Except that discord isn’t anything like that, having centralized control of all these groups on one platform with global rules enforced upon all of them (see the recent iOS NSFW ban)
I agree the technical foundations aren’t like that but the social structure is. The incredible ease of setting up a new server is a strict requirement for discord being successful. I don’t think we’re at a point where you can have people self host this stuff easily.
The average person realistically doesn't care. You can just use the desktop app and switch a toggle that turns off the nsfw ban which is what Apple requires for apps. Discord and similar IM apps have become small scale social hubs for the world.
