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Discord Alternatives, Ranked

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Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#411

Post by aaravchen »

a3w wrote: post #244
raxxorraxor wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike Signal as I need to identify myself through info that is protected. Like a phone number for example. Not a privacy app in my opinion. Sure, might be good for some use cases... but overall there are better solutions.

Completely not my experience: I have lots of Signal contacts I cannot phone, since the phone number is never shared by default. Not even the signal contact is shareable. It is way too privacy focused to work easily. i.e. I cannot even match two people I have in contacts unless one of them sends me their hidden username. Then they can talk to one another. And people in my contacts don't use their full name. In groups,…

I, and all of my contacts, have the default setting for this which makes me discoverable on Signal by phone number look up, but I have phone number sharing disabled. That's the default settings. I've had no issues at all with discovery.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#412

Post by aaravchen »

cykros wrote: post #180
raxxorraxor wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike Signal as I need to identify myself through info that is protected. Like a phone number for example. Not a privacy app in my opinion. Sure, might be good for some use cases... but overall there are better solutions.

Keep an eye on Whitenoise. It's basically taken the technology behind Signal and placed it atop Nostr, so rather than signing up with a phone number, you do it with an npub (pubkey). Still in very early days so the features aren't all there yet, and battery use could be better, but they've got the basics of it working already.

SimpleX is another option. These don't have discoverability for lay people users just joining though, which is actually a huge network effect positive for Signal in the family and friends use cases. However it avoids the issues with the public group chat privacy. It ends up coming down to client and protocol features for those. SimpleX has a more extreme privacy threat model than Whitenoise so user contacts tend to be throw away (for good or bad), which generally doesn't work for public communities.

The real kicker is that almost nothing has the community automation tools and administration of Discord which is the really hard lift.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#413

Post by aaravchen »

palata wrote: post #69
aaravchen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been brought up on HN before, and people smarter than me identified that this view is about 10 years out of date. Yes it's a bunch of XEPs, but there are standardized "sets" apparently that include all of the things any other similar tools do. It sounds like only very niche old/minimal XMPP clients don't support encryption by default for example, and virtually all servers have supported it for many years.

> Yes it's a bunch of XEPs, but there are standardized "sets" apparently If the answer to "it's confusing" is "there are apparently standardised sets", it sounds like it is, indeed, confusing :-).

I don't disagree, but whether you're even aware of the XEPs and how it's presented to the user, is a critical factor in viewing it as "confusing". Gaim for example only even tells you about XEPs if you dig into the server settings, and then it shows a very good job of listing all XEPs from either the server or client and noting which are supported by each in a table if you're far enough down the rabbithole that this info is useful. But for a regular user they just log in and it Just Works (tm).

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#414

Post by aaravchen »

Groxx wrote: post #397
palata wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes it's a bunch of XEPs, but there are standardized "sets" apparently If the answer to "it's confusing" is "there are apparently standardised sets", it sounds like it is, indeed, confusing :-).

It's overwhelmingly more of an outsider talking point than an actual issue in practice. There's a category of people that just says any extensible protocol must fundamentally have massive amounts of incompatibility, and brings it up every chance they can... and while that is technically always possible, it only happens in practice if clients diverge greatly. XMPP clients mostly work together much better than Matrix c…

For Matrix clients I'm given to understand the issue is the lack of XEP equivalents. Either your server(s) and clients are all on the latest available version or you're SOL. This makes third party clients effectively impossible since every change is basically a breaking change and the client and server are tightly coupled.

XMPP took it a step further and has feature segmentation by defining XEPs. This is basic minimum for defining an extensible protocol for client-server communication and has been for decades (maybe it was a new idea when XMPP first started). Notably, browsers use this same thing with w3c specs, which is why they keep working too. If you don't have this feature segmentation and negotiation, you don't have a functional open source client-server protocol full-stop (looking at you Matrix).

I think what XMPP has gotten better at is doing like with w3c and setting baseline minimum features, which has allowed more standardization of clients.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#415

Post by aaravchen »

palata wrote: post #401
Groxx wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's overwhelmingly more of an outsider talking point than an actual issue in practice. There's a category of people that just says any extensible protocol must fundamentally have massive amounts of incompatibility, and brings it up every chance they can... and while that is technically always possible, it only happens in practice if clients diverge greatly. XMPP clients mostly work together much better than Matrix c…

Don't get me wrong, I have been hearing about XMPP forever, and I would love to have an opportunity to try it. Unfortunately it hasn't happened. I have been forced to use Slack, Discord, I have had opportunities to try Matrix, Zulip, of course I have been using IRC for a long time. But XMPP? I may have installed an app, but I haven't had an opportunity to actually use it. Is there a list of communities there? Then ab…

XMPP has had less allure as "the new thing" since it's been around for a very long time. It was _the_ chat protocol in the 2000s when it started, and all chat apps used it (when AOL Instant Messenger, Trilian, Purple, Yahoo, ICQ, etc all interoperated). Vendor lock in started taking off not long after though, so Facebook Messenger (also originally XMPP) stopped interoperating and went fully closed along with a number of others, and the ones that interoperated didn't shift business models and disappeared. None of that means there's anything wrong with XMPP, it just means it's not in the public mind.

IRC has been getting the retro nostalgia kick start, and it briefly came back to attention when Slack started as "wrapper" of IRC. In my experience IRC channels are used by about 50% of open source projects, even though it's abysmal for access on mobile devices, very unfriendly for users, and extremely limited in functionality. About 50% of those have a bridge to Matrix so the mobile access is at least somewhat solved, and there are some more usable client options.

It seems because you haven't seen people already adopt it, you believe it must not be good. I'd encourage some basic research for your own benefit so you can see how XMPP is way easier to setup and maintain, far more efficient, and more capable than the oddly more commonly used Matrix/Element. In fact, between the organization issues of the last couple years, everyone finally getting fed up with Matrix being brittle, unmaintainable, and extremely inefficient to run on a server, I would expect Matrix support channels to drop off very rapidly over the next few years.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#416

Post by aaravchen »

ozlikethewizard wrote: post #48
aaravchen wrote: post #16

Ironically, Signal actually ranks a -1 for privacy in this use. Presumably you're already using Signal and getting mainstream contacts to start using it too. You probably have a basic profile that at least includes your real name, and might also have your picture. Maybe you're even one of the 7 people in the world that use the Stories feature in it. Well good news, now all of that is also unconditionally available to…

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.

You could have a second actuve eSIM if you have a phone that supports more than one (no phones support more than 2 active simultaneously). Though technically the phone number only needs to be accessible for the initial account setup so I guess you could have a burner phone you switch out eSIMs on. Each Signal application only supports a single account though. So you can have one, and if you have a work profile you're not otherwise using you could have a second account in that instance.With the new Private Spaces you could potentially have a third as well.

So you _may_ be able to have up to 3 simultaneous Signal accounts on the same device.

I'm using my work profile and Private Space for things I can't share a Signal install with though. And I dont want to buy and maintain an extra phone number from a telco just to have another Signal profile.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#417

Post by aaravchen »

lvass wrote: post #192
andrepd wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't know that the UK, the Netherlands, or Portugal aren't part of Europe... Also, you can buy phone numbers with monero for 0.08$ https://smspool.net .

And what happens when the next guy buys that same number and registers on Signal? Phone numbers are recurring costs. And to keep a truly private one you must keep paying without ever disclosing personal info and that is really hard. Signal is a privacy nightmare for long term use.

One statement is not related to the other here.

Getting and maintaining an active phone number privately is indeed quite hard, partially by governmental design.

Signal only requires occasional/rare proof of control of the registered phone number. It also has very little visible data the provider can access on your account, even if they had a reason to assist in breaking your privacy by look it up from the phone number. Without Signal foundation direct support, the phone number linkage to your Signal account is completely opt in by you only.

So in terms of privacy, Signal is actually very good about the phone number and leaves it mostly to you how public you want to be about it. They're primarily using it as a finite controlled resource to limit how easy it is for people to spin up arbitrary new accounts. Other projects might use some cryptocurrency junk that effectively equates to paying for accounts, but Signal uses what you probably already have.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#418

Post by aaravchen »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #299
worble wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a recommended or "blessed" server and client combo for someone who just wants to migrate their friends off discord? The main site https://xmpp.org/software/ lists lots of different options but I have no idea what core/advanced means and comparing all of these would take ages.

If you stick with mobile use, there is Snikket[0], which provides a branded server+mobile app ecosystem that should "just work". YMMV; I haven't tried it myself. [0]: https://snikket.org

I have and it works great.

The developer is very active in updating and maintaining the software (both client and server), and it already supports most of the XEPs.

It's open source and fully supports self-hosted as first class, but if you want to support the developer he offers a cloud hosting paid offering as well. There's a crossover offer with JMP.chat too. If you pay $5 upfront for your first month of JMP.chat, you can get a free cloud hosted Snikket server for it to be setup on. As long as you maintain at least one number with JMP.chat, you keep the server maintained. If you don't, you get a chance to migrate your data. The Snikket cloud server gives you an XMPP server admin account, and you can setup as many accounts as you want. The caveat is that Snikket implementation is optimized for <1000s of user accounts per server.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#419

Post by aaravchen »

worble wrote: post #37
aaravchen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been brought up on HN before, and people smarter than me identified that this view is about 10 years out of date. Yes it's a bunch of XEPs, but there are standardized "sets" apparently that include all of the things any other similar tools do. It sounds like only very niche old/minimal XMPP clients don't support encryption by default for example, and virtually all servers have supported it for many years.

Is there a recommended or "blessed" server and client combo for someone who just wants to migrate their friends off discord? The main site https://xmpp.org/software/ lists lots of different options but I have no idea what core/advanced means and comparing all of these would take ages.

Basically you need a server, which you host, pay someone else to host for you, or you join am existing server someone else hosts. Then you find a client. There are a ton of clients around, but it's like picking a browser before Chrome ate the world. Tons of options and everyone has thier own opinions and information about them.

Re: Discord Alternatives, Ranked

#420

Post by jrflowers »

pseudalopex wrote: post #345
jrflowers wrote: post #78

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

Discourse was free to self host in 2024.[1] This changed? [1] https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-discourse-still-free-to-self...

My mistake. I am now imagining hearing someone say that they do not like the MSN Messenger interface in 2003 and saying “have you heard of phpbb? The install script runs without a hitch if you chmod +777 every file and folder in public_html”
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