligned.
It's not inevitable that people will regret going with Discord, Slack, or Skype. Most people won't.
I dont have a solution to that, but I feel like we need to find one over just self-flagellation while waiting for a critical mass to appear.
If anyone can recommend any other open platforms for me and the other concerned readers of this post, that would be highly appreciated.
In my mind, federation is a pretty important feature, as it allows you the possibility to bridge the gap between all the disparate chat systems we currently have. Chat bifurcation is a major issue that is serving to help divide us all.
Personally availability was always a major issue to me when it came to older self hosted solutions, with Discord I don't have to worry if group B has someone willing to bother hosting because it's always there hosted on Discord's servers and if something happened we don't suddenly lose our hub and chat.