mastodon.me.uk is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Open, user-supported, corporation-free social media for the UK.

Administered by:

Server stats:

504
active users

"I really wish there were something around now like IRC so we didn't need to use discord"

amazing

I believe, and forgive me for saying this, but the alternative you may be looking for is a thing called IRC.