They are recommending the Anker PowerConf S330, that is about 100eur. Can any one recommend a more budget friendly option?

Just use it solves the never ending stream of ads and also many other issues yt has.

How does this compare with matrix?

May I ask what do you guys have exposed to the internet?

I personally just have a wireguard VPN (single UDP port open) and everything is accessible through an internal reverse proxy. I just never felt the need to expose nothing ant least not web related.

Definitely sushi

I for one was not familiar with this and even if the source is not reliable there sure is an unhealthy amount of politics involved.

This and keep subscribing to anything that interests you

Honestly is not a big deal. Some specific instance might start behaving like aholes because of corporate greed or anything else.

All they can do is take their specific communities down. The affected communities can always move to other instance (that is easier than changing to a different system all together).

Changing platforms will always be harder than just switch instance because you instance changed the rules on you.

If this checks out, they may be in disrespect of a bunch of privacy laws including GDPR.

I will look into FiveFilters, sounds like it would solve some issues for me. Thx