341–350 of 489 posts
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
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More friction!
Is it really though? The average user doesn't need to know about all other clients, how it all works, etc. They just "open this website, register, and you're in!" It's not like the registration process necessarily involves typing in the server IP and port number, picking and setting up an advanced TUI client or something else.
The Lounge is open website, type name, you're in. Matrix definitely is not.
I know I'm in the small minority of Discord users who mostly uses it as a voice chat room while gaming with my friends, but for that use case the best alternative I've found seems to be Mumble. I recently set up a Mumble server on my home server and it seems great so far, was able to get my friends connected pretty easily. We'll see how the voice quality and latency compare to Discord.
> small minority Huh. I’d have said majority. It was always my impression that a) gamers make up the vast majority of discord users (with all their gamification and gaming features), and b) that gamers mainly care about voice chat (which is what people almost always talk about when it comes to discord and gaming).
Myself, though, I basically only use it to talk to the same guys I've been gaming with since we met in middle school 20-some years ago, and for that Mumble seems perfect.
I like this page about how a paid forum is the best alternative to a free chat app. Trying to imagine saying “if you don’t like the whole ICQ numbers thing just buy a vBulletin license” in 2002
[1] https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-discourse-still-free-to-self...
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You can have multiple instances of signal on a mobile device, and you can use VoiP or eSIMs to register. Signal with an online persona revealing no identifying information, registered to a cash purchased eSIM on an ungoogled android is as good as your getting. Why do you think so many jurisdictions are trying to ban both GrapheneOS and Signal.
In europe you need identification to buy a sim or esim. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9ziqfi/european_cou...
Don't forget Flotilla Social! TeamSpeak also has a newer client, but its design decisions are a little odd. Still worth checking out though.
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They have >200 million DAUs and guesses say they have >10K servers with >10K users. Assumptions from a tech crowd who were used to IRC should be taken with a grain of salt. Now if we're just looking for alternatives for ourselves, cool. But I think the reality is that most normal users do fully lean into the social aspects of Discord. A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that disc…
I'm just questioning the 'most users' aspect- just anecdotally among my 'normal' peers those big servers dont seem like the most common use case. For every big million-user server there could be a million private 10-user servers
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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,…