> The sticking point for me is the lack of persistent messages, something the devs strangely think is a privacy plus
This is my complaint about Discord and such as well, though. People seem to love platforms where what you typed last week is never looked at again and isn't searchable/accessible from a regular web search. HN is also moving more and more in that direction: threads always dropped off very fast (matter of up to 3 days if you have a top-of-the-year popular thread) but then, at some point, editing was restricted to only be 2 hours (countless times I run into not being able to add a correction or addition, so posts are now less good/useful in posterity), and last week I noticed I couldn't reply to someone anymore after 18 days (they had replied to me, I had finally gotten around to checking their suggestion, and wanted to reply back ... alas).
This is my complaint about Discord and such as well, though. People seem to love platforms where what you typed last week is never looked at again and isn't searchable/accessible from a regular web search. HN is also moving more and more in that direction: threads always dropped off very fast (matter of up to 3 days if you have a top-of-the-year popular thread) but then, at some point, editing was restricted to only be 2 hours (countless times I run into not being able to add a correction or addition, so posts are now less good/useful in posterity), and last week I noticed I couldn't reply to someone anymore after 18 days (they had replied to me, I had finally gotten around to checking their suggestion, and wanted to reply back ... alas).