Are you going fangless?

I would definitely go fangless. I have been bitten enough times. A bite might also transfer viruses. Nowadays I defang all my computers.

But then why bother to package the game for the distro in the first place?

Sorry, but you are mistaken. Joplin definitely encrypts data at rest if you enable end-to-end encryption: https://joplinapp.org/e2ee/

Discord is not very privacy-oriented. We‘re in a privacy-oriented community here, so Discord should raise an eyebrow, not Signal, which is famously privacy-oriented.