I have some crazy theories about "why" this is happening, I'm not an expert though.

1. I think that enforcing TPM is part of the end-to-end attestation plans for the Internet: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/ . TPM allows for a full stack, end-to-end, of hardware->operating system->browser trust chain to make sure you're not rooting your own system to get around DRM.
2. This sells hardware as "never-linuxers" are forced to upgrade, and people who have been scraping by with old hardware are given an "excuse" to upgrade. I guess that results in profits for partners and also MS?

Maybe I sound crazy. At any rate, I'm really glad for places like Lemmy (and operating systems like Linux) existing, because I don't trust any for-profit tech company not to ban Firefox/Linux users/Ad block/video streaming/etc.

I was using NeoChat for a while, but IIRC it doesn't support encrypted historical messages, so you'd have to get it set up and keep element around for searching history...

NeoChat has the benefit of supporting OIDC which my server uses exclusively, otherwise I would have given Fractal a look as well.