My main chat client is Element/Matrix and I've been toying with the idea of starting a sim-racing community in Matrix, but don't feel it would be right for me to spearhead a community when I'm only starting to get in to it myself. I'd be willing to help moderate one though. I'd also be willing to tolerate IRC, but the protocol (at least before v3) is far too old, missing support for far too many modern features and we really need to get past it. As much as I miss the old IRC days as well.

Are there any alternative chatting communities on open source tech out there?