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Discord Alternatives, Ranked
351–360 of 489 posts
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#352Best for: anything but real-time chat, really.
Maybe the best way to think of Discourse is as an anti-Discord. It's everything Discord isn't: asynchronous, open source, and self-hostable.
Then why is it the highest rated "Discord alternative"?
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#353I 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 benefit of one big app is a consistent identity. Seeing that an account was created years ago, and how long it's been a member of the current server, helps identify spam and scams. When a user you're familiar with provides a link to another Discord server, its more trustworthy.
Discord has also done a good job protecting identity; better than DNS has :) I use lots of other apps with "real" identity, Discord is good for centralizing non-work, non-family activity.
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#354I 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…
You can use as many different apps for yourself but good luck sustaining a community/team/org that requires learning 5 apps for participation, especially when not all users are savvy.
In order to sustain an ecosystem instead of mega-app, that ecosystem needs to be really smoothly integrated, and I know of no good examples of this
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#355I'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
The owner's terrible reputation, no mystery here.
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can with dino. I wish I had the time to work on getting A/V calls back in gajim. It could be worth asking an NLNet grant for that… https://dino.im/
Yes it works but it lacks QOL features like automatic compression of videos or images when sending attachments. A bit too barebones.
Why would you want to automatically degrade the quality?
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#357IRC is the only alternative that runs on random potatos and survives lawfare.
IRC can do voice, screen sharing etc.?
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Most people use Discord for its community features and being able to join massive servers with 1+ million people Do they? Personally I've never willingly joined one of those massive servers, only when forced to by some projects that refuse to host their content anywhere else- and its always a terrible experience. 99% of my discord usage is just a group chat with my IRL friends, so when looking for alternative I dont…
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…
> A server like Marvel Rivals has literally millions of users. Players join that discord to socialize with all of those players and build a community around the game.
Going back to something you said earlier:
> Rocket chat is a Slack alternative for people wanting to host a server for a community. It's not a platform, you need to register and login to each server manually.
So the primary thing is that there is no SSO for each server? No centralized auth system? Because everyone I know that uses discord 'found' the discord via some official means of those million person discord's like the official Marvel Rivals one. If the only purpose of the centralized system is not requiring a new login for every server, then a centralized auth system could be implemented by relying on people's other social media accounts. Login with Google/Facebook/Apple etc.
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#359I'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
"After you checkout, we’ll email you a private download link that includes everything you need."
Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but I haven't found any good decentralized options for almost anything that don't have enough friction to scare the average user away. I'm talking about decentralized options that are actually decentralized, not "potentially decentralized in theory but no one uses them in a decentralized way". I do see a future where we crack the code to a smooth flow that does allow for decentralized networks, but it does suck…
Email is decentralized is it not? It's pretty frictionless to create a new email address with whichever provider. You can have as many as you want. Some are free, others you pay for. You can even run your own email server (if you want to deal with the pain that entails). I think we're so used to email we forget how well it works.
Actually great point. It's been a bit ruined by spam detection and trust, but definitely still a good decentralized option.
> I think we're so used to email we forget how well it works.
You're right and that's quite a testament to it.