...does anyone have any suggestions for a Discord-Shaped-Object (DSO) that isn't owned by a big bad?

I'm testing Matrix but want to keep my options open. Main use-case is a server with 4 people in it making art/music together.

While e2e encryption is a nice-to-have, my main concern is ownership/control over any data uploaded to such a server.

We work on lyrics, audio files, and cover art on discord and it's becoming more clear that this could turn into a liability in the future.

@lexfeathers I suggest XMPP. Both client and server implementations are significantly more lightweight than Matrix (like 16MiB vs 1.7GiB memory usage for prosody vs conduit), and in my experience it's generally much less broken. I have two Matrix clients (both Nheko) that refuse to verify each other and e2ee does not work.

You could also use IRC but you'd need to use some other service for file upload.

@lexfeathers look into NextCloud Talk. NextCloud generally has a lot of stuff that might be nice for organizing a small team, and talk is like matrix/slack/discord/etc