Current situation on FOSS Discord replacements?

A couple weeks ago Discord announced their plans to go down the IPO route. This means that there is now a ticking clock until the platform goes full-on enshittified like so many others before them.

Last time i checked last year there weren't many options to migrate to, mostly Matrix communities (which are not quite the same thing) and Revolt Chat (which is a non-federated but FOSS and self-hostable drop-in replacement for Discord). Revolt sounds like the logical route as it's clearly designed for just this exact role, but it seems it's still early in development and not yet ready for the average Discord user (looks like the voice functions in particular are still in development)

Has this changed or improved since then? I feel like the use case of "IRC servers, but modern!" should have been solved years ago but feels like it hasn't, i have lots of non-technical people who heavily use Discord who I'd love to rescue from it before it starts actively burning, a replacement that isn't complicated and has all it's features would be welcome.

39 comments

I do want to say Matrix. You'd have to find a server first --> https://joinmatrix.org/ .With its discord bridge, it does allow users to switch to matrix and still be in the community if the community is bridged.

Matrix also supports voice chat rooms and video chat rooms. It isn't monetized so there aren't custom stickers, premium accounts, and so on, but if more people used matrix and donated, maybe that'll happen. Someday.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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- I spun up my own server for our game, and it's been working fairly well for us. It's not a 1:1, but I like that the data stays local and it's e2ee
  
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I love the Element client for Matrix. I use it with my friends and I have joined a lot of communities on there. It's Discord-like, but I personally find it much easier to navigate than Discord. It's free, open source, decentralized, you can self-host if that's your jam, it's got some solid security and usability features, call quality is great, and I've found it to be very stable and reliable. I'm a little biased because I personally don't like Discord, I find the UI clunky and unpleasant to use, but I love using Element. If you love Discord, you will find Element familiar, but you may or may not appreciate the differences.

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- I'm amazed you find Element easier to use, their idea of cramming a pile of channels into a "home" that you can't even see unless you specifically look for it is absolutely bizarre, and you can't make voice rooms either, you have to enter a text chat and then start a 'call' which is odd.
  
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  Discord is a mess and very hard to use. Element in the other hand is designed logical and easier to learn.
  
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- How do you find communities to join on element?
  
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  You can just search terms right within Element to find public "rooms" (like a Discord Server). There's rooms for all kinds of things. There are private rooms, too, but someone in the room would have to send you a link to it.
  
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- I have joined revolt servers purely based on size just to see if anything was happening, and every single one of them was basically dead, especially anything with a focus. At most I will see one or two people talking. Makes it very hard to hang around on a daily basis.
  
  Are there any servers you know that have decent activity?
  
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- Webcord is also a great client with great settings to limit fingerprinting and rendering of specific things. Has support for Fosscord (Spacebar) built in.
  
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There's Matrix, but I think the under-development is a similar story there, to speak nothing of the infrastructure and UX of Discord that would be hard to pull people away from.

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I recently started my own Matrix home server. It seems fine for chatting. "Communities" has been replaced by Spaces can act like Discords servers, Inside of that space you can nest other spaces or rooms which would be like channels in discord. Element recently added video channels as an experimental feature. and it looks like you can disable webcam and only allow mic when you connect to one so it could act as a "voice channel". Overall it is pretty basic in features but usable. It doesn't help that the available features are different depending on the client used. Bridging is great, I have discord, signal, and sms coming to element on my computer so I only have one application for all of my messaging. I'm looking forward to the further development of Matrix. Voice rooms, custom emoji, and adding gifs to chat would make it basically perfect for me

Originally I was looking into Revolt but couldn't get a self hosted instance running. My experience with system admin is pretty limited so this was likely an error on my part. I don't like that accounts can't be federated so users would have to make a separate account for each revolt server which would be a pain. The developers have stated that as a case against self hosting and prefer users join their centralized server to grow the platform. Last time I checked they aren't looking into a way to add it since it sounds like it would have to heavily overhaul the protocol. This is one of the main reasons I went with matrix. Issue #25 on their github has a lot of troubleshooting and discussion of people trying to self-host I recommence reading through it if you are planning on setting it up, although If I remember correctly voice chat is not functional on a third-party servers. If self hosing isn't an goal then most of this is irrelevant.

Spacebar chat was also mentioned in another comment. I'm gonna have to look into it and see how it compares to matrix

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- I recently started my own Matrix home server.
  
  Cool! What's the simplest step-by-step guide out there for this?
  
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  I've read a lot of people use the ansible playbook on a vm to install synapse. It would automate most of the install and usually recommend it as the easiest. you can find it at https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy. I am hosing it on unraid so I used this guide instead https://forums.unraid.net/topic/127917-guide-matrix-synapse-w-postgres-db-chat-server-element-web-client-coturn-voice/ which worked pretty well
  
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Revolt seems like it would be a good replacement if it gets to a stable point.

Other than that everything else is nowhere within miles of being a discord replacement. The best option IMO would be a regular chat server like Matrix/Element or something, and Teamspeak or Mumble for voice. But you won't have streaming, screen sharing, etc.

Everything like Element, Jitsi, and so on are replacements for stuff like Slack, they don't have easy to use voice rooms or streaming or anything like that.

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- I think this is the only right answer. They try to provide the same interface which works for the most people.
  
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the most "drop-in" replacements I know of aimed towards users (not companies) are

Matrix + Element Client: Supports E2EE and voice + video chat, it works very well, but the onboarding experience of federated platforms is still confusing for some, and along with that they have to change knowledge of guild/channel type chats to space/room. I don't use this.

Tailchat: Very similar experience to Discord while not being it. It's functionality is extended through plugins. Integrating all the services I use into one app is not as bad of an idea as it sounds, and I like the implementation very much, as do my friends. That being said, it's, very bare-bones in it's current state, and not much you can add through said plugins besides voice + video chat and bots. This is what I use right now.

Spacebarchat: Very very alpha, but the end goal is very promising, that being complete backend compatibility with anything designed for Discord. The official client will not be finished anytime soon, so you have to bring your own Discord-compatible client and modify the endpoints to connect to and get any major use out of a Spacebar instance. Voice and Video chat still isn't there yet, but most all other things work as expected. I keep my eye on it, and will probably use it later on in it's more finished stages.
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I was wondering what happened to the Discord IPO. Discord already went to shit, I don't know what else an IPO could do to it? More restrictions?

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- 500 character limit unless your paying for nitro? It's so scummy that I expect royalties when they steal my idea.
  
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Damn, this is going to be way more tricky than migrating away from Reddit. I have too many "servers" and friends on that platform so moving to matrix or something else seem unfeasible :(

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- You can try to convince the Discord server moderators to bridge their servers to Matrix with something like T2Bot:
  https://t2bot.io/discord/
  
  That's what I did when I was running a Discord server,
  worked nicely in both directions.
  
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Color me surprised.

I loathe that platforms treat themselves this way. We see this happen over and over again when a newcomer comes into the field to shake things up. They become, eventually, the best alternative. They eventually become the only thing.

And all that they turn out to be, are just portfolio fluffing projects to be made into an IPO. Then the enshittification and oh, there is next to no where to go.

What a world...

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The tough part for me is going to be plugins and such. pbd groups use a lot of dice rollers and initiative trackers and such.

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There's also Linen.

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- That looks like they're going for a Slack-like interface which is awesome.
  
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went back to teamspeak but i doubt that it is FOSS

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- teamspeak but i doubt that it is FOSS
  
  Nope. You may want to consider Mumble.
  
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what about rocket chat? https://www.rocket.chat/

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- They're very commercial oriented. I don't think you can host a free server with them with more than 25 people without paying out big $$$.
  
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  It's self hostable, they have a docker file.
  
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- Two companies I worked at used rocket and I despised it every time.
  
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~~Guilded.gg?~~ not FOSS - I didn't notice the post community

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- That doesn't seem to be FOSS, i see no code, at a glance it looks like another closed, VC-backed commercial platform unless i missed something
  
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- where can you find their source code?
  
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