D06M4

It is. We witness it almost every month here in the fediverse. But for the time being, unless more decentralized options like Briar, Simplex and Session become more accessible and reliable, a few federated options are the best we have available even if their server/node/instance admins carry too much power and responsibility over them.

It probably is. They just close registrations from time to time. But other smaller servers are usually a better choice.

There’s a couple of server lists I like to check.

• https://tatsumoto-ren.github.io/matrix/
• https://servers.joinmatrix.org/

Can’t believe the parental controls stance isn’t more widespread.

Probably the uncertainty of choosing a server and have it either vanish unexpectedly or it’s admins ban your account without prior warning or transparency, which is also pretty common here in the fediverse.

I always help onboard people choosing one or two longstanding servers they might like. The last time I told someone to just use the matrix.org server to begin (years ago) it had closed registrations two hours earlier. Never again. 😅

Matrix is great as long as you know how to use it and keep it organized. It’s Element client used to mix contacts and group chats but that’s better now on web/desktop and on mobile you just need to add group chats to favorites and select the space you want to limit your browsing to (or use FluffyChat on mobile).

There’s also Zulip, which is actually closer to Slack.

If you’re on PC, use Discord as a gaming VoIP chat and you’re already using Steam I’d tell you to take a peek at Steam’s voice settings and either use that or disable Steam’s overlay if you don’t like it for whatever reason. In my experience Steam’s chat performs much better than Discord but can be trickier to configure for some.

XMPP has an experimental XEP for group spaces too, but who knows if it’ll be ready soon or used in apps for all major platforms.

What OS do you use?

If by this you mean you want to only rely on your smartphone then the local storage you want is just that. Get a good SSD that you can connect to your phone and carry it around. Then share your phone’s screen to a TV over WiFi or copy the file to your phone’s internal storage and plug it with an USB to HDMI cable if that’s an option for you. A good app on Android for file browsing is MiXplorer.

I usually only think about running stuff like Jellyfin when I’m already using my PC, so turning it on or off is never an issue and I’ll never need an external server for this purpose.