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”.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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)
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.I’ve set up Lemmy, Forgejo, Nextcloud and Mastodon. Forgejo is unbelievably easy, Mastodon and Lemmy both are complex but if you follow the instructions you get there pretty quickly.
Matrix is like “Follow a book of documentation, then when it doesn’t work anyway, spend hours of your life troubleshooting a bunch of stuff that’s NOT in the documentation. Why is this so hard?”
Sounds like this is part of their business plan. Make hosting it so onerous, you’re better-off using their servers, or paying them to do it for you.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
It never made sense to me how popular discord was to begin with.
- 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.
Matrix is the way. It’s federated and you can have your own server.
TeamSpeak exists too
Teamspeak is alright, in fact we use it along with discord for inter-channel Comms. But discord does a lot of stuff that ts doesn’t touch
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.
Oh man, Basshunter was huge in the chronically-online gamer space in the 2000s. His other songs are pretty good too.
To put it in perspective, the fact that they’re gaming on laptops and LCD monitors was an enviable flex when his songs released.
I still have my copy. I cannot believe that song is like, 18 years old now. It was such a staple of my college experience.
Mumble!
Tmspk egssts tuh
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.
https://spacebar.chat/ looks like it will eventually be good, it looks like it’s in its infancy right now though
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?
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.
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.
One of the major draws of discord is the fact that they host the servers for you, for free. Anyone can make an account, click a button, and have a discord server.
Afaik matrix does allow this (haven’t used it personally) but it’s something where I am a bit worried about hosting costs if it reaches a large scale. (Also unsure about how the matrix protocol works precisely, but if defederation is a thing which I feel like it has to be, I can see it leading to huge pains since discords use case is often about being part of a specific communitu, as opposed to twitter or reddit. Being unable to join a groip or see some messsges because of federation issues would be a major headache).
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.
Way too few mentions of Jitsi.
I use it with friends, it has good server config, and I’m pushing it on businesses.
they are owned by a Nasdaq-listed company. does that not the defeat the purpose when OP is trying to avoid Wall Street-ownership?
Discord is a completely proprietary walled-garden that bans third-party clients to maintain full control AND (soon) has Wall-Street-ownership.
Jitsi is open-source built with multiple open protocols BUT has Wall-Street-ownership.
Neither is great, but these are two distinctly different situations.
Just self-host it? It’s open-source, that will last you a lifetime.
