I'm building a publicly-accessible Matrix app [0] for anyone looking to self-host a discord + discussions alternative.
More and more communities are moving to closed-off apps hidden behind auth, and not being indexed by search engines. This is quite unfortunate, and I'm hoping that Shpong can (soon) be a viable alternative that respects the open web.
Shpong instances federate with each other, and I'm working on adding ActivityPub compatibility as well.