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Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

revolt.chat

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Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#381

Post by korse »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #371
korse wrote: post #362

The problem with Discord is that it doesn't allow for servers in the same way a protocol like IRC does. Some commenters have alluded to this. From a quick glance, revolt.chat doesn't allow for server creation either. Am I mistaken or is this pretty much a joke (Discord replacement with the only real benefit being a 'trust us bro, we're European' sort of promise to not do bad things)?

What you classify as a problem is exactly why Discord was a smashing success.

Financial success, undoubtedly. Successful at distancing users from the systems that underpin their interactions, certainly. As far as granting users more agency over their digital existence, it has been an abject failure, a state consistently exacerbated by the number of tech communities that could easily exist on IRC or a custom platform.

It really hurts when a con is so solid that even the 'enlightened' are ensnared.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#382

Post by TulliusCicero »

korse wrote: post #381
TulliusCicero wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you classify as a problem is exactly why Discord was a smashing success.

Financial success, undoubtedly. Successful at distancing users from the systems that underpin their interactions, certainly. As far as granting users more agency over their digital existence, it has been an abject failure, a state consistently exacerbated by the number of tech communities that could easily exist on IRC or a custom platform. It really hurts when a con is so solid that even the 'enlightened' are ensnar…

A success in terms of popularity, in terms of creating something that regular users enjoy and find value in using.

> It really hurts when a con is so solid that even the 'enlightened' are ensnared.

It's exactly this sort of sneering attitude that so often causes FOSS projects to fail to catch on in the mainstream.

The framing isn't "people like this feature set", it's "people got conned". For a certain type of user, they must see others' preferences as beneath them, as lesser.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#383

Post by viccis »

metalliqaz wrote: post #353
killerteddybear wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from being very early on the train for Discord, it also had an extremely solid userbase right from the start because much of the early pre-marketing pull into it was for raid groups in the then-new Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. People really needed a chat client to coordinate a big number of players and it was totally free, functional, and new on the scene. It spread a ton in the community and the peopl…

Teamspeak and others were so well entrenched at the time. Wouldn't players of WoW, CS, etc. have brought those tools to FFXIV? What made that special?

Its killer feature was how frictionless it was to adopt initially. If I sent you a Discord link, back then you could just click it and be going in under a minute.

Same reason Zoom quickly took over video chat. It was so easy to use that you didn't have to convince your friends to sign up for it, you just sent them a link and it just worked.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#384

Post by stackskipton »

elif wrote: post #320
elif wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest flaw of Discord is the federated nature and how disconnected each discord is from any others. As a casual game enjoyer, I found myself somehow juggling over 50 discords in ca 2021, each with their own server rules and conventions for how to use @all tags, alerting thresholds, etc. It's too much burden on the user to manage the incoming information and resulted in a kind of anxiety about reading red marked…

There's also the shady components of discord. All manner of illegal activity thrives behind custom access control. The most notable instance in media is the leaking of classified materials, the creation of swatting/ddos communities which gave us the 'BigBalls' hacker employed by doge, But more sickeneningly recently it allowed this doctor to successfully target countless children, including convincing a 13 year old g…

I don't think Discord has anymore shady activities than any other large scale social media platform. When I helped moderate a very large server, we had access to Discord Trust and Safety team and they were trying against what is a massive flood. Automated moderation is extremely difficult even with all AI tools unless you 100% block any NSFW content and sexual messaging and even then, you will get false positives.

I do find it interesting that we hold these platforms liable but not the phone/pager/mail service. If this doctor had called this girl on her cell phone, no one would be mad at Verizon.

Part of the problem is most parents have no clue about social media/communication tools outside what they use. At my church, I gave presentation about Discord and it was shocking to see how clueless parents were.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#385

Post by elictronic »

metalliqaz wrote: post #353
killerteddybear wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from being very early on the train for Discord, it also had an extremely solid userbase right from the start because much of the early pre-marketing pull into it was for raid groups in the then-new Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. People really needed a chat client to coordinate a big number of players and it was totally free, functional, and new on the scene. It spread a ton in the community and the peopl…

Teamspeak and others were so well entrenched at the time. Wouldn't players of WoW, CS, etc. have brought those tools to FFXIV? What made that special?

Every action had more friction and the ability to post images was game changing.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#386

Post by ZeWaka »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #378
metalliqaz wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teamspeak and others were so well entrenched at the time. Wouldn't players of WoW, CS, etc. have brought those tools to FFXIV? What made that special?

Discord's killer feature for my money has always been that ever user in a call gets a slider bar (and mute button) to control the volume they hear ever other individual user in the call Zoom, in 2025, still makes you wait for the host to figure out which of the 30 other people has a dog incessantly barking or is causing the echo or has horrible feedback, and then try to talk them through fixing it before finally muti…

We had that in Teamspeak/mumble/vent, but the chat functionality on those platforms were definitely an afterthought. Not a place you'd cultivate a community.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#387

Post by ZeWaka »

squigz wrote: post #295
kevinsync wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t spend much time on Discord servers (mostly just use it for DM with specific people) but certainly spent a lot of time on IRC in the 90s / early 00s; are channel bots not a thing? Especially now with LLM APIs and all that, you’d imagine a lot of the FAQ-level questioning would have automated answers in busy project-based servers

Bots are still a thing, certainly, but much like in IRC, they're still usually triggered by devs (of course some users will use them, but then, those aren't the users who need to be pointed to the FAQ) There's also stuff like server intro guides and onboarding steps that should deal with most of the low-hanging questions... Should, but don't always :P As for use of LLMs... probably an interesting use-case, but I'm no…

Yeah, people never read channel topics so we're forced to use commands & embeds for common things

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#388

Post by squigz »

ZeWaka wrote: post #387
squigz wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bots are still a thing, certainly, but much like in IRC, they're still usually triggered by devs (of course some users will use them, but then, those aren't the users who need to be pointed to the FAQ) There's also stuff like server intro guides and onboarding steps that should deal with most of the low-hanging questions... Should, but don't always :P As for use of LLMs... probably an interesting use-case, but I'm no…

Yeah, people never read channel topics so we're forced to use commands & embeds for common things

Okay but I don't blame users for that particular failing - topics are not easily discoverable. They should be shown above the input bar the first time a user visits a channel or until they dismiss it or something.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#389

Post by rikroots »

Legion wrote: post #352

Pushing what used to occur on web forums into Discord chats has been a net loss for the Internet.

I started a Discord 'server' for my JS Canvas library thing a couple of years ago because - apparently - it was a "good way to build a community". Not only have I failed to build a community, I've grown to hate its UI and confusion of channels.

I think Discord is overkill for my requirements. But I still want a (free) venue (which is not GitHub) where people can ask questions and - maybe, just maybe - form a community around the library. I keep staring at PhpBB ... but it feels too oldskool, so: nope.

I am beginning to like the idea of a self-hosted Discourse[1] thing; there seems to be a fair number of active tech-related communities... maybe if I have some time over Easter I'll investigate further.

[1] https://discover.discourse.org/

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#390

Post by mystified5016 »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #377
Legion wrote: post #352

Pushing what used to occur on web forums into Discord chats has been a net loss for the Internet.

"Push" is the right word, because moderating web forums was always a labor of love, and automated trolling/spamming has only gotten easier and more prevalent, not to mention anti-mod culture. It's just too hard to moderate a space with so little friction, and any friction you add chases away all but the most dedicated users -- and the most dedicated users are often the ones more likely to get entangled in some insane…

No. A readme on GitHub that only says "documentation on discord" is an active push by the developers to contain everything within discord.
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