official client is customisable and by default looks way better than discord, third party clients are allowed, it’s feels the opposite of corporate, doesn’t have AI, has its original features like multireplies and except for the pretty inferior voice chat that will undergo rewrite there aren’t really any I miss, I do quite well without super reactions. as for now donations are sufficient, you always have an option to self-host and tbh if it was federated most people would be on the official server, it would be harder for normal people to join and moderation would be harder so I’m pretty ok with not having it there… not like discord has that