I’m not sure I agree with the take that blahaj.zone has a facism problem. They’re explicitly anti-tankie and anti-nazi, which are the authoritarian end of the political spectrum. It’s a very left leaning space, and I think anyone in the lower left quadrant, e.g. libertarianism to anarchism and socialism to communism, would be well received.
I’m also still interested in the xmpp vs matrix debate. I’m using matrix ATM because it seems more actively developed and used, but I know some people still swear by xmpp. Ultimately I really just want a decentralized alternative to discord, but beyond that I feel like I’ll just want to go to whichever alternative has the most users, since that’s pretty useful for chatting software.
I’ve heard feedback that matrix doesn’t seem to be very united, with different groups implementing different competing features proposals etc., which does seem to be a pretty big issue.
I’m also pretty optimistic about a lot of the new stuff being built on matrix. I recently became aware of Commune, which is about making sections of matrix servers web searchable, and that sounds incredible - one of my biggest issues with discord is how often it gets used as effectively game wikis, collecting all these guides and information that’s only accessible through a proprietary discord account. No anonymous search.