Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discord Alternatives, Ranked

taggart-tech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 489 posts

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#231

Post by obsidianbases1 »

monooso wrote: post #207

I'm a little surprised nobody has mentioned Campfire [1]. It's open source, trivial to self-host, and can support an arbitrary number of rooms and users. Sure, it doesn't have all of Discord's bells and whistles (for better or worse), but then neither do some of the alternatives mentioned in the article. [1]: https://once.com/campfire

I've been running a campfire chat with a few hundred users for a couple of years now. It's one of my favorite pieces of software simply because I don't spend any time thinking about it.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#232

Post by 71bw »

haunter wrote: post #104

Discord became popular because it was free group/team voice chat. Mumble, Ventrilo, Teamspeak all needed servers/clients, paid hosting etc. Discord is text chat (with history) + voice chat in one place. If you want an alternative it needs to do this both first and foremost. People saying IRC are trolling or never used Discord.

And video calls + screen sharing.

No alternative platform does this.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#233

Post by doublerabbit »

monooso wrote: post #207

I'm a little surprised nobody has mentioned Campfire [1]. It's open source, trivial to self-host, and can support an arbitrary number of rooms and users. Sure, it doesn't have all of Discord's bells and whistles (for better or worse), but then neither do some of the alternatives mentioned in the article. [1]: https://once.com/campfire

This is cool. Thanks for the shout.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#234

Post by ses1984 »

dizhn wrote: post #145
direwolf20 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp sends a copy of all your messages to ICE. Signal doesn't.

Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_o...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/nsa-staff-used-spy-...

Millennials and older generations witnessed this happening bit by bit, some of us tried to fight it, but ultimately it’s everywhere now, and apparently it’s been so ubiquitous for so long that people aren’t even aware of it anymore.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#237

Post by cheeseomlit »

popcar2 wrote: post #222

I was considering making a similar list since I was very interested in checking out alternative chat programs, but I have to say this list isn't that good. A lot of the alternatives here aren't ACTUALLY Discord alternatives. Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people, follow news, talk in forums, etc... It also has a lot of features people hand-wai…

>Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people

Do they? Personally I've never willingly joined one of those massive servers, only when forced to by some projects that refuse to host their content anywhere else- and its always a terrible experience. 99% of my discord usage is just a group chat with my IRL friends, so when looking for alternative I dont really care about roles and moderation and bots at all. I just want a group text chat, a mobile client for it with notifications, and drop-in/drop-out voice calls

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#238

Post by saghm »

edhelas wrote: post #166
cookiengineer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is about why clients like AstraChat can be listed with "Advanced" in the overview, but then in the details page it has nothing. See https://xmpp.org/software/astrachat-xmpp-client/ This should not be allowed.

Because the declaration file of the clients says that it is actually compatible with everything in this section. You can't run scripts on all the XEPs declared, some of them are purely redaction or bound to specific UI/UX behaviors. This is based on trust that the developers actually implemented things as stated.

Not being able to automate something is not the same as not being able to verify at all. It sounds like the parent commenter is arguing that at least some of the clients listed are not worthy of this trust because (either intentionally or due to developer error) they don't actually hold up to scrutiny. Obviously they're just one person and their opinion might not be representative but it's hard to argue that if some random user is expected to have enough time to try out various clients and figure out which ones work or don't that the official people in charge of making the recommendations of clients should probably be able to find the time to as well even if it's just a volunteer that they, well, you know...trust.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#239

Post by lukan »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #155
aaravchen wrote: post #16

Ironically, Signal actually ranks a -1 for privacy in this use. Presumably you're already using Signal and getting mainstream contacts to start using it too. You probably have a basic profile that at least includes your real name, and might also have your picture. Maybe you're even one of the 7 people in the world that use the Stories feature in it. Well good news, now all of that is also unconditionally available to…

I dislike Signal as I need to identify myself through info that is protected. Like a phone number for example. Not a privacy app in my opinion. Sure, might be good for some use cases... but overall there are better solutions.

"but overall there are better solutions."

Can you please name some?

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#240

Post by su-m4tt »

71bw wrote: post #232
haunter wrote: post #104

Discord became popular because it was free group/team voice chat. Mumble, Ventrilo, Teamspeak all needed servers/clients, paid hosting etc. Discord is text chat (with history) + voice chat in one place. If you want an alternative it needs to do this both first and foremost. People saying IRC are trolling or never used Discord.

And video calls + screen sharing. No alternative platform does this.

Teamspeak6 does have screen sharing.

I've been using it with my group of friends for a about a month now. Its quite solid in my opinion, uses a peer to peer system with an option to host a central server for video.

Post reply on HN