Discord alternatives

I was using Element for a while, but you need to get friends to join it - so its kinda like an uphill battle.
(plus theres a bit of an issue if you don't have it on two devices where it could potentially erase your message history without validating it on a 2nd device)
 
It's probably not a welcome thing but... Stoat fundamentally has all the same problems discord had, in terms of it's place and structure. It's just "discord but not yet".
If you're unhappy with how discord turned out in the end, with how terrible it is to use now, and how they're trying to sell out their entire userbase for a quick buck now that they're practically universal, know that Stoat is going to go down that exact same road. There's just no other path for that sort of service or software.

Element is great, but there's a lot of gochas that are great for extreme security, but that will absolutely end up ruining some normie's day a year or two in. It's pretty much the same with any Matrix client; Element is just the most feature rich Element client, used as a benchmark and reference for other clients to base off.

Personally, my recommendation, and I'm aware it's very unpopular, is to use XMPP for person to person communication and contact lists, and IRC for group chats. Rely on the clients to support end to end encryption where needed.
It's old, it's not fancy or flashy, and group video and voice calls aren't really a thing, but it's old, reliable, well supported, there's a diverse range of clients and servers to use, and you probably won't have your personal information sold to communists for a penny.
 
jellymouse said:
It's probably not a welcome thing but... Stoat fundamentally has all the same problems discord had, in terms of it's place and structure. It's just "discord but not yet".
If you're unhappy with how discord turned out in the end, with how terrible it is to use now, and how they're trying to sell out their entire userbase for a quick buck now that they're practically universal, know that Stoat is going to go down that exact same road. There's just no other path for that sort of service or software.

Element is great, but there's a lot of gochas that are great for extreme security, but that will absolutely end up ruining some normie's day a year or two in. It's pretty much the same with any Matrix client; Element is just the most feature rich Element client, used as a benchmark and reference for other clients to base off.

Personally, my recommendation, and I'm aware it's very unpopular, is to use XMPP for person to person communication and contact lists, and IRC for group chats. Rely on the clients to support end to end encryption where needed.
It's old, it's not fancy or flashy, and group video and voice calls aren't really a thing, but it's old, reliable, well supported, there's a diverse range of clients and servers to use, and you probably won't have your personal information sold to communists for a penny.
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By that logic Ephinea is doomed to fail in the end too because, much like Schthack, Ephinea also has the ability to donate and there's no other way a server with donations could go.

Let's not jump to conclusions and presume to know ahead of time what will happen. I actually think that Stoat has a golden opportunity here and I wouldn't count them out yet just because they're similar in nature to discord. If Stoat can take everything that Discord did right and then leave behind all the bad Discord did, having a similar UI whilst having all the good and none of the bad would be an insanely advantageous thing. You're not going to be able to please everyone, but Stoat isn't out of this yet just because they're following a similar UI model.
 
Varista said:
By that logic Ephinea is doomed to fail in the end too because, much like Schthack, Ephinea also has the ability to donate and there's no other way a server with donations could go.

Let's not jump to conclusions and presume to know ahead of time what will happen. I actually think that Stoat has a golden opportunity here and I wouldn't count them out yet just because they're similar in nature to discord. If Stoat can take everything that Discord did right and then leave behind all the bad Discord did, having a similar UI whilst having all the good and none of the bad would be an insanely advantageous thing. You're not going to be able to please everyone, but Stoat isn't out of this yet just because they're following a similar UI model.
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Age verification isn't the real problem. The intent to IPO, and literally sell all their users and all of the users' message history, including now faces and ID to associate with all of that, is.
How do you expect another chat software to do it different using the same "unsustainable growth into IPO exit" business model? They're not running a charity.

Insanity is performing the same action repeatedly and expecting different results.
 
Im not going to begin to try to understand how the alternatives could be met because that would require me to know of events ahead of time, which I don't, and nobody could ever.

Im not going to immediately write them off because the start is similar. It's not how you start, its how you finish.
 
My friends and I are currently looking at Fluxer, which surprisingly isn't getting a lot of discussion despite presently getting hammered so hard that the servers are having trouble accommodating all of the activity right now. The dev is based in Sweden and is implementing federated channels soon. It's also open source and allows self-hosting. Looks very promising. As far as the user experience goes, it's almost a 1:1 copy of Discord, somewhat concerningly so. The only major issue right now is that it doesn't have a mobile app, but it has a web app that works on mobile browsers. The dev has pulled in some people to help make a mobile app so that's on the way. Desktop apps are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as through a browser.
 
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Jellymouse has a point about the IPO trap, every centralized platform seems to end up there eventually. That said, I've been trying out Revolt and it's been pretty solid for smaller communities, though it's still missing some polish. The real issue is getting everyone to actually migrate somewhere else when Discord still "just works" for most people.
 
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Varista said:
By that logic Ephinea is doomed to fail in the end too because, much like Schthack, Ephinea also has the ability to donate and there's no other way a server with donations could go.

Let's not jump to conclusions and presume to know ahead of time what will happen. I actually think that Stoat has a golden opportunity here and I wouldn't count them out yet just because they're similar in nature to discord. If Stoat can take everything that Discord did right and then leave behind all the bad Discord did, having a similar UI whilst having all the good and none of the bad would be an insanely advantageous thing. You're not going to be able to please everyone, but Stoat isn't out of this yet just because they're following a similar UI model.
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I think you are making a categorical error. Ephinea accepts donations, but it's a totally different beast. Ephinea as we know it can not ever legally become a profiting corporation.

Jellymouse has a good point and there's good precedent that supports his view.

I think it's a significant handicap to compete with these types of for profit companies that have the ability to raise capital easy while not being one.

I'm a big fan of IRC!
 
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