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Discord Alternatives, Ranked

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Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#301

Post by unethical_ban »

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…

Nothing open source and self hostable will be a "platform" then. Being dependent on a central platform/identity server is the way they control you and increase the friction of leaving.

I think the client side could still be a "platform" like pidgin, allowing login and simultaneous participatiin in multiple servers, without needing to be fully centralized.

What disappoints me about this list is the lack of consideration for video calls and screenshare.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#302

Post by MarsIronPI »

Moomoomoo309 wrote: post #262

I'm quite surprised to not see teamspeak 6 on here. From what I've seen, it has all the features discord has now, including screen sharing, video calls, channels like discord, and it's also designed for gamers. It's been mentioned in some replies, but not any top-level comments yet. Is TS6 missing some discord features? (maybe calendar events, and their bot ecosystem is a lot smaller)

For me, any alternative isn't really appealing unless it's FOSS.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#303

Post by benrutter »

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.

> People saying IRC are trolling or never used Discord.

I think it's probably that Discord has such a range of use cases.

I only ever use Discord for open source projects that have communities there. Discord supports a whole load of stuff around voice chat etc, but I've genuinely never used it.

Open source projects I've seen mainly just use it as a text chat, so they could in theory switch to something else with only a tiny fraction of the features.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#304

Post by alfnor »

opan wrote: post #250
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…

This may be a good time to consider whether one program should really be handling all those things, or if it's putting too many eggs in one basket and asking too much of any one program. Discord seems comparable to a Chinese superapp, made to trap its users and become an irreplaceable part of their everyday lives. I think I understand it's hard to give up some of these features once you're used to them, but it seems…

The private servers I'm in always have a few people screen sharing whenever a voice chat is active. They're either sharing their gameplay (semi-privately, hence no Twitch) or they're co-watching movies. Oh and every so often, screen sharing is used for getting someone's opinion on image editing or a song in they're making. I've also given people remote tech support which is way easier to do when their screen is visible.

But it's worth noting that as an older Gen Z, this is just how people hang out nowadays, so we'll be watching anime together in the server until we fall asleep or whatever. That's why screen sharing isn't as useful as screenshots and video clips.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#305

Post by hnlmorg »

opan wrote: post #259
hnlmorg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the reason for Discords initial success, and the literal only reason I have it installed, is for voice chat when playing certain online games. I love IRC, I even wrote my own IRC client in the 90s, but it’s clearly not going to be suitable for gaming in this context.

IRC for main chat, Mumble for voice chat when gaming. Been solid for decades. I have at least 3 functional Mumble servers saved (including my own) in my client, most of them are associated with an IRC community. I occasionally hear "Anyone down for some Quake? Hop on Mumble." or something to that effect. Mumble is pretty easy to host, so if you're using it with a small to medium group of friends, I'd say just throw u…

Not all gamers are techies though.

Some of my gaming buddies on Discord needed help getting that properly working. Asking them to set up and use both IRC and Mumble would be a step too far.

This is a common trap HN falls into. Stuff that’s easy and practical for people of our capabilities can be a nightmarish hellscape for other people.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#307

Post by asattarmd »

Moomoomoo309 wrote: post #262

I'm quite surprised to not see teamspeak 6 on here. From what I've seen, it has all the features discord has now, including screen sharing, video calls, channels like discord, and it's also designed for gamers. It's been mentioned in some replies, but not any top-level comments yet. Is TS6 missing some discord features? (maybe calendar events, and their bot ecosystem is a lot smaller)

This entire list is Slack alternatives, not Discord alternatives. Discord is first-and-foremost a gaming voice chat platform. Teamspeak is the OG in that space and should've been the top of this list.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#308

Post by lanfeust6 »

outime wrote: post #135
pmdr wrote: post #96

Email + IRC (there are daemons that support chat history). Bouncers exist. Logging. This should be standard for OSS projects, not some private, unsearchable, data-mining platform. This is what happens when we reach for convenience over openness.

As someone who spent countless hours on IRC when I was younger and enjoyed 99% of it to the fullest... I'd kindly suggest refraining from pushing IRC any further. It has had its run, and while I know it still exists, it's nowhere near what it once was and it's not coming back. Times have changed and people have different expectations. Nobody (except very few) is going to use multiple services and set up a bouncer jus…

The corollary to times changing is that periodically what's old is new again. We can't have our cake and eat it too; if the gripe is that for-profit services become enshittified, then necessarily FOSS should be given a shot, but adding to that I'd say some of these platforms re-invent the wheel or add a coat of paint. What you can do with Discord you can already accomplish with a mix of IRC, vbulletin forums, email, Mastodon, and and others in decoupled fashion.

I take the point that a one-stop-shop is nice and probably viable leveraging this tech. At the same time, users already use a slew of different social media platforms that are usually redundant or overlap in some way. For most their mode of consumption is "the algorithm", endless feed of videos. Discord's core offering is not that, it's an orchestration of chat, video-chat, forums, notifications. It's a swiss-army knife.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#309

Post by mgaunard »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #230
mgaunard wrote: post #187

why not just IRC?

A lot of people here don't understand Discord was born as an alternative to Teamspeak, Mumble and Ventrilo, which main purpose is voicechat rooms while playing video games. They were difficult to maintain since you had to install your own servers. Discord swept with them with the ease of setup and generous free tiers. If you don't use it with that purpose, there's tons of alternatives.

In most discord groups I see voice is just this weird feature no one uses.

Even when people insist on organizing a telecon they usually use zoom, teams, or google meet instead.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#310

Post by Anonyneko »

tpxl wrote: post #213
igotdiscord2015 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the true killer feature for discord back in the day was something much dumber, but still heavily related to on-boarding and community transference. You could join a discord server with a single link. Account creation could come later. Considering the competition at its heyday was Teamspeak or Skype, the mere fact you could just actually see the hell you were getting into without some stupid ass "Hol' Up!" i…

Account creation is the first thing you gotta do when trying to join a server complete with a silly captcha. At least on the server I just tried.

IIRC, admins of a server can configure it to require different levels of authentication, from anonymous all the way to requiring a verified phone number (the latter of which I have so far refused to join).
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