Discord going public. Plz help a future refugee.
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".
if discord is going public they don't need my turbo sub anymore
Matrix is the way. It's federated and you can have your own server.
XMPP?
Mumble?
TeamSpeak exists too
That's a throwback. Let's take it one step further and just get back on Ventrilo and play some DOTA. (For the younger folks who don't get the reference: https://youtu.be/aTJncWndUB8 )
I am certainly not one of the younger folks and had never seen that before. That is awesome, thank you for sharing.
Mumble!
Me and my brother are using teamspeak to this day.
Its been a while since I used Revolt, I use element everyday. But I'd prefer something more "third party" too. Revolt was servicable back in 2020, maybe it has gotten better?
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.
Matrix.
Matrix is spectacularly cursed to the point of being unusable if you self-host it. The protocol is dumb enough to lock you out of rooms hosted on another server forever if anything goes wrong with the key rotation.
If you just need voice comms and basic chat mumble/murmur has worked great for me for ages.
Honest question, but on a technical level isn’t discord basically IRC with some bells, whistles, emojis, and a some WebRTC Logic wrapped in electron with a large marketing budget? Throw in some cloud storage and a CDN for images. What am I missing? I’m not saying it’s “easy”, but I’m curious what it would take to build a solid streamlined FOSS alternative built on combining existing technologies.
Edit: I’m not familiar with the ecosystem… is the issue with existing FOSS bad UI and complicated onboarding? Missing features? Or is it simply a critical mass issue?
Does IRC have performant voicechat?
That would be the WebRTC logic.
In addition to the replies you got already, discord has screen sharing/streaming. An experience kind of like zoom (I don't use it and dont see the appeal but maybe someone who does can elaborate more. My partner uses this feature sometimes).
I commonly will be in a call with friends, where we all stream the games we are playing independently to each other.
Another use case, one person screen shares YouTube for group watching
And one more, we will often play chess and screen share so others can watch.
This is for a group of 3-10 people typically
A group of friends use this every weekend to play party games (Like jackbox games). One person streams and everyone uses a browser to interact.
If I want to show a friend a new game, I use it as well.
Discord is not even necessarily Electron. I'm running it as Datcord, which is a Firefox based wrapper.
Discord has a searchble chat history, which is what sets it apart from IRC. Everything else can be emulated by modern IRC clients, such as emoji and embedded / unfurling images and link previews.
However imagine the chat history as if you had a bouncer that has 100% uptime and joined all possible chat channels from their creation, along with offering you search and buffer.
If not IRC, either Matrix or XMPP should be capable of this.
I'm fairly sure Discord's popularity was due to aggressive marketing, likely during their venture capital funding rounds. Something which FOSS does not have.
The main benefit I remember from jumping to Discord from IRC back in the day was the ability to easily see past messages. That said, I'm not sure if that's a problem anymore on IRC since I haven't used it in ages. Even then, I don't think it would be too terribly difficult to whip up a self-hostable fediverse competitor to Discord. It would essentially be IRC++.
It's probably more of a critical mass issue, though not near the level of Reddit vs Lemmy or Twitter vs Bluesky vs Mastodon. Every Discord server is essentially a walled garden. A Discord server doesn't hold much advantage over a Slack server, GroupMe, Teams, or IRC. For that reason, it would be a lot easier to move individual communities over.
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!
Matrix is cool but it really suffers from complexity.
The spec is a mess because they keep expanding it.
Let's not mention the abysmal performance for servers. Making it largely infeasible to scale.
It's not the solution, not even remotely close, unfortunately.
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
Alternatives to discord, open source or not:
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:
Until Revolt adds a way for different instances to federate, Matrix is really the only other option.
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.
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.
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.
Element/matrix all the way
if you want something that looks like discord there are themes for the clients, there's even commet.chat for a discord like experience (but they haven't added calls yet)
Calls and easily sharing my screen are 90% of my use cases for Discord. The entire appeal of it initially was that it was a more functional Ventrilo with both text and voice channels. Hopefully something FOSS gets further developed by the time Discord completely shits the bed.
Then i'd recommend the element client in particular.
https://github.com/aaronraimist/element-themes/tree/master/Discord
^^ there's also this!
An alternative would need screen share, just voip is not enough any more.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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 sounds great. If you end up writing something for the other commenter using a Linux server and the Messenger bridge I would love to hear if there were any pitfalls to avoid!
https://spacebar.chat/ looks like it will eventually be good, it looks like it's in its infancy right now though
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
It's so much easier to set up and install than Matrix.
It’s so much easier to set up and install than Matrix.
Unbelievably so. Mumble is... basically one setup command. Don't even need a domain. And it needs absolutely no resources, can run on a Pi Zero.
Setting up my own Matrix server was honestly one of the most difficult things I've ever attempted in decades of non-professionally using computers and I'm still not sure I'd be able to properly take care of the installation if it breaks. Sooo many moving parts. All the federation-oriented projects that rely on adoption rates reaaaaally desperately need setup wizards before any other additional feature.
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.
that and screen sharing
If you're self hosting, it's Revolt. But the default instance limits you to 20mb or something for files, which is a problem for me, personally.
Just use croc to share files. Then size doesn't matter.
It never made sense to me how popular discord was to begin with.
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.
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.
@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"...
The bloat that it had tacked onto it since then is egregious.
VCs gotta make back that ROI...
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..
It used to be fast and not full of useless bloat like what you see right now. The usual enshittification.
What are your thoughts on xmpp? Recently I have come to like a lot and am pretty active with friends there.
XMPP feels dated and has to much protocol sprawl.
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.
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.
I've been tinkering with old BBS software :)
Kibo lives!!!!1
Somebody needs to create an XMPP/Jitsi hybrid
Jitsi-meet is already using xmpp under the hood.
But there are some efforts to add multi-user video calls to full xmpp clients as well. Dino can already do it for a while, and Movim and Libervia recently added experimental support.
Its not quite a full Discord replacement, but for private groups it works quite well.
Why use Element for matrix?
From what I can tell it collets and links data to you: Location, identifiers and contact information.
How is that private or better than Signal?
Because people don't use discord for privacy. They use it for gaming, voice chat, communities and streaming.
@Nikelui is 100% right: a chat room may be private, but it's not secure. Even in an encrypted room, every additional person you add reduces your security. I'm sure there's some paper out there that studies this, and that the graph of # of members vs security is an inverse power ratio.
If it's a public chat, there is no security.
However, with Matrix, if you run your own server and restrict access to your friends, at least you can be fairly certain your chat room isn't being used to train an LLM, or to harvest information about you for advertising.
The Element web client will break encryption when you clear your browser data.
I use Signal for private and personal messages. I use Discord solely for gaming and voicechat. A good alternative doesn't need to be overly private (although that would be a bonus of course). It just needs to have a good UI and feature parity with Discord.
There is a difference between willing information that you put out there and data gathering that goes on without your consent.
Location data is something I don’t want anyone collecting without my consent.
Why does Element need to know where I’m located? Why is that being gathered with my identifiers?
Does it? On Android, it never asked me to grant location permission unless I try to share my location to another user. Similar with contacts and calendar, it's working perfectly fine without them. Where exactly does it link those identifiers and with what?
Isn’t the data sharing optional? I’m pretty sure it asks you on first startup and you can decline.
rocketchat seems decent
This would be the perfect time for someone to throw up a nice UI for a webrtc based voice chat platform in the browser. Nothing to install, no crazy permission/server setup. Just create a room and invite your friends. Boom, team based voice chat.
Jitsi-meet does that. Easy to install as well.