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

Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

revolt.chat

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 562 posts

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#221

Post by Nullabillity »

mportela wrote: post #150
Dracophoenix wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The secret is how did they get popular with young kids? Well they offered a free service obviously, just like Google, just like Facebook. In 2015, when they first got started, they marketed towards gamers (i.e. boys and men in their teens and early 20's). Even though the company's tagline at the time was that it offered a better Skype, Discord was more inclined to be a better replacement for a moribund Xfire and an…

Curse was becoming more popular than TS at the time, but Discord offered a better quality of audio and stable connection. That's why my group of friends migrated to Discord around 2016.

TeamSpeak was usually the default option at the time (with some on Mumble). Skype had some presence, but was usually grumbled about beyond 1:1 calls. RaidCall was starting to gain some presence because it was free but otherwise followed TeamSpeak's UX, but was still pretty niche.

Curse Voice was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#222

Post by fullstop »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #119
INTPenis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest selling point is clearly the community. Without the community revolt.chat is just another Mattermost or Matrix. Discord is popular for one reason and one reason only, all the young people are there. The secret is how did they get popular with young kids? Well they offered a free service obviously, just like Google, just like Facebook. I've been trying to explain this to a friend recently. You're o…

> The secret is how did they get popular with young kids? Well they offered a free service obviously, just like Google, just like Facebook. In 2015, when they first got started, they marketed towards gamers (i.e. boys and men in their teens and early 20's). Even though the company's tagline at the time was that it offered a better Skype, Discord was more inclined to be a better replacement for a moribund Xfire and an…

They also have ties to Universities with their student hubs. This part is great if you're a student, as you can find clubs and people with similar interests. There is immense power in what an older sibling does, and soon the younger siblings are using it to chat with them. They can chat with their friends from any mobile device or a desktop without the dreaded green bubble or restrictions of SMS / iMessage. In groups, they can hide their identity.

It gives the server "owners" the ability to enforce rules, ban those who are disruptive, and has an impressive bot API. I can see why it is immensely popular.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#224

Post by doctorhandshake »

sph wrote: post #172
smittywerben wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been in a Discord server and thought "Wow this server doesn't do the moderator LARP-ing thing".

My dream is to be invited into a mildly popular server (more than 15 users), than doesn't have 50 channels, 8 separate roles and T&C to agree to. It hasn't happened yet. An entire generation of bureaucrats and bean counters is learning the ropes on Discord.

I started and mod a server of about 6k users for a community around a niche software used by professionals, students, and hobbyists. We keep it really simple and focused primarily on people getting questions answered. Recently a small but vocal cadre of hobbyists have been demanding more Discord-y features oriented towards socializing with other users of the software, and our reticence to complicate the server and add features just because Discord offers them has been a point of contention. They seem to think we mods don’t understand Discord. We are having trouble getting them to understand that we are aware of what other servers are like and that we’re deliberately choosing not go that route.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#225

Post by moiz41510 »

diggan wrote: post #50
RobotToaster wrote: post #36

The self hosting instructions aren't that friendly imo.

The backend seems to be a fairly standard Rust project, you basically run `cargo build --release` and then deploy the binary. For the frontend, it seems like a pretty standard frontend project, you install dependencies, then run build command and you have a bunch of website assets you deploy to your server. Overall, seems pretty standard and easy to deploy. Most complicated would be to also run the various services t…

I think it's pointless to selfhost if you have to recompile an app in order to connect to your server. The team should have a field box to add a server URL.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#226

Post by surajrmal »

1oooqooq wrote: post #203
Mashimo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest selling point of Discord is its insane network effects. Ease of use is also up there. (Compared to IRC)

that's like selling email with gpg as easy to use compared with newgroup. anything win when compared to the ultimate underdog. but that's hardly a valid comparisons. discord only win from other opensource forums because you don't have to own a domain, i guess.

Like reddit or Facebook groups? Discord being realtime chat is an important part as well. I don't think it was necessarily competing with traditional forums that are post and thread based.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#227

Post by Mashimo »

Brybry wrote: post #180
short_sells_poo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me preface this by saying I use Discord daily to keep in touch with friends. It's a great digital campfire where you can relax with people, talk with them over voice and video or just post random stuff. The issue is that Discord has replaced things which it shouldn't have, the internet forums. Discord is the epitome of a golden cage. It is a prison for information, a black hole. I'm not even talking about the abs…

Even IRC was better for data archiving and searching. We usually had local logs we could grep and web-indexed/searchable logs from bots. It's really insane how much information is on Discord that is both impossible to discover and will silently disappear at some point.

> We usually had local logs we could grep and web-indexed/searchable logs from bots.

But only IF you are good at regex.

On discord you can easily filter by date or date range, if it has media, if it contains an URL or what user/roll got mentioned.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#229

Post by Mashimo »

1oooqooq wrote: post #203
Mashimo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest selling point of Discord is its insane network effects. Ease of use is also up there. (Compared to IRC)

that's like selling email with gpg as easy to use compared with newgroup. anything win when compared to the ultimate underdog. but that's hardly a valid comparisons. discord only win from other opensource forums because you don't have to own a domain, i guess.

I mostly use Discord for real time chat. And around that time Discord got big it was IRC that filled that roll. Or skype for some.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#230

Post by dingnuts »

Mashimo wrote: post #149
bsenftner wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Group mentality that picks and chooses who is "cool" and then bullies everyone else.

But I assume that is because of the people on that specific server, not because of the software? Or is there something about discord that enables it, that IRC etc. does not have? I hang out with friends that predate discord, on discord and can't see it. Same with new servers.

happens on irc constantly too

chat rooms are cliques, almost always

choose any sufficiently populated room on libera chat, join, and start talking a lot without lurking first for awhile and see how the inhabitants react

Post reply on HN