Ive been trying to migrate off since 2020
Communities I follow refuse to, and no other service is close to parity. Guilded was the closest until they allowed themselves to golden parachute with their Roblox purchase, so they’re now not longer worth considering
Teamspeak and teamspeak6 is a joke, anyone who prefers it is off their rocker
I’ve been following Revolt/Stout, River on FreeNet since I found it on FUTO, and others but frankly all alternatives I’ve found suck for varius reasons
What are the others missing? In other words, what are the main features of discord that make it stand out so far above the rest?
I tried to move my friend group away from discord to stoat or matrix. But a pig part of why it stands out is that people are used to it and don’t think privacy is a big enough reason to switch
Discoverability and moderated official servers
You need to be able to find say a public battlefield, minecraft, dayz, CivilizationVi, whatever community and subcommunities easily, so for minecraft you need to be able to find speedrunner, hardcore, smp, and so on groups
Active People to talk to
Chicken and egg problems. Gotta have signifcant quantities of people to attract more active people
Intuitive and easy joining, clean links.
Have to be able to say “oh we can hop on here and chat/discuss” to onboard new people from YouTube, Twitch, Owncast, whatever
The shared link cant be a string of letters and numbers because uninitiated correlate that with bad actors
This was something Guilded was starting to get right before they were bought out and shut down and it was massive for getting people to join
That’s an absolute failure of all of those products to not provide that environment on their own.
This used to be commonplace
Discord at its best was simply a hangout where you and your friends can talk to each other without needing to be playing the same game.
It became entirely too complicated and bigger than it needed to be. It’s a. Overblown IRC voice chat. And before nitro, it was exactly all it needed to be.
Now it shot itself in the foot like so many others by trying to be something that isn’t what made it great
I think its yet to be seen if they shot themselves in the foot or not
Remember Reddit?
Yeah they were dirt bags and still exist just fine aren’t they
I’d wager its more likely that the same scenario repeats than this being a catastrophic event for discord personally
Unfortunately
You are most likely correct that it’s too early to say. I don’t have a problem conceding that point to you.
I think Reddit did shoot itself in the foot though, regardless of if they are still around. I don’t know that they will ever be able to regain what it has lost.
As a Reddit refugee myself I can say that for me they absolutely fucked over the chance to have me return to their platform, and many if not most of other refugees I’m guessing would share a similar opinion
Teamspeak 6 with the teamspeak 6 beta server is a great solution for my small community. I’m hosting a dedicated server on my mini PC that is used just for servers.
Has voice chat, text chat, screen share (whether it is streaming video games, your desktop, or webcam). The streaming is peer 2 peer, meaning there’s no restriction on streaming quality except what your Internet can handle. Audio quality is amazing.
Beta
No app version
Since you appear to have some experience and technical capacity I have some questions for you
Selfhost is wonderful, but how secure is it when exposed for public access?
Is it a PITA to get into like say Immich if you want to share it to friends and family, where you have to play shenanigans with say OpenVPN having them connect to your home via VPN or Tailscale to share it?Teamspeak allows for your server to have a nickname, effectively a DNS by TeamSpeak. Open ports on the router and firewall and you’re good to go, no need to share IP addresses.
Honestly I just tried stoat and setting up a server (it’s not hosted by me so maybe just a space) to try to get my friends to migrate to. We have ~20 some odd people and have lots of chats categorized by outdoor/indoor with channels for diy/gaming/cooking/ordering out and so far, stoat has a few limitations I miss from discord (editing category or custom emoji names, for example) and I have yet to try out the voice chat aspect of it but it looks like this is going to be the clear winner for my use case. I’m hoping they get a mobile app working for some of the more casual just want to chat and share interesting pictures of our day without sitting at the pc members but besides that I’m loving it. Maybe at some point I’ll try to look into seeing if I can self host, but for now it’s nice to know there’s something that feels just like discord from an organization of topics perspective that hasn’t gone down their path (yet?)
sadly people will forget about this next week
It’s not that they forget. It’s that 98% of its user base won’t care. They will just do whatever and continue on.
Too many companies have invested in discord being their point of contact.
It’s the same as windows 11 killing windows 10. Everyone just moved on.
Yes, you will have a few niche users quit, same as the few who moved from windows to Linux. But not any significant numbers to make any of these companies worry.
It’ll be the new Victorian age all over again. Morals and acting righteous up top and secret human stuff just underneath the surface. Just look at what is happening in the bad old usa today. This is not about protecting minors.
So you are also following this Epstein timeline we are living in…
require a laser scan of whole body. for security
Note, this is happening for the same reason Reddit started enshittifying much harder all of a sudden. Discord wants to do an IPO and so they’re going to suddenly start squeezing their users to make the numbers look good just in time for that IPO. Their bet is that they have enough momentum that enough people will stick with them long enough for the IPO to succeed, and after that happens, it’s someone else’s problem.
Definitely uninstalling discord. I hardly use it anyway.
I use it daily, but I’ve now deleted my account and will move on.
I dont put up with this shit.
I keep researching alternatives, and every time I circle back around toward Matrix, despite criticisms. Part of it is a question of what everyone is using. I pretty consistently see that groups who use or used to use irc are now using Matrix additionally or as a replacement.
Part of me would like xmpp to be the best answer, but I’ve yet to see an implementation that handles public communities well, particularly for anything that functions at all like Discord. Matrix seems to be at least gaining voice/video chat support?
irc does looks cool BUT its hard to learn and you’ve gotta make your freinds download it
Americans- If you’re thinking “this isn’t so bad” please consider that all it takes is a teeny tiny, insignificant api added to the back end with absolutely no notice to users and suddenly the DHS has a database of dissenters, with cross-referenced IDs, photos of faces, chat history, link share history, raw uploaded photos, and approximate locations.
Say no to this. If you need a temporary alternative that’s quick to get going, create a signal group chat with your friends.
Forget DHS or other government agencies, these companies have been shown to be untrustworthy stewards of our data from regular hackers.
I get that discord is used to groom kids and there is a very real risk to allowing children to use it unsupervised, but that means kids devices are the ones that need to be locked down, not the rest of the world.
No argument there. Just feels particularly relevant right now if you know what I mean.
Pain fucking ass but deleted my Discord account. Sure wish had a decent alternative. I see a lot of suggestions just don’t which to try? Any that work great with Linux Debian?
Me and my people are moving to stoat. They’re having some growing pains right now, but I’m sure it’ll smooth out.
Matrix
Do the people you talk with use Signal?
Only used it when used to game with my kids. So no one I know uses Signal.
They’re already doing it to access the social security website.
If this is truly a concern, smash your phone, because all that is easily accessible.
I run graphene and have self control. You do you.
The absolute shitload majority of users will not care about this enough to stop using the product
I think it’ll strongly depend on how intrusive it ends up being.
they would allow it to record conversations in their house while the computer is off. people do not give a shit
Kinda like reddit
kinda like gamers in general.
Cry, and cry, and cry, and stir up a big shit storm about whatever the latest greatest grievance is… Then continue to speak with their wallet by shoveling hundreds of dollars to the companies doing all the atrocious shit they hate and complain about.
I use it to stay connected to my local community including the high school robotics team I help mentor. I don’t have much of a choice. :(
As I understand it, you should be fine unless that server is doing 18+ stuff. Don’t verify, discord will assume you’re a teenager. I’m leaving because I don’t have any ties like that. Maybe you could convince the server to move elsewhere?
I am one of them. I only use it for comms for gaming. The rest doesn’t matter to me.
Good.
Discord is overused for help forums and wikis, which makes them extremely difficult to search and dependent upon third party software to be maintained. I hope this will force people away from that behaviour and back to good old fashioned messageboards that have been working just fine since at least the 80s
If you say your documentation is on discord we don’t run your software.
Absolute fucking clown shit
Wait 6 months, this will have changed nothing for Discord and they’ll carry on. Most likely in 2-3 years they’ll deploy the age verify for all users, not just users trying to access “adult” stuff.
Hear me out. Maybe, if you are a parent, its your duty to keep an eye on your child, and exert some control over the spaces and people they interact with?
Conservatives have been using the “think of the children line” to justify Draconian overeach for years. All while simultaneously doing everything in their power to take away programs that help children.
Let’s not act like the dems don’t do some of the same shit.
And no I’m not both sidesing this shit…just saying that the dems/left uses this reasoning a lot as well.
I’m not both sidesing, but both sides…
Minnesota recently used their tax on billionaires to expand education and provide free lunch to children so while the party isn’t perfect they are not at all comparable.
What makes them so similar is first pass the post it guarantees a two party system and the practice of gerrymandering creating safe seats. The worst Democrats are the ones with the safest seats. If you want positive change start there.
We’re talking about trying to pass legislation in the name of “think of the children” logic. KOSA is a fairly recent one that is from the dems.
Oh I know but anytime someone starts saying that they’re very alike I need to remind people that they really aren’t because these upcoming elections will be a fight for survival
Yes it’s an important fight for survival. Which is why the dems will nominate a bunch of corporatists who have been scorned by trump. Let the “good” money back into politics and “save the kids” my benevolent billionaires who are noble and just!!
This is why we need to push for progressives, it’s the only card we have left. Look at the last year if you want to see what not playing gets you.
Average age of Lemmy is too low to remember the democrats always managed to support the war on drugs. Save the children indeed. Think of the children is just the go-to bipartisan reasoning for bad legislation
Off the top of my head I can only think of Lieberman and honestly the ESRB was a reasonable compromise.
Tipper gore? KOSA
What’s tipper gore got to do with anything in the last thirty years? And kosa was bipartisan and died in the house.
30 years is a blink in time. You do realize laws don’t magically stop being potential issues after a few years right?
The Patriot Act which was bipartisan was passed almost 30 years ago now (25 years ago) now.
KOSA was introduced by a Dem.
You’re reaching to pull a both sides. Regardless republican platform positions harm children, Democratic ones feed them.
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You’re mostly correct, but Dems are not left in any political paradigm with the slightest awareness of the existence of non-American countries.
political parties aren’t real. Their only purpose is market segmentation.
It doesn’t matter which teams win in sports, billionaires own all the leagues.
Bugger off ml bot.
I, too, attack the source when I cannot refute the claim
Absofucking- lutely!
My 12 year old has zero unsupervised access to the internet. Zero. “But they’ll suffer sociallly!”
Will they? My son has tons of friends and they play sports and Nerf guns. And, he can read. A whole chapter book, on his own, without prompting.
Suffer socially, ask the “incels” who have recovered if the internet access they had as teens “helped them socially”.
My nephew plays lots of on online games. My sister checks in with me to make sure that he is both playing games that are appropriate for him, and with people who are appropriate to play with. We’ve setup a discord specifically for him and his friends, and the account he uses is actually my sister’s account, on her own device, so she has direct control over what communities he’s on in discord, who he talks to, and what content he is exposed to.
He is not allowed to play public lobby games with out her supervision, or a trusted “chaperone” (one of many IRL friend and family members) being in the lobby with him. This is as much about protecting him from harmful content, as it is about teaching him proper gaming etiquette. He was showing some toxic behaviors (greifing mainly) and I shut that down pretty quick.
My kids had full internet use with only porn and advertising blocking, except for “homework time”, as well as no restrictions on video games (except for fucking Roblox). They recently graduated high-school at the top of their class and continue doing great in university.
They grew up to be nice, well-rounded young men who make friends easily, aren’t assholes, aren’t glued to their cell phones (which they had since they were little), don’t mindlessly watch TV, can easily switch tasks and “buckle down” when they have to, and have a great work ethic. They grew up with the attitude that internet/cell phones are tools, not rewards or distractions. Once they hit high-school I found I no longer needed to monitor them (and it was starting to feel creepy and invasive). When they had to study they studied, on their own without prompting or timers.
I had no worries because I know how to read papers, and there was (and still is) ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence that doing so would be harming, but in fact the reverse is true.
Kids grow up to be like their parents. Don’t want them to be assholes? Then don’t be an asshole. Want them to grow up with a reading habit? Then read for yourself. It’s that easy.
It’s interesting to see that their friends who had strict internet/gaming rules ended up turning into complete shitheads they no longer associate with.
Lot of pride here… Good for you?
Kids don’t always grow up to be their parents. I found such a broad statement to put such a sour taste in my mouth when I read it.
Feels pretty privledged, and like, good for you, but damn this statement … Is very broad, dare I say arrogant. Plenty of good kids come from shitty people and vice versa.
Anyway, enjoy your adult kids and thanks for sharing
I feel like it will be more common to heavily restrict the tech access of children as people who actually grew up using the internet become parents.
I also plan to restrict my (future hypothetical) children from internet access until 13 or so, depending on maturity. So your comment gives me some optimism in that regard.
As a parent: 100% agree
So are you for or against mass surveillance veiled as “child safety”?
Should be pretty evident from the comment.
I can’t help but see their comment as a joke. One can only hope
After what happened in Nepal last year, this 100% tracks with the dystopian narrative we are currently living. The powers that be saw a small country use it as a tool to affect change. To me, and tell me if I lm jumping to conclusions here, its obvious as to why this policy change is happening at all, to prevent the site from being used in that manner again.
What happened in Nepal and prevent what manner being used?
The youth used discord to coordinate an overthrow of the government, and used it to organise a vote for who to replace the leader with.
this is not at all what i’m seeing on discord, and I think it’s worthy of note that the article’s sample is Reddit posts in r/discordapp. Discord users who use Reddit in general have a systemic bias that’s close to ours, as opposed to the majority that is young Discord users.
Also could guess how many people have already uploaded pictures to their servers.
So anyone who knows some good altenatives that are either FOSS or EU based?
This entire problem is because of the EU… So finding something EU based isn’t a valid solution.
I heard sharkord allows for self-host. It’s super early in development, but it’s browser based for now, and I think if more people get on board and improve it, it’d be a pretty good alternative.
I found this little substack article that lists out alternatives. The timing is is great & I hope it helps people out.
At what point are we going to take responsibility and take action collectively to punish these mainstream platforms ?
Keeping it real
Also this https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/ which is much more detailed and focuses on decentralised discord-like apps
