Creating your own chat server for you and your friends is easy, and you don't have to rely on a complicated system to get started. IRC is an old but gold protocol, and has clients for basically every operating system made since the 80s, with many powerful modern ones on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Having a chat server for you and your friends makes it impossible for a group of arbitrarily appointed moderators to deplatform you for wrong-think, and gives you greater freedom of communication.
