I don’t think people on this sub use it, but it’s great news for us. The worse it gets the likelier people move on.
Resisting? It was a clear strategy: use VC money to give away something for free then charge/monetize to give back those investors all the money, with interests
Revolt is also a great open source alternative that I tried and would recommend
I just installed it after I ran into it on some other Lemmy comment. I was hoping to replace discord with it.
- clicking on a voice room doesn’t actual join it. You still need to dial in
- I can’t see who is currently in/using the voice room.
- doesnt seem to remember me granting mic access
- doesn’t seem to support screen sharing
It just feels like it isn’t “there” just yet? Unless I’m missing something?
If I showed it to friends of mine today and they had my experience I’m sure they’d go back to discord.
Not hating on the devs though. The product itself seems to be coming along nicely.
Yes, it definitely has missing features in comparison to Discord but I think it has potential. It may be useful to submit requests on Github.
If it helps, I’m pretty sure the devs are in the process of rewriting the UI on a private repo. Idk if there’s any eta or progress chart
It is just as centralized and has a tendency to ban people for poor reasons
It’s way better than Matrix
I don’t think it’s good as Matrix in terms of privacy and security but I think it’s better as an alternative to Discord
No E2EE for DMs, groups, or notes.
That’s going to be the deal breaker for most.
Matrix is far too slow for what it’s intended to be. I’d certainly like to see E2EE come to Revolt.
Looking at all those companies that moved their support to Discord.
But I thought we cold have free support in realtime with security updates for free forever?
It would’ve been very smart of them to have this ad change only affect business ownedchannels, and then open up a fee option for businesses to no longer have ads on their channel
I truly don’t have a problem with ads being in a free service. My anger will be based on how annoying they are when they roll out.
The problem is that no o.e will just serve a static PNG banner ad anymore. Ads these days inherently come with all the BS that makes blocking them mandatory
people do pay for discord though. that was the entire justification for Nitro and Server Boosts. they made $440 million in revenue in 2022. they aren’t publicly traded so there’s no way to compare that with expenses, but i’d be pretty surprised if they weren’t turning a significant profit.
The ads will become increasingly annoying snd intrusive over time based on every other website and app that has gone from free to supported by ads.
Even if they aren’t too bad at first, they will get worse. Just like the nitro ads that are already in discord.
I wish I had enough time and knowledge to combine mumble and revolt… That would be the perfect discord replacement.
Actually, I just want 1) gaming voice chat with 2) a shared music bot which 3) my non-tech friends would want to use
And thus begins the enshittification of Discord
More like half way down the road
It has always sucked. From the beginning it was privacy-invasive, had no real business model, has had crappy Electron apps and has been proprietary.
mumble is free and open source.
And no one uses it. The last time I used mumble was over a decade ago and its use was short lived.
Isn’t Mumble just a voice chat software? I don’t think that is the main use case for Discord for most people.
Yeah, discord is for running a community not just chatting in voice.
Idk, me and all my friends use discord for vc, plus screenshots and memes while we chat. You can do that in mumble. Not sure about broadcasting or anything (I started a server yesterday after the news broke), maybe there are extensions. Discord is just a means to an end for us.
So is Matrix and it includes self-hosting and end-to-end encryption enabled by default.
Did they rewrite that crappy Python server in something with better performance by now? I tried self-hosting Matrix a few years ago and gave up after the one room I joined hadn’t finished syncing after a whole day (admittedly it was their main matrix chat room with lots of members but still).
https://matrix.org/ecosystem/servers/
There are multiple options for homeservers and the Python one is just one of several implementations. There are others written in C++, Rust, Go!, etc.
Just don’t make a new install with Dendrite - it’s not really supported anymore. And no automated automation for us who do have Dendrite servers …
Synapse if you plan to go large, otherwise Conduit, would be my recommendation.
It depends on your skillset. If you can self host services in docker, matrix should not be an issue anymore. Its still nowhere ready for everyone at this point but is constantly improving.
Docker changes nothing about the performance characteristics of a service. If anything back then a full server dedicated to it wouldn’t have been enough.
That hasn’t been an issue for a year if you’ve enabled sliding sync. It is very fast nowadays. Look into element-x https://github.com/element-hq/element-x-android
Element X is a client.
Sliding sync doesn’t make joining Matrix HQ any faster. This is depending on your hardware and whether or not you have any workers configured. For most users it isn’t worth joining that room anyway.
Why not? I’m not in mhq but why is it different than other rooms?
It’s the amount of users and servers in the room. When you join it on a new server it needs to process and verify the state of the room and agree it with all the servers. As the state is massive in this room it can take a very long time to join it.
If you want to learn more read this: https://matrix.org/docs/older/stateres-v2/
Thx. So the first time the server joins the room it’s slow. Any subsequent joins are faster
Is this april fools or for real
The news broke yesterday sooooo
Oh no.
Mr Kool-aid man, but with a discord logo on him OHH YEAHHHHH!
Sadly this one’s real, their April Fool’s joke was a lootbox that gave avatar/pfp decorations and stuff
Gotta switch to revolt. My username: super_user_do#0384
Looks like Discord will do a Reddit in the near future.
I recommend switching to Matrix.
Same. Matrix works like a charm.
Why can’t I click and drag rooms into the position I want them?
Ended up switching to alphabetical and numbering the rooms.
Don’t get me wrong, I love matrix, but works like a charm is not how I would describe that. Element Just seems to make everything harder because you have to keep track of your session keys. That way if you have a new device and can’t use the previous device you don’t get locked out And then to top it off you have the export and import of end to end encrypted room keys which even for somebody like myself who is technical enough to manage it has managed to screw it up almost every time. I find something like session or SimpleX easier because you’re not having to manage keys like that. SimpleX has an actual database file export instead of key management and you need only remember the decryption key. Session of course uses session IDs with a neumonic seed phrase like crypto
Interesting concept! Element isnt my favorite client either but it has nothing to do with running or using matrix. Its like using an iphone and saying calling someone is very expensive.
The keys situation needs work though.
I havent found another client that really improves the situation though.
I use fluffychat daily and it works well. The issue atm is that frequently changing devices, leaving and joining a lot of rooms can disrupt the experience. If you talk mostly on the same devices and in the same rooms there is no issue as far as I can tell.
As all FOSS software it needs work and people who want to put in that work. I wont help with element and synapse since the element folks want contributors to sign away their rights which I‘m not okay with.
Oh, I don’t blame you for that. I just feel like Matrix in general is rather complicated for normal people. I like simple x a lot because all the keys are just in a database and the database is encrypted instead of having to remember the keys and session obviously only needs the mnemonic seed for restoration. Like, I can manage a cryptocurrency wallet absolutely fine, but there are a number of different times that I have lost access to encrypted chats on Matrix due to not getting the key situation right.
Yeah, a lot of apps have interesting functions. Since matrix already has a lot of users and is somewhat integrated with the other services I‘ll stay with it.
You can just restore with your recovery key
If the server holds your room keys encrypted by your restore key, sure. But thats still a 3rd party holding your keys.
Not if you run your own instance 😁
I will gladly leave this shithole called discord, as soon as matrix start to support screen sharing
I actually havent tried if screensharing works but jitsi seems to work very well in there. Even the german government uses it so I suppose it might be able to do that.
There’s a huge difference between streaming games and streaming PowerPoint slideshows
Obviously, yes. Whats your point?
Telling Discord users to switch to Matrix because “it works like a charm” is incorrect, considering how Discord is used.
“It’s tolerable if you can put up with the low bit rate and high latency” is more accurate.
I know for a fact you can screen share in jitsi as I have seen it done.
In that case it should be no problem in matrix, assuming it uses a full version of jitsi.
I frequently use Jitsi w/screensharing. Been using it for quite a while this way with good results.
I hate this recommendation because Matrix is just a terrible user experience. It has basically nothing of value over Discord other than being open source. Which is important but it’s not enough to counteract the amount of basic quality of life stuff that is just absolutely trash garbage on Matrix. Stuff that no normal user is going to put up with.
If Discord does end up completely eviscerating itself the replacement will just be some new upstart closed Source program that is shiny just like how Discord took over from Slack it will not be the rise of Open Source because open source developers have no concept of user experience.
I mean we don’t even need to start talking about how bad all the client options are and how half the features don’t work and all that. You can look no further than the login system. Average users do not like want or accept having multiple options for logging in. There’s a reason that irc, teamspeak, mumble despite in many ways being objectively Superior especially in the case of the voice chats ended up relegated to only nerds like us. Because no one else is willing to deal with keeping track of servers to connect with or how to cross join or add users.
Same reason that Lemmy is like 90% technical users that are already invested in something like Linux. The average user got frustrated by how fragmented everything is how many duplicate channels and content you would find between instances and how difficult it was to search instances in the first place. I am here because I can ultimately work around those emoians, but the average person? Is not willing to and they shouldn’t have to
some new upstart closed Source program that is shiny just like how Discord took over from Slack
Guilded already exists. It’s a Discord clone with more features, but no one uses it. I assume they are just waiting for Discord to fail one day.
It’s because is owned by Roblox.
I didn’t look into it much other than trying it out for 15 min. Good to know lol.
Which is important but it’s not enough to counteract the amount of basic quality of life stuff that is just absolutely trash garbage on Matrix
The thread is about discord adding ads in their platform, so much of user experience… there’s no such trash on matrix
You don’t need to be a technical user to use matrix you simply don’t have to be closed minded
Someone else mentioned Revolt.chat higher in the thread and it seems to be a promising FOSS replacement for Discord. It’s looking to fix some of Matrix’s issues like not having voice channels (voice calls on Matrix aren’t the same)
I’d love to be able to disagree in any of your points, but I can’t.
The vast majority of users want something that simply works, is polished and intuitively usable. Reading docs, remembering anything other than the bare minimum, running into issues that don’t get magically resolved within 5 minutes will turn them away forever.
Even people with a technical background will at least partially compromise and migrate towards the services with the most users to not isolate themselfs.
Matrix is neat, Lemmy is neat, Nextcloud is neat (well, in theory), Immich is neat, so many other privacy friendly solutions are neat. But they’ll always be irrelevant in the global context.
The vast majority of users want something that simply works, is polished and intuitively usable.
That’s exactly what matrix most popular client Element does.
It is often sketchy. The search function doesn’t work properly. Loading older messages often makes your client spaz out. There’s several glitchy commands. Spamming snowflakes can slow down your client to a crawl. A friend once crashed Element on my phone using a lot of nested quotes with muscle emojis. We had to spam other stuff so I could open Element again because the moment those messages started loading my client crashed again, preventing me from even changing the channel so I could open my app again.
I use Element and Matrix because it is the best privacy-respecting option, but it has a long way to go.
I mean with next cloud and immich it doesn’t really matter if they are popular. Those are services that you host for yourself for you to use generally by yourself.
Immich I could see someone using if they’re already familiar with Google photos, so long as someone else handled the setup and maintenance of it of course
Selfhosted services like Nextcloud/Immich aren’t nearly as dependent on a critical user mass like Discord/Matrix, but the principle is the same.
If you host for family or friends, they may even use it if you convince them to switch. But when the setup, which doesn’t consist of redundant instances and isn’t maintained by a small army of SysAdmins 24/7, inevitably breaks for longer than a few minutes, most will switch back to the easy, reliable option.
I don’t want the average person here. That makes companies more incentivize to come here and fuck everything up. All those normies can stay using Discord or Slack. Matrix is easy and its a good protocol.
I hate this recommendation because Matrix is just a terrible user experience.
Heck agree. In my experience, IRC is a much better alternative.
I am a big fan of Matrix and glad to see it getting some attention in this post. But it is definitely a bit rougher around the edges and esoteric compared to Discord. For more technically-inclined people, it’s fine. But it’s a bit much for some people.
I’m no fan of Apple (and don’t want to divert discussion here), but part of their winning formula is ease of use.
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That is why XMPP is still superior, both for hosting and usage.
2^32 different incompatible extensions for receiving images and an inability to receive messages when offline. Glorious.
Have you used this protocol at all? You CAN receive messages when offline, this is not IRC. And media uploads don’t seem to be such a problem.
Yes, I have. With various clients. It sucked.
Matrix is rough, but it can be the future. Revolt seemed more complete for the time being.
They already have
Pre IPO allocations were available two years ago.
the problem isn’t switching, the problem is making all the other people using It to switch too, not everyone cares about security or ads
There’s also privacy issues with Matrix:
- Account deletion on Discord: username becomes [deleted]
- Account deletion on Matrix: will not delete username
- GDPR-compliant account deletion on Matrix: will not delete username
Discord is also one (admittedly very lousy company), while Matrix starts with the privacy issues and just gets worse
Go, change it! It’s open source.
Right after you promise to convince all their moneyed interests to accept those changes into the repositories they manage
i dont use it and im curious, what interests? i tought is was FOSS?
FOSS does not mean there are no business interests. Think about Mozilla Firefox, Postgres, RedHat, etc.
sure but they are usually more tamed. what is matrix doing exactly?
Shit takes time bro. We’re all trying not to starve to death here.
I have happily succeeded. While there are some communities that are still on Discord, the vast majority of my friends are accessible on Matrix.
Yep most of the communities I like are on Discord nothing I can’t do.
most of the communities period are on discord
even the one that really have no business being in there and really should be on a forum
One of the interesting features about Matrix is that it supports some degree of interoperability. The Beeper phone app, for all the fuss about its ill-fated attempts to bridge to iMessage, can connect to Discord for basic no-frills text chat.
I refuse to install Discord on my phone but use Beeper for DMs and group texting.
I’m constantly looking for something that could replace discord for me, I need something like the discord screen/gama streaming to consider changing apps.
I need something like the discord screen/gama streaming to consider changing apps.
I second this. It’s one of our most used features. Whether it’s streaming for team mates or for spectators there’s almost always 1 to 2 people streaming/watching.
With how much they been cash grabbing, I’m not surprised.
If only I could convince 30 people I barely know to switch platforms.
The Discord server I spend the most time on is constantly looking for alternatives in case something better pops up or we need a backup.
April Fools?
The website will ask for a user streaming to do something in-game or play a specific game while others are watching to probably earn something either in-game or in Discord.
I feel this is fine, the “streamer” can decide to do this tasks or not. And can disable receiving the tasks at all in settings.
Yeah I don’t think it is actually going to be particularly intrusive visually. It is based on data on games you play and stuff so one could argue that is intrusive. It’s 6 months from now as they start getting more bold and greedy. The ads will get worse, they always do.
“please drink verification can”
Yeah I mostly agree, I don’t like them adding ads but the way they’re doing it seems not too intrusive so I’m not the most bothered
(Last I checked) From this spreadsheet, Discord is the fourth worst messaging platform in terms of privacy. Now a new row for “Has ads” will have to be added…
According to my iPhones privacy viewer it’s almost worse than Facebook.
I wouldn’t say it’s great for me, because I have to use it for some people who just refuse to use an open source alternative.
The people who refuse to use an open source alternative, I no longer speak with. I have made plenty of new friends on the open source alternatives that use the open source alternatives.
this is wild. people who use open source software are a small small minority, and its good to have a diverse group of friends, not a tiny insulated group of the internet. dropping a friend over their choice of messaging app is pathetic
We need FOSSCORD!
