EngineerGaming

I don't think it's great to change one walled garden for another. If you are willing to change, better switch to a protocol instead. Even if there's something wrong with the server, witching between different instances is much easier than between entirely different products.

On one hand, it's cool that you have an excuse to ditch Discord. The platform sucks in several different ways and the more people leave it, the better off the world is.

But on the other - you seem to be aiming for the wrong goal. I know what it's like to have one thing blocked after the other, so I know for sure that migrating every time something gets blocked is just not a sustainable long-term strategy. You might replace Discord for unrelated reasons... But I strongly advise you to look into censorship circumvention methods. Especially stealthy ones, like they use in China. Set it up for your family and friends (maybe distributing the server costs between them). You will need it.

I have not checked both, but seems like both are insignificant. From what I understand, the messages and files are only stored on the server until reception.

I host a Simplex server, it is not that bad in terms of resources. My smp server is around 90 MB RAM and XFTP is 30 MB. Could be better, but still would run without problem on low-end hardware.

It is in FUTO's F-Droid repo that you can add.

I did use to use Vanced but stuck with Newpipe as it was lighter (not tried Revanced as I switched before the shutdown).

True. But not like stock Firefox is "good" either.

Yes, and that was the issue for me. Some thoughts are indeed meant to be short, but I'd prefer elaboration in a lot of cases.

True! That's why I much prefer federated protocols so that the cost (and data!) does not pile up in one specific place. You can end up paying for it - in form of your VPS bill or the cost of the hosting hardware.

if it's free, you're the product.

FOSS software existing proves this is not always true.

That is indeed a massive improvement, but until they allow multiple profiles per number - that would still mean either using the same account with internet randos as I do with IRL friends, or renting a whole other number and risking losing the account once the ownership of the number expires.

Depends on how you set it up. I had Wireguard installed and couldn't figure out why only some sites got unblocked by it... And then it turns out it doesn't use the VPN server's DNS automatically, only if you specify so in the settings.

I am stupid, I know. But that's just an example.