Honest question, but on a technical level isn’t discord basically IRC with some bells, whistles, emojis, and a some WebRTC Logic wrapped in electron with a large marketing budget? Throw in some cloud storage and a CDN for images. What am I missing? I’m not saying it’s “easy”, but I’m curious what it would take to build a solid streamlined FOSS alternative built on combining existing technologies.

Edit: I’m not familiar with the ecosystem… is the issue with existing FOSS bad UI and complicated onboarding? Missing features? Or is it simply a critical mass issue?

Genuine question - isn’t their terms basically “if you use these third party services you’re subject to their terms, and also were going to collect some data to see if people actually use this feature or if it’s a waste of time?”