The closed-source chat platform Discord announced on February 9 that it would soon require some users to verify their ages in order to access some content — although the company quickly added that the “vast majority” of users would not have to. That reassurance has to contend with the fact that the UK and other countries are implementing increasingly strict age requirements for social media. Discord’s age verification would be done with an AI age-judging model or with a government photo ID. A surprising number of open-source projects use Discord for support or project communications, and some of those projects are now looking for open-source alternatives. Mastodon, for example, has moved discussion to Zulip. There are some alternatives out there, all with their own pros and cons, that communities may want to consider if they want to switch away from Discord.
I found this article much better: https://wiki.alopex.li/DitchingDiscord
The OP article seems like a promotion for Matrix with only a cursory and not very well informed look at other options.
Also both articles glance over serious recent efforts to modernize IRC, such as https://github.com/ObsidianIRC/ObsidianIRC and https://codeberg.org/emersion/goguma which in combination with a Mumble server is also a real Discord alternative.
That’s a really fantastic (and humorous!) summary of, well… everything. Didn’t realize Matrix worked so differently.