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Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

revolt.chat

271–280 of 562 posts

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#271

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.

> The biggest selling point of Discord is its insane network effects True. As it also hits a local minimum in terms of user experience (to the point that the average user does not care), I don't think it is possible to make a new centralized (even self-hosted) alternative on technical merits alone, since you necessarily incur a cost in the form of signing up to every server. The only hope is a decentralized alternati…

Cinny exists as a discord-like client, thing is, Matrix is mostly the text chat part, it doesn't implement voice chats or anything. Also, the space/room system works differently to discord server/channel

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#273
post #195

Is it built on Matrix? I used Riot (now Element) back in the day, but like others have said in this thread, without a network effect these things don't really take off. I haven't heard of anyone using Element for years now.

I have over a dozen people I regularly talk to on Matrix, though I prefer to not use browser/electron apps, so I only use Element on my phone (separate codebase from other Element), and Nheko on my PC. FluffyChat on Android also seems decent and recently added multi-account support.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#274

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 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…

Yeah, it is the chat program treadmill. Spend investor money to host a completely commoditized program. Of course it is better than the version that costs money by virtue of being free. Eventually run out of investor money and do something unpopular to raise revenue, leaving the opportunity for the next iteration to come in for free and take your spot.

The only thing I don’t really understand is why investors keep falling for this? The only real business model is giving their money away. Maybe they get some good ad network profile data in the time between the heel turn and the point where everybody ditches the service.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#276
post #184

Seeing as this is closely related to [1], which I also commented on, and in the hopes that someone finds this useful regarding Discord's ownership of your data (where your messages remain even if you delete your account): If you'd like to delete your Discord messages en masse, I made an open-source tool for that [2]. It leverages a fairly undocumented process using your Discord data package, providing a UI to explore…

[deleted]

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users are worryingly hostile to developers.

If you've been on a game dev discord, it's usually the opposite.

Not in my experience, either on Discord or any other platform where devs interact with users. Most users are polite enough, but many are toxic as hell; whereas most devs are maybe, at best, brusque - but you would be too if you had to constantly point users to the FAQ or answer the same obvious questions that Google can answer in 5 seconds.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users are worryingly hostile to developers.

If you've been on a game dev discord, it's usually the opposite.

I'm sorry, I didn't understand, are you claiming that gamers (perhaps one of the most notoriously toxic communities) are not hostile towards game developers?

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#279

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...

[deleted]

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#280

What do people find upsetting about Discord? It's free, there's no ads, it's reliable, it has many established communities, it's cross-platform and even works in the browser, supports voice chat and screen sharing. What more could you ask for? Or, are you asking for too much? What I mean is: What innovative functionality is missing to such a degree, that if it was introduces, would make people abandon Discord?

There are ads in discord now. They just call them Quests and the notifications for them can't be turned off.
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