alt Hacker News> [chat]... without mandating use of a surveillance capitalism product
Sooooooo what is your solution?
You just described every single, non-E2E communication product, because they are all indexed and used by surveillance capitalism, including governments and corporations.
Your problem isn't the tools, it's the internet.
IRC and Matrix are self hostable and end to end encrypted. There is no good reason for tech communities to lock themselves into Discord and exclude anyone that does not agree to their corporate terms of service.