Obviously it’s not smart to switch to a Cloudflare-plagued network like that of Matrix if your goal is to escape US tech giants. For strictly internal use on self-hosted instances, sure. But as soon as a matrix room becomes open public Cloudflare rears its ugly head.
Zulip and SimpleX are probably better options. Certainly IRC is a better option so long as the channel has no Matrix gateway. SimpleX is also free of Cloudflare.
You don’t. But you don’t get to make that decision for everyone you talk to. People /erroneously/ think they do, so it has become impossible to participate in a public discussion without Cloudflare in the loop.
FOSDEM 2026 demonstrates this embarrassment. Every single FOSDEM talk this year has a link to matrix.to (Cloudflare). Even if your own account is CF-independent, the rest of the crowd who you correspond with is not. You cannot isolate yourself from Cloudflare and also participate in FOSDEM rooms. That’s not ETS.