Matrix just isn’t a Discord alternative flatout to me. It’s too different.
We really do a lack a Discord alternative right now. I know of two major examples: Stoat and Root. Both centralised. This is offputting to many, altough Stoat is actually UK-based which could in theory mitigate concerns about US big-tech.
The only down-the-line federated potential is something called “Roomy”, and I am following it - but it’s too basic right now.
I would not consider UK-based to be any better than US-based. The UK seems to have a major hate-on for anonymity, privacy, and encryption.
This is true, but also Ofcom runs affairs here and Stoat is likely too small for the forseeable to be even noticed by them.
Remember UK regulatory bodies are known for their ignorance and incompetence.
Security by obscurity is not security.
Fair enough. Truthfully I doubt Stoat can ever get that big (especially as it seems Root has a much faster development cycle and is likely to suck up any momentum they might have).
How is Root any better than Discord? I’ve never heard of it, but very quick search revealed it’s not open source, not federated, not even possible to self host, is US based, has venture capital interests already.
Too small to be corrupted?
I just used Root as an example here. There isn’t a federated alternative of any note unfortunately.
Well, yet, maybe? I’ve heard similar about Guilded, which looked pretty much like Root does now, but it got bought by Roblox and later dismissed (dissolved into Roblox). I fear there’s no other future than this for Root too :-(
I was always disappointed that Stoat (terrible rename btw) pushed federation out of their roadmap. If that would have taken a front seat it could have been a real discord clone. Anyone could spin up a server, and it’d be simple enough for users to understand. It honestly could have been the next IRC.
I would add that a true Federated Discord clone should have a “Community Discovery” map where accounts could jump in and access other chatrooms. And ‘instances’ could choose what other instances to federate with. Just like how it works on the Fediverse now.
Otherwise its just entirely disconnected independently run chatrooms.
Yes that’s what I don’t like about Stoat. No one is going to create logins for 7 different Stoat servers, they need to have a single place to access, and then join others from that one. Average users don’t want to know about servers or DNS names or anything, they want to click a button and start talking
Well currently Stoat isn’t federated, I was just noting that a hypothetical federated Discord should allow a single account to interact with servers not on the original accounts server - just like the fediverse
I use Matrix for a few different things, and I think the biggest thing holding it back is that it isn’t particularly user-friendly or refined. It feels like something that is more packaged for enthusiasts than for general audiences.
A discord alternative with functional voice chat and video streaming would be nice, but it’s sort of an AIM in the 90s situation. If the people you want to talk to are using the platform as their primary means of communication, it’s still kind of necessary. An alternative wouldn’t just have to be close to discord, it would have to actually be better so people use it.
Spot on. The features discord provides are pretty great.
An alternative wouldn’t just have to be close to discord, it would have to actually be better so people use it.
There’s always the possibility Discord goes the Microsoft route: making themselves worse.
Maybe Cinny?
I think Cinny has a pretty similar interface.
https://commet.chat/ is the closest I’ve seen.
I like Element well enough. It works for my needs.
FluffyChat has a decently similar interface, but it takes effort to set it up to be similar.
