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Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

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Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#241

Post by [deleted] »

agumonkey wrote: post #83
lordofgibbons wrote: post #47

The biggest selling point of Discord is its insane network effects. There are servers for libraries/frameworks, languages, ai/ml, math, whatever you can think of. And a lot of the adjacent ones will cross-link scheduled events and messages from other servers. I'm really hoping for an alternative. I'm always weary of en-shitification whenever a single platform wins all the users.. like what has happened to Reddit.

I thought the main value of discord was quick and solid voice / game stream integration. I rarely feel any connection between servers, but that might just be me.

[deleted]

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#243

Post by rychco »

_mitterpach wrote: post #31

Note that there have been rumours about Discord preparing to go public, I reckon this might be made in preparation for it. I think it is a wise move to offer an alternative. The design is very similar to Discord, could this possibly even go to a copyright breach or is the bar for that set too high?

> Note that there have been rumours about Discord preparing to go public

That’s disappointing, but even now it’s hard to imagine they’re particularly profitable. The core functionality of Discord is entirely free and I doubt that Nitro / other paid features earn that much.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#244

Post by TZubiri »

Mashimo wrote: post #124
TZubiri wrote: post #58

Reminder that discord is an app for kids. Is your open source code and volunteer run project going to keep kids safe? Is it an advantage that the comms protocols are open and everyone can build bots? Or a disadvantage for this usecase? Also, how is it an alternative for Discord if it's in a whole different jurisdiction?

> Reminder that discord is an app for kids. Why is that?

Because it's a video game accesory.

They market to kids, and have kid safety features.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#245

Post by TZubiri »

Lanolderen wrote: post #171
TZubiri wrote: post #58

Reminder that discord is an app for kids. Is your open source code and volunteer run project going to keep kids safe? Is it an advantage that the comms protocols are open and everyone can build bots? Or a disadvantage for this usecase? Also, how is it an alternative for Discord if it's in a whole different jurisdiction?

Not sure about that one. There's a ton of minor edating/esex/grooming going on. You have massive community servers that essentially work like gaiaonline back in the day and tons of servers of 18+ communities. Horny, curious kids will always find a way so I can't blame Discord for not having a magic wand but I would be monitoring its usage if I were a parent. Only 1 of the servers I'm in is what I'd consider kid safe…

Yeah I get that it would have problems. But I'm saying that being a closed source product with staff is what allows it to fight against that.

Foss on the other hand just clones an app offers a download and calls it a day, "self host", sometimes they encrypt stuff so that not even devs or admins can see the content, they would think of this as respecting privacy, but then when they get a subpoena for a sex offender case, they can't turn up anything.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#246

Post by Brybry »

Mashimo wrote: post #227
Brybry wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only if it's in the discord search index, which sometimes doesn't include all history, and it does some fuzzy elasticsearch query that works ok for most cases and awful for anything that isn't most cases.

The metadata filters are nice but they're also what keep it usable at all.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#247

Post by short_sells_poo »

Mashimo wrote: post #227
Brybry wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Discord search still sucks a lot because by nature discussions are largely unstructured. It's not really suitable for discussing specific topics - only perhaps types of topics. Discord threads could ostensibly fulfil the forum topic role, but their implementations is so utterly incompetent that it is genuinely puzzling. You can't search specific Discord threads, they often disappear from the left hand nav bar even if you subscribed to the thread. Whoever implemented the Threads in Discord should be kept away from computer systems because they are a danger to any application.

But even if Discord search was good, it still doesn't matter because it is not only a walled garden, it is a hermetically sealed chamber from which no information can escape.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#249

Post by bbno4 »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #103
croisillon wrote: post #13

haha i had to laugh at the language selectors: {flag:uk} English (traditional) {flag:us} English (simplified)

Since US English retains more historical features of English and has fewer of the newer ones (especially in light of Received Pronunciation, rhoticity, and random u insertion), one could argue that US English is the more traditional one. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-p...

The article you linked says it's a myth.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#250

Post by LorenDB »

Qdulf wrote: post #168
jorvi wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than open or closed source programs, let's have interoperability. Then everyone can choose. I believe Facebook was aiming for something like that with Threads, and was playing to have WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger be open to a specific standard as well? I fondly remember the days of Pidgin and Adium..

The push for messenger interoperability is a reaction to the EUs Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires certain gatekeeper services to allow interoperability with smaller platforms. Threads is working on implementing ActivityPub for interoperability with other platforms that already use it. ActivityPub is an open standard for implementing the Fediverse, a group of federated social platforms heavily based in the op…

Nope, Matrix has been pushing interop for years (since the late teens).
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