There is no truer adage to me than nothings is perfect. And when it comes to anything related to Discord it’s no different.
Discord itself to me has been an issue for years. Its use of data collection, the obsession of companies trying to buy it all were concerning. For me the latest age verification just further reinforces my beliefs. That being said the majority of users who ignored all this and kept going, really nothing would change. Most people I know use Discord lightly and aren’t in large chats that use hentai gifs. I still would tell anyone who would listen to get out of dodge. But if you never cared about data usage then you’re probably not going to start now.
For all the alternatives out there truth is, none are really anywhere near perfect. Matrix and most of its clients while encrypted don’t offer true jump in /jump out game chat. More a kin to Skype really. Foss Discord implementations like Spacebar are to all over the place and for me are not really functional. Stoat while probably my favorite is still really small and not holding up to the stress of the user influx. And of course it’s missing “discord features” and the new kid Fluxer while appealing is still to new and it’s monetization model a little to concerning. 300 bucks as a backer for unproven project ? And of course with the exception of Matrix none of the other projects currently offer encryption.
Truth is no option really is ideal. Truth is all the options have some pretty serious flaws. And truth is getting your large swaths of friends to move might be close to impossible.
So if you are looking to move please do some digging. Ask people who use the apps their opinions. Try to as a group of friends chose to make a move.
And the final truth is it’s a really good thing we finally have some options. No matter the flaws having competition brings innovation.
I hope this posts helps clear up some things for people who might be confused or concerned.
I wasn’t really sure if the US chatroom app infamous for harboring pedophiles and saving hyperlinks of users’ deleted photos in rooms’ modlog was evil but now that the logo is red and has scary eyes I’m seriously considering it
I have offered to do a lot of education and technical effort surrounding this, e.g. helping groups migrate in some of the circles I’m involved with and all it’s really gotten me is abuse and condescension, bafflingly. No one cares and if they do it’s mostly superficial and they want the easiest way out—someone/something do everything for me, and I mean everything. I don’t want to click more than two buttons and even that is pushing it, buster. Sometimes there aren’t easy solutions, though, and I think this is one of those times. Big Tech is massive and in the world we live in now we cannot have all of the things it promises without immense tradeoff, and for the most part it just isn’t worth it. The modern web being almost completely centralized around Discord is really harmful, like what happened with Facebook years ago. What used to be simple, publicly accessible websites for all these groups, locations and interests with email, forums and chat rooms for asynchronous as well as real-time communication is now entirely on Discord or Facebook. It’s disastrous. Neither of those things are easily accessible or friendly to archival…why do I need to be in a Discord chat room or Facebook group for community events around my public library? It’s absurd. I hate all of this so much, and basically no one around me agrees with me so we’ll just circle the drain forever while the “pet cameras” start calling DHS on our neighbors.
I’m just going back to xmpp, maybe mumble for voice calls. They’re both friendly and simple and xmpp supports modern features just fine. I can host it for myself and my friends who care; I don’t have much hope for the masses anymore. I don’t really like how bloated Matrix/Synapse is, and everything else is riding coattails we don’t need to ride. I don’t care about video games or streaming to people in a chat room or anything like that, and if I did I’m sure something like Jitsi handles that well enough. Oh no, a second program!! We are all so dependent on tech in our lives but it seems like so many want nothing to do with being informed about it on any level…I just don’t get it.
I have offered to do a lot of education and technical effort surrounding this, e.g. helping groups migrate in some of the circles I’m involved with and all it’s really gotten me is abuse and condescension, bafflingly. No one cares and if they do it’s mostly superficial and they want the easiest way out—someone/something do everything for me, and I mean everything. I don’t want to click more than two buttons and even that is pushing it, buster.
Oh no, a second program!! We are all so dependent on tech in our lives but it seems like so many want nothing to do with being informed about it on any level…I just don’t get it.
I feel this in my soul, and it’s something I’ve noticed a lot on reddit when trying to tell people that lemmy/piefed exist. Some of them will just find any reason whatsoever to not do something, pointing out the most minor of differences or slightest inconveniences as insurmountable obstacles that no human could be expected to overcome, and usually end it with “if It’s not already perfect/better than what I’m currently using (despite the alternative not being actively user-hostile like the thing they’re using and complain about is) I’m not going to bother”.
I’m just going back to xmpp, maybe mumble for voice calls.
With the Movim client (or Dino client), XMPP can do group voice/video calls :D
I get what your saying and it’s true people are insanely lazy. But the whole point of these applications is to chat with your friends. So if you can’t get them to move in the first place , what’s the point of the application then ? So while there is no perfect solution , trying to do much at once won’t work either …
Fluxer wants to have a ‘monetization’ to give payouts to ‘creators.’ Hard pass.
My wife and I have been using Stoat and it’s been mostly fine, but they’re already implementing age verification.
Stoat being based in UK makes me nervous as their laws are ridiculous. Devs claim that they are going to try to only apply draconian things when necessary but I have my doubts.
Can’t you self-host stoat?
Any opinions on team speak 3?
Proprietary 👎
TS6 is already avaiable and good replacement for many (sadly not all) of discord functions
Genuinely curious: Stoat’s Community Guidelines list the legal jurisdiction for their Service Operator as the United Kingdom (sorry for the awkward sentence structure) I know that any online platform that provides “risky” content to the UK has to perform age checks, but I’m curious if the privacy impact increases when the service is hosted in the UK? Eg, would they be required to conduct age checks for all users, rather than just UK users?
Very good catch. Honestly the platform is so small I doubt it will come under fire. Worse case if the platform takes off more can self host and completely avoid these requirements
ICQ was perfect in 1996.
Damn, I think I’ve finally forgotten my ICQ number.
95589327
Damn I have forgotten every telephone number I ever had, but my ICQ# still pops out instantly.
I haven’t. Still mourning.
Im about to try to self host stoat. I’m really feeling like spinning up 3 or 4 of the new services and trying each to see which one or mixture works best. If anyone else is doing this we should start a megathread
Movim would be a good one to try. It’s actually more full featured than Stoat as well, as it offers Encryption, Federation (XMPP), group video/audio calls, and screensharing with application audio! (must use a chromium based browser to pass the audio for now). It is currently missing Discord-like channels with rooms, but the dev is actively working on that.
Stoat currently cannot do video calls or screensharing, and has no plans to implement encryption or federation, AFAIK.
Also @[email protected], @[email protected] and @[email protected]
I don’t believe Stoat is federated so your server would be in its own silo. But it’s great if you just want a space for you and your friends
Oh, apologies if this was about federated options. I’m just excited for the death of discord.
Oh no it’s not purely about federated. And I love Stoat. I just wanted to make sure that wasn’t lost in translation. Especially if you had any interest in that part
I actually do but I kind of dont know what that would entail with an app like discord. I’d imagine it would just be the same but with @domain.com instead of Username#1234
Basically how discord works right now with other “servers” but it can actually ne a different server.
Agreed, I’d really like to know how that goes! I didn’t even think of selfhosting stoat, but I’m intrigued now
Read the privacy policies too. I can’t remember which one I was reading yesterday but it read like they were going to monitor every word I said… All the while saying they are privacy advocates and based in Europe
If you can remember please report in.
It might have been fluxer but I’m not positive. I’ve been looking at all of the options because I need an alternative so there’s lots of mixed info in my brain. I should have started a spreadsheet
Even stoat writes on their privacy policy they store everything you write on their servers. That if needed they will hand over what’s required of them as of GPDR compliancy.
Now if that analyze said data and sell it, that’s another thing entirely.
With both Stoat and Fluxer community audits should be done, if Fluxer has had AI generated code that opens up unforeseen risk.
Thanks for the heads up!
Self hosting stoat is gonna be awesome for my community :)
From my quick testing I did the other day, the conclusion I came to was:
- Fluxer looks like the easiest drop-in replacement for my group. I agree I am also a little hesitant about its longevity & funding.
- Matrix UX leaves some to be desired, but it’s functional and I like the E2EE.
- We don’t have anyone good enough at selfhosting in my group to even attempt Spacebar.
- Stoat just doesn’t seem viable. Lack of screenshare is a big issue for my group.
Surprisingly, the new TeamSpeak 6 looks pretty okay to me, but the UX is pretty different so might have a little bit of a learning curve for some people in my group. It costs money for a server but honestly my group is fine with that. We used to pay for a Mumble server back in the day but it doesn’t have robust text channels so we don’t want to move back to that.
I was just informed today of a huge red flag for Fluxer; it has a contributor CLA that could allow it to change to a non-FLOSS license in the future. I was hopeful for it previously, but that kills it for me.
Also @[email protected]
I’ll be sticking with Movim, which is already federated, encrypted, can do group video calls, can even screenshare, and most critically does not have a CLA.
Movim looks insanely promising. I’ll have to check it out after I get off work. I’ll have to update my write up if it’s that impressive. Curious how it will handle from what I understand XMPP is protocol like matrix yes ?
Yes, it’s an open-standard that anyone can create a client for. Here’s a good presentation with more details on XMPP itself, if you’re interested :)
I’m interested in movim. They are a mature project that has been around for ~15 years and are working adding some discordy features. With those coming it seems more promising to me than the alternatives that haven’t even hit a stable state yet https://piaille.fr/@movim
For me Fluxer is technically more feature complete with steaming options. But banners and custom emojis are behind paywalls. (Non local hosted)
Stoat offers free banners, emojis a nice UI even a community browser! Its voice chat works well enough but no streaming features. Stoat is purely donation based at the moment.
Sounds like Fluxer is gaining momentum mainstream wise. I’m happy with either option …
if you tried TS6 may i ask how it was? it still seems to be in beta and i couldn’t find any easy setup guide or demo…
Self hosting TS6 is as simple as running the file and port forwarding setup on your router. I have not tried using it with anyone else yet, as I was not satisfied with the lack of persistent text chat, but setting it up is pretty easy.
If you’re familiar with Docker they have a Docker compose file example as well.
with the lack of persistent text chat
i was under the impression their UX is just like discord and they use the matrix protocol underneath, seems like it’s not :( that’s a dealbreaker… thanks for sharing
There is some way to do it using like, group chats and their hosted services, but there is no self hosted server based persistent chat.
Honestly, spinning up the Synapse stack (Matrix) from their Helm documentation wasn’t too difficult. I have not tested the voice chat super thoroughly yet, but the text chat is working great. The hardest part was formatting some of the config files correctly so it would use them properly.
https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm/tree/main
It seemed like it would work for me. The user experience is pretty different than Discord, but I caught onto it pretty quick. There are public servers you can join to see what it could be like. When you launch the desktop client, there is a “popular servers” section on the home page that lets you pick from a couple different community servers. I joined the “Official TeamSpeak Community Server” and then just jumped into the Counter-Strike channel and played around, tested streaming, chat, etc.
To be clear this is the TS6 client, not TS3.
As far as I can tell you can’t actually test creating your own server before you pay for a community, although the cost is cheap ($5 USD a month) and it looks like there is a trial.
From a longevity perspective, TeamSpeak might be a good choice for my group, since it’s been around in some shape or form for like 30 years at this point. My group has moved like 3 or 4 times. Not sure if we’ll find a forever home but the longer we can stay somewhere, the better.
For all the alternatives out there truth is, none are really anywhere near perfect. Matrix and most of its clients while encrypted don’t offer true jump in /jump out game chat.
After complaining about it heavily for a few days, I did find one client that has that same feel, commet.chat. I haven’t done a whole lot of testing yet, but from what I’ve seen/experienced, it’s close, if not there
Personally I still prefer XMPP+Cheogram. It’s more Signal than Discord, but it’s a lightweight chat server with voice call abilities, and that’s what I needed it for
Check out the Movim client for XMPP, it allows it perform group video/audio calls, and even has screen sharing! (though you need to use a chromium browser to share the audio of an application for now). And the dev is currently working on implementing Discord-style channels with collections of rooms.
I’ve gone through like 5 different services trying to set one up. Am I dumb or does no one know how to make a straightforward docker compose? I thought the whole point of Compose was to copy-paste a config, change a few variables and hit go. Several of these assume you know so much about how to setup these services and then just leave you to your devices.
I want like 5 or 6 variables in an .env file. No reason I should have to spin up my own database and link it when you should be containerizing the entire thing in the first place. The only services so far that I’ve had any success setting up are Mattermost (which doesn’t offer group calls) and VoceChat (which I can’t get the voice to work in).
All the others either don’t offer voice at all or I can’t get past the setup.
You can PM me your error messages for help. When it comes to simple group voice chat, I recommend mumble
I know I didn’t mention it in my post, but I do have a couple requirements:
- Self-hosted
- Web client
- Voice/video conference/group
- Private messaging
Nice-to-haves:
- Native mobile/desktop app
- Modern UI
- Lightweight
I have my sights on Snikket at the moment, but that was one I couldn’t get up and running. I can reach out with errors and maybe get it running, but my point stands that Docker Compose is supposed to be as hands-off as it gets, but some devs seem to not get that.
discord was a one-stop shop for multiple very different things.
Retvrn to gamer clans coordinating in forums, talking in mumble, chatting in IRC &c.
one program for one purpose and a community webpage tying it all together
The big problem is, every good privacy-respecting solution costs money and comes with the inconvenience of setting up a new account. Having lived 90s Internet I don’t mind that at all, I actually kind of prefer it, but I can understand how younger folks can be discouraged.
Movim doesn’t cost anything and is federated (just like piefed/lemmy are). It also offers really solid encryption for privacy. I’d say it’s out best long-term option.
One of the problems is that a “privacy-respecting solution” that includes a monthly bill is self-defeating. It creates a paper trail.
Part of why I want to self-host in the first place is to get away from shitty gigantic corporations. Discord, Spotify, Netflix, HBO, Disney, etc. Just because you are paying them doesn’t mean they aren’t making you a product anyways anymore.
I would love for a good way to do this without having to rely on Cloudflare or Tailscale or similar too. Even if they have free options today, what are those free options going to look like 2 years from now?
One of the problems is that a “privacy-respecting solution” that includes a monthly bill is self-defeating. It creates a paper trail.
I told that in the most general sense. You may self-host or rent a VPS, all cost money and maintenance. There is always more private and less private options. But anything run but a volunteer or community or selfhoster wouldn’t data mine to sell ads, that you can be sure.
My young friend was like , why would you have to pay for a server?? And I’m Like bud, if you aren’t paying, you are the product. They don’t get concepts like servers and that they are offsite hardware…hard for them to conceptualize.
Because discord uses the word differently than the rest of the world. Convenient.
i got a team speak 6 server running for my friend group. there are things i wish were better, but ultimately it’s really not that big of a deal. mainly it’s the separating the text chat from the voip servers, and the text chat not being hosted on my machine. but then again others would rather it was on a companies servers any way
but now it’s just the work of pushing my friends to not stick around due to momentum and the whole “but discord retracted their decision! i don’t want to!”
my solution is Zulip/XMPP/IRC/Jitsi, none of them can replace every functions of discord but they partially can and it seems like they’ll work for my use case.
The Movim client for XMPP can do all of those functions as a one-stop shop. It can even do screensharing with audio passthrough (though you need to use a chromium based browser to pass the application audio in the stream). I think it’s easily out best option right now.
That’s the other thing, everyone’s use case is slightly different, which honestly I’m kinda glad there are so many options for even if all of them have their flaws.
Just curiousity: why not Matrix?
the clients still feel extremely buggy to use and has poor ux, there are too many frictions overall. surely it works for some people, but it feels not optimal for me. i even tried it with a quite techie friend once and they had extremely bad experience with it that they’re now skeptical of any alternative chat systems i ask them to try out with…
For me it’s purely the voice chat issue. I rarely use chat rooms anymore. Arguably something like TeamSpeak would work just fine for me.
