Discord was already succumbing to enshitification. Now with their intention to be owned by Wall Street, that trajectory will certainly accelerate at warp speed once the change of hands happens.
Anyone already get ahead of this and find a solid alternative?
Right now I’m on the fence between Element for Matrix, and Revolt. Both seem to have their pros and cons and I can’t find a clear “winner”.
Personally I got all my friends to move to Element on Matrix. Not all of them are particularly technical, and they still have no problems on Element. I’m inclined to recommend Element / Matrix.
it’s Element/Matrix if we’re lucky. Revolt is just another Discord - surely this single company will last! With Element/Matrix being an open protocol, it won’t be a “platform” you have to leave when it goes corporate.
Revolt is F/OSS
https://github.com/revoltchat/
It’s not just a company with a clone of Discord, all the server back end, etc is open.
Yes, which is good, but the lack of federation is a deal-breaker. It means that you either:
- Use their servers - This requires entrusting them with your communities, just like Discord.
- Host your own private instance - You can control it, but the lack of federation means it’ll be isolated from communicating with other communities. This makes it really difficult to convince people to use your self-hosted servers.
Until Revolt adds a way for different instances to federate, Matrix is really the only other option.
My experience with Matrix is that the federation itself is a deal breaker. I have a pretty beefy server and good connection which was getting ddosed by running Matrix and timing out on so many requests for avatars/profiles etc. Maybe I did something wrong, but the whole experience rendered me quite skeptical to the viability of it as a federated chat.
That said I’ve had nothing but good experiences using it with big servers set up by pros.
I get why Federation can cause issues (most of the time it’s moderation related), but why would an extra option be a deal-breaker? Federation can always be disabled on a per-domain basis if you prefer. In fact, I’d argue it’s best practice to only allow domains on a case-by-case basis to prevent spam and abuse.
On the converse, you can’t enable Federation on a platform that doesn’t have it.
They were talking about matrix itself, not a specific option. And I’m not going to lie, having to hand hold your servers federation choices seems like a hassle. At that point why not just use a self hosted, non federated option?
I think the point they’re making is you can effectively have a self hosted non federated option with Matrix. Just disable federation as a whole (which I’m pretty sure is completely possible. Given companies use matrix for comms, and might not want federation, for similar reasons to what is being discussed here)
Why would an optional feature be a deal breaker?
It also seems like an issue that could be easily solved by whitelisting.
Yes, which is good, but the lack of federation is a deal-breaker.
The federation itself is a deal breaker
Why would an optional feature be a deal breaker?
Because the person they’re responding to said the lack of the optional feature was a deal breaker for them on a different piece of software.
I’m might be being dense but… Still: why would an optional feature be a dealbreaker? You just restated, you didn’t address the confusing logic.
Go ask the actual person who said it was a deal breaker for them, I can’t explain it more simply than I have.
but also with request ratelimiting
That doesn’t really change that it’s one company hosting it. Unless you’re willing to make 10 different accounts because your super-FOSS friends aren’t willing to join each others instances?
I guess the easy solution here to to make it use oauth2 authentication. Then you can just authenticate using one account elsewhere. If fediverse services also at some point become oauth2 providers, then even better.
That’s still not a solution. That entails non unified communication, access, and search. Making it easy to log in to others still doesn’t solve easy sharing between others. Also oauth2 is a pain to set up, and many people hosting their own instance aren’t going to bother.
Sorry but what exactly do you communicate and access between discord servers? Are you talking about PMs which are by default independent of servers?
Unified search could easily be achieved through third party tools at the least, like for IRC. I don’t think even discord has unified search between servers.
Oh hey, you’re totally right, that’s crazy. I use Beeper (hosted matrix setup) to aggregate my chats and I guess I’ve always been using that to search across all servers without realizing. Fully thought the DM search would also search across servers.
DMs are definitely also another case though - you can’t easily DM people on another server if that requires you to log into another server.
That’s true about DM, however DMs are not a core use-case for discord-like services. It’s the group/voice chats etc. I could see a workaround like lemmy does, where if you want to DM a user in another server, you might be able to do it through your fediverse instance (i.e. a DM simply has your fediverse instance DM their fediverse instance), but I’m sure there can be more elegant things like. However DMs by themselves are a weird thing by themselves, so much so, that even bluesky had to bolt DMs on-top and outside of their protocol.
Nheko provides an interface that is reminiscent of Discord. Fully featured and fast Matrix client.
Thank you for the recommendation. I tried element a while ago and found it lacking. Matrix must be the way forward. Disregarding IRC of course.
deleted by creator
Ah this is so exciting!
Discord ‘existing’ has held back development motivation on Foss Federated Communication alternatives.
When they go public only good things will happen for projects like matrix :)
I’m very excited!
I feel like matrix isn’t a one-to-one replacement. It’s a good slack replacement.
I haven’t used matrix enough to know for sure but does it have the discord equivalent of servers?
those are called spaces there. but there’s no flexible roles system. also no hop-on voice channels yet, but that’s a client feature so maybe that’s a bit different
Honestly, I am ready to go straight back to TeamSpeak.
I miss hosting my own server and having full access and control over it
I used to just host it on a piece of shit. 2003 Dell XP machine I put Ubuntu on
Hell yah, TS3 crew all the way. (Or TS5 for the zoomers…)
My nerds herd recently also set up a cluster of Matrix Synapse servers so we got our little “We have Telegram at home” set up. Getting non-tech people to accept that this is how to find me has been tricky without sounding like a digital prepper.
: ( i was too dumb to follow the playbook correctly
i wanna have a matrix sever!
but I’ll use snikket for now until i skill up
We believe in you, there are other write-ups and guides on how to get it working. Its was great learning expirence for VMs and Proxmox (thats what I did and it did make it harder, but I feel more confident when im cosplaying as a sys-admin)
This one is pretty close to whats needed, but go into it expecting each step to open a new tool/application that needs to be researched before you press enter. Also look up how to set it to a PSQL db before you start inviting users, it defaults to SQLite and that will cause problems eventually.
If you try to do calculus and don’t have the understanding of the underlying math then you won’t have a good time when ansible breaks. I’d advise it’s normally better to learn how to manually install and manage software from the command line.
Why would you down-grade from Snikket to Matrix?
If you want to skill up a bit add a Slidge.im gateway to your Snikket xmpp server to access Matrix (and Discord etc.) from there.
that is actually what I’ve been thinking. xmpp with encryption seems good enough for me! plus I’ve heard some stuff isn’t encrypted in matrix, (metadata? emojis? not exactly sure)
i am heavily leaning towards scaling up to snikkets big brother, prosody.
The currently common older implementation of e2ee in xmpp has the same issue with only the message body being encrypted. There are newer specs of OMEMO that have better metadata protection, but its adoption in xmpp clients has been very slow.
Prosody is more of a sandbox, with Snikket being a preconfigured version of it, but yes running Slidge will be a bit easier with a normal Prosody server.
There is also Mumble. TS3 era voip and text chat features, but it’s FOSS.
It was so featureless back when I last used it. I don’t remember it having half the features ts3 had in 14
Oh, it’s basic af. But it did what it needed to do, and still does, for some.
I havent used it in ages, I have no clue what sort of stuff continued development has enabled. If anything.
My friend group went first from Skype to the massively better TS3, and finally to Mumble. I don’t remember really missing anything.
TS 6 looks so good. I can’t seem to figure out it’s release window though. Along with the mobile app being updated. Once those are done I plan to move over.
I used to have a free lifetime server from someone that was giving them away, but he shut down after a few years.
Did he die?
Maybe it was based on the “lifetime” of their hamster 🤷
An alternative would need screen share, just voip is not enough any more.
The problem is that performant screenshare (to multiple users) more or less requires infrastructure. That requires money, and it’s impossible to compete on price with services that have the VC-enshitification model.
You can get around this in a few ways, but they’re all tradeoffs that are in some way or other worse than discord.
- P2P - sacrifice latency, reliability
- direct multi-stream - sacrifice PC performance and/or bitrate
- paid infrastructure - sacrifice money
I think P2P is still the way to go. Sure it’s not perfect, but it’s simpler and by it’s very nature doesn’t require the infrastructure we know will be a problem.
Plus, don’t forget screen sharing in discord isn’t very good as is (720p30) if you’re not a paid user.
What if you had OBS create a “camera” of your screen, and then use that through video chat?
Ah, the good old “screenshare not working on wayland” workaround!
honestly that isnthe only thing that stopd me from going all in on teamspeak/mumble
i just need a screen sharing solution (not necessarily built into those tools)
Most of the discords I’m on never use screen share for anything.
All the ones I’m on, around 30, it’s the only thing it’s used for.
TeamSpeak recently added screen share to their TS6 beta, however it currently only works on official servers provided by TeamSpeak; they have not yet released TS6 server software, only the client. To my understanding, they are thankfully still planning on releasing it though.
Damn TS3 was still kinda wet behind the ears and maybe even still in beta last time I played with it. I only used it for one group and I cut ties with them.
I never even used it, I only know TS2 and it’s purplish, super basic ugly interface. (If anyone even remembers that- would’ve been back in mid to late 00s)
I’m running a Matrix server with a FB Messenger bridge via mautrix-meta and that makes it a clear winner. Half my group chats have migrated entirely since I’ve set my close friends up with accounts in my server and they also use the bridge. The fact that people can slowly migrate chats without losing messages or groups is killer for adoption imo.
Did you follow a guide, or know one you could link? I’m thinking this is the path for me and my friends too.
I can try to write some stuff up, it’s not super complex. Core requirement for my setup is Docker + a domain. I recommend Linux host but you can make Docker Desktop work.
Let me write some stuff down this week.
This is my wiki, no Fb bridge, but telegram, WhatsApp, discord and signal bridges yes
https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=matrix%3Astart
Check the sidebar, its closed by default on mobile.
My humble experience so far: https://kcross.engineering/blogs/matrixandmautrix/
Biggest thing so far is “go slow on federation”. Large federated servers are where you get into trouble with resource requirements and needing to spin up workers, etc. Small, private servers are relatively easy.
Are you saying you can import chat history with a bridge some how? I don’t remember that being an issue, but would be very handy
I’m messaging Facebook users over Matrix via the bridge.
Yes! Absolutely (* didn’t check all existing bridges, so… Maybe not all of them)
man I wish mumble had a better interface and a chat function, it could real FOSS competition with Discord, but the lack of a chat feature is holding it back
that and screen sharing
There’s no text chat in mumble? Really? (I seem to remember otherwise, sorry)
There is text chat but it’s not persistent, or very customizable.
Its been ages for me, so I may be incorrect now. I think the chat is not persistent and I am pretty sure there is no channels. Its most definitely not set up how discord is where its more of a chat client that has voice rather than a voice client that has chat.
Started hosting a mumble server for gaming maybe six months ago and have been using it daily. Really happy with it.
I don’t have a guild to host for anymore, but I used to host one years ago and it was solid as a rock. I am glad mumble is still going strong
It never made sense to me how popular discord was to begin with.
@Xanza@lemm.ee Among my friends, it replaced Facebook Messenger, Teamspeak, and Mumble instantly. It was fast and the voice quality was excellent. The appeal in 2017 was obvious. The bloat that it had tacked onto it since then is egregious.
Don’t get me started on the “rewards”…
Don’t forget free servers.
On TS3 it was to either know a friend that rented/hosted it, rent/host it yourself or use a public server.Funny, I remember in 2017 the voice chat had mic issues all the time but now that works much better. But I suppose everything else got bloated…
The bloat that it had tacked onto it since then is egregious.
VCs gotta make back that ROI…
- persistent IRC style chat rooms
- virtual “servers” to organize said chat rooms, manage privileges, control visibility
- integration with bots for all sorts of things (moderation, user welcome, dice rollers, etc.)
- integration with games/music players/etc (I don’t use it but it’s very popular)
- privacy and moderation controls
- client allows fine grained notification controls
- voice, video, and screen casting simultaneously
- “server” templates: use an existing server config (roles, permissions, rooms, etc.) when creating a new server.
That’s just off the top of my head.
It’s enshittifying, but the value proposition is still hard to beat. I’m really hoping Matrix catches up with the feature set soon.
It used to be fast and not full of useless bloat like what you see right now. The usual enshittification.
Other voice chat programs were crap, discord was significantly better and more consistent. Simple as. It still has features way ahead of other services. The business side is shitty but it works without anyone needing to know anything with no troubleshooting.
What are your thoughts on xmpp? Recently I have come to like a lot and am pretty active with friends there.
There are people using xmpp? Last time I set up a server and tried using it with Pidgin, I couldn’t find a soul that used it
They’re out there. The Venn diagram of people still choosing IRC (as opposed to being forced to use it b/c that’s where the community is) is probably just a circle.
I was a big XMPP user back in the day, but because of the lack of multi-device message syncing and the really shoddy state of encryption, I wandered away. Plus, using XML for the protocol really geeked me out. XML is a document format, and per the spec, to be well-formed it needs to have an open and matching close tag. Jabber hacked around this by making a sort of infinite document - you get the open tag, but never the close tag - and it just felt really icky.
I understand a lot of these things have since been addressed. I don’t know if XMPP still uses that bastardized version of quasi-XML without a close tag. But other things have come along that I like more. About 6 months ago I started running a client on my desktop again, but like you, nobody I knew was still using it, and nobody new was advertising it as their connection info, so… yeah. After a few months, I stopped running the client.
@sxan @shortrounddev jmp.chat uses XMPP, and it’s a very viable replacement for Google Voice (and generic SIP options like voip.ms), so that’s what got me back on the XMPP train. No one else other than my family is using it with me, though, but it’s still nice to have SMS, (encrypted & decentralized) family chat, and IRC (via biboumi bridge) in one desktop client.
That’s interesting; the integration with SMS is a nice feature. Thanks!
Xmpp is mostly used for private groups and 1:1 chat, so more of a WhatsApp than a Discord replacement.
But you can find some public channels here: https://search.jabber.network/
The issues you mentioned have been fixed, and XML was never an issue 😅
You do eventually get the close tag, when you log out. Lol
Irc isn’t the competitor of xmpp. Discord is
I didn’t mean to suggest that it was. I meant that the kind of people who voluntarily choose IRC are the same sorts of people who would voluntarily choose to is XMPP. While IRC is older than XMPP, it’s still the 1:1 chat protocol for old technical people.
Do older technical people use 1:1 chat? I would think email is more common
Who do you think invented XMPP?
Yes, email, but it’s not real-time chat. Jabber sat between community chat IRC and the digital snail-mail analog, email.
xmpp is still valid but the new kid on the block is activitypub. I don’t think I’ve ever hosted an xmpp server but to me it’s a better suited (mature, focused)protocol with plenty to offer that AP can’t yet.
having said that, stillll no moderation on free networks.
if discord is going public they don’t need my turbo sub anymore
Cancelled mine when they redesigned the mobile app anyway. I don’t want a different interface on mobile vs desktop. I want a unified experience, which was their original purpose.
Matrix is the way. It’s federated and you can have your own server.
+1
https://spacebar.chat/ looks like it will eventually be good, it looks like it’s in its infancy right now though
XMPP?
Mumble?
Is there any option to stay on discord but better? Like vencord or something similar through Linux? I cannot imagine being able to get my friends off of discord ever.
I guess that’s the biggest hurdle, especially when it comes to social apps. One tech-savvy person wanting to migrate is usually not enough to start moving a community, even as a small as a group of friends.
Had to experience that first hand. I tried to get my best friends to register on my Matrix server last September and join a room for our group, and they did, but I rarely see any of them online and I only get responses days later, if at all. One even stopped using it entirely, lol. Ah well, but at least I got a Matrix server out of that that I can use to federate with other like-minded people.
