I don't really mind seeing this cycle wind down, however it does raise a question that's existed even at the height of these centralized platforms...What the hell do we use to chat with individuals online? Discord might work okay in small groups, but it's still a single company-owned platform, so those free servers aren't going to last and you'll lose that space eventually. The only big name alternatives that come to mind for decent cross-platform carrier independent chat are either owned by Meta/Facebook (Messenger/WhatsApp), or are Snapchat or Telegram.

Meta's problems are obvious to those that follow tech.

Snapchat's in a weird limbo so far as I'm aware, where it's no longer as popular as it once was, as younger demographics I think are skewing to TikTok now, and I don't know that it ever really saw wider or consistent adoption outside of those demographics. Beyond that Snapchat is just another single company desperately trying to monetize their platform as much as the rest.

Telegram's probably the most viable competitor to WhatsApp if I'm not mistaken, but the head of it & group behind it are as questionable as Meta/Facebook, at least imo.

I guess the real alternatives might be to try to set up and host one's own IRC/XMPP/Matrix servers, but...That seems impractical for small group chats, no? Or maybe it's not as costly nor cumbersome to spin up & maintain as someone not too familiar with it might think? 🤷

Edit: As to email as another option for individual comms, uhh, well all I know is that's probably the one thing you'll frequently see many self-hosting folks recommend against trying to host yourself due to major email providers by & large blocking random small self-hosted email servers.