The article doesn't cover this, but how do people discover these group chats? All the Discord servers I've joined I've essentially found by word-of-mouth, which doesn't seem very high tech. In the old days you'd find the interesting online forums by "surfing the web".
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I feel there is an argument that this is one of the reasons people are gravitating to private chats. They’re invitation only. You’re not running the risk of your offhand snark about something with political ramifications getting besieged by bots and drones the way you are on Twitter.
You have to be someone who people want to connect with. And if you stop being that kind of person you run the risk of getting kicked out.
Also not at risk of it becoming an online controversy with articles in the media and the potential of your employer firing you to save their own reputation.
Sites like Reddit, Facebook and especially Twitter have a bad reputation for taking people who said something slightly controversial and making them online pariahs.
These more private systems are safe from both drama fanatics and people looking for controversies, and from journalists looking for controversial communities to infiltrate and profile.
Discord is experimenting with a searchable servers list. But in my opinion, the fun part of these group chats is that you have to seek them out or get lucky enough to know someone in them, or have friends with whom you can form them organically. I wouldn't want random internet strangers drive-by chatting in my friends' group chats – that's why we talk there and not in the comments on social media.
I'm in over a dozen groupchats among my friends and they all have a purpose or topic. Works pretty well! I don't think chat apps are that great if you didn't already know the bulk of the people in them in real life. The rapid fire mess that is 99% of popular twitch chats is an example of what happens with a wide open chat lobby.
They're not discoverable and that's a feature. You get added by talking to someone else outside, like real-life friend groups. Yes, it's low-tech, and it's great because of that.