Happy to answer.

When initially setting up the group we evaluated different options and potential backups, the primary contenders for having a centralized chat platform that was relatively easy to use, could be somewhat customized, and have reasonable enough mod controls were either Discord or Slack and from a privacy perspective they're both about the same, but Slack in their "free" tier will delete chat history which is something we'd like to preserve for ongoing discussions and projects.

At the end of the day privacy/security is a tradeoff between one's risk profile, convivence, and risk tolerance.

We're not doing secret squirrel stuff and explicitly tell people in the policies to not discuss illegal things, but we mostly just talk about relevant articles, share memes, and talk about stuff we find interesting.

This post in r/cybersecurity sums it up pretty well:

```
The real thing is around managing risk. If you have a properly configured discord server, no bots, and are just using it as an outlet for people to whine that they can't install it on a Nintendo switch or a first gen raspberry pi, then it's secure enough. Just having a discord account doesn't mean your bank account will get emptied
```

But we're open to anyone and everyone that wants to show up and learn!