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”.

  • Kuvwert@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    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!

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      13 minutes ago

      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?

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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        9 minutes ago

        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

  • Ulrich@feddit.org
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    2 hours ago

    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.

  • pory@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    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.

      • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net
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        6 hours ago

        Yes, which is good, but the lack of federation is a deal-breaker. It means that you either:

        1. Use their servers - This requires entrusting them with your communities, just like Discord.
        2. 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.

        • aleq@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          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.

          • hobovision@lemm.ee
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            2 hours ago

            Why would an optional feature be a deal breaker?

            It also seems like an issue that could be easily solved by whitelisting.

          • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net
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            4 hours ago

            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.

            • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              44 minutes ago

              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?

      • drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 hours ago

        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?

  • Forester@pawb.social
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    7 hours ago

    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

    • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      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.

      • SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        : ( 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

        • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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          4 hours ago

          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.

          • SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            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.

            • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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              3 hours ago

              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.

        • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          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)

          Guide

          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.

    • SatanClaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 hours ago

      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.

  • stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 hours ago

    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

      • stopforgettingit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 hours ago

        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.

      • splendoruranium@infosec.pub
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        4 hours ago

        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.

        • The Bard in Green@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz
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          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?”

  • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    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.

      • assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        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.

  • Xanza@lemm.ee
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    6 hours ago

    It never made sense to me how popular discord was to begin with.

    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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      56 minutes ago
      • 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.

    • u_u@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      It used to be fast and not full of useless bloat like what you see right now. The usual enshittification.

    • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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      6 hours ago

      @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”…

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 hours ago

        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.

      • Comtief@lemm.ee
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        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…

    • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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      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
      • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        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.

    • loiakdsf@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 hours ago

      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)

  • astro_ray@piefed.social
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    7 hours ago

    What are your thoughts on xmpp? Recently I have come to like a lot and am pretty active with friends there.

    • shortrounddev@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      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.

    • crawancon@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      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.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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      4 hours ago

      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.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        Isn’t the video the jingle part that Google added to jabber originally (before it dumped everything to remake it from the group up about 4 more times like a GSoC crossed over with groundhogDay)?

        • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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          4 hours ago

          Today xmpp uses a distant relative of those original jingle specifications, which have been modernized to use Webrtc.

  • Xanza@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    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.