[muyuu]

it is especially a normie world when it comes to chat

the intersection of people who aren't sheepish normies, get stuff done and also chat, is almost entirely covered by forums and IRC, as they had been for decades and they don't really have a need for anything flashier

if you want for some reason to have a self-hosted chat of sorts, imo your best bet is to install it on your own website next to your own forum/BBS and pretend it's not really an open messaging service so authorities don't end up coming to you asking to id your users (ideally you'd be moving your server to a non-authoritarian jurisdiction outside of China, UK, Iran, North Korea, possibly the USA at this rate, etc)

basically stay below the radar and enforce compulsory anonymity in your spaces to be on the safe side, that way you only need to gatekeep registrations and the occasional ban and moderation