CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@BryanGreyson discounts for those with nice paw socks maybe~

@PepperTheVixen I remember an audio clip going around back in the day from Linus Torvalds, something like "My name is Lee-noose Torvalds, and I pronounce lee-nooks, lee-nooks"

@owashe oh that's so sweet I'm happy for you both

@owashe What? You like paws?! Why have you never said anything before about this?

@blackwolf for asynchronous text chat and limited voice options I'm using Matrix

much like mastodon it's both an underlying protocol and a flagship of the decentralized service

also much like mastodon if you're an individual casual user it's as "easy" as researching and vetting a homeserver whose owners/admins you trust for both policy and longevity https://joinmatrix.org/guide/

if you want to host a larger community it might be "easier" for your own admin reasons to host your own (federated, interoperable) home server, or pay a hosting provider to set up and maintain one for you. I have zero experience with this. it can cost a bit of money, but relying on a for-profit company to give useful services away for "free" is how a lot of people got stuck

it offers optional end to end encryption in both one-to-one and group chats, but I think the larger the room the less stable full encryption can be. also it's full user responsibility to maintain their login and keys - forget them and you just have to start over with a new account