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Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

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Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#461

Post by mech422 »

crowdstriker wrote: post #354
mech422 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to IRC? Forums? hell - even an email list... All things that are a lot easier to search then Discord, have much lighter clients, and can be done free. Do you really think there was 'no way to communicate' for projects before discord ?

You're comparing ancient obsolete technology to a streamlined instant messaging client. There's a reason they 'just' use Discord. So now you want developers to have to check emails, IRC, forum posts, whatever other outdated communication platform, AND Discord? Why on Earth would they use all that when Discord takes care of all of those features and more. Having more than one central place to communicate is 'hostile'.

>>You're comparing ancient obsolete technology to a streamlined instant messaging client

I'd hardly call discord a 'stream lined' system. Latency (especially in voice which is supposed to be it strong suit) is bad, search is subpar compared to even simple google searches, information is silo'd, its yet another place that can potentially leak PII, and basically the network is a SPOF. SourceForge promised all you mention, and was backed by (at the time) the largest IPO in history..and lasted what 2-3 years before it started decaying? I remember projects scrambling to find hosting after SF - and I remember how fast everyone jumped on GitHub .. I was donating to GH from the beginning just to help prevent another SF scenario...

As for it 'hostile' - its a lot easier to do a google search and find all sorts of information streams about something, rather then having to figure out the discord server for a project, search the discord server, and still miss any info. from outside of discord. That seems more 'hostile' to me then less wall-garden systems.

Edit: last I knew, over 1K oss projects still maintain libera.chat channels

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#462

Post by protocolture »

doctorhandshake wrote: post #224
sph wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dream is to be invited into a mildly popular server (more than 15 users), than doesn't have 50 channels, 8 separate roles and T&C to agree to. It hasn't happened yet. An entire generation of bureaucrats and bean counters is learning the ropes on Discord.

I started and mod a server of about 6k users for a community around a niche software used by professionals, students, and hobbyists. We keep it really simple and focused primarily on people getting questions answered. Recently a small but vocal cadre of hobbyists have been demanding more Discord-y features oriented towards socializing with other users of the software, and our reticence to complicate the server and ad…

My experience is that discords that arent properly moderated go through a boom/bust cycle.

And that whether in the ascendency or the fall, the moderators trying to maintain complete opaque control will fight to the death to keep it that way.

And where moderation is done more by feel than by rules people start self censoring and then disengage entirely.

But then you go to a discord that has moderation figured out, and its just... a nice place to be?

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#463

Post by extraduder_ire »

immibis wrote: post #458
metalliqaz wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2025, a company using IRC to communicate with its users would be like using ham radio. Sure it exists, but it is far too niche to be worth the effort.

How so? You literally just open a web page, and choose a nickname. It's easier than creating a Discord account and verifying your email address and phone number.

Discord has a gradual onboarding process. If your IP isn't poisoned, and your browser looks pretty normal, you just have to enter a username and you're in with an "unclaimed account"

They'll then nag you to fill in more details as you use it. It's honestly a pretty slick way of doing onboarding.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#464

Post by chaorace »

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?

Gaming was becoming less and less the domain of the tech-savvy crowd, strongly curbing the public's appetite for such host-it-yourself services. Teamspeak/Mumble were already dying at the hands of (inferior) free/easy chat platforms like Steam & Skype, so it's really no wonder that Discord was able to swoop in and clobber all of them by simply being free and featureful.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#465

Post by extraduder_ire »

Aachen wrote: post #307
cies wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sorely lacking on the homepage! All FLOSS is expected to link to the source from the homepage.

May even be required, if you have a license that requires sharing the code along with the product (AGPL). Still not sure why that license isn't more popular, isn't it in the open source spirit that you can get the code whenever you use the product? Same as when you get the binary with GPL license, that you have a right to see what code you're running?

There's a considerable amount of FUD around AGPL. Mostly around never being able to actually redistribute exactly what people are accessing, IIRC. I remember conversations about it being rehashed on here constantly a few years back.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#466

Post by hiatus »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #448
stackskipton wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I do find it interesting that we hold these platforms liable but not the phone/pager/mail service. Phone and mail networks in letter and spirit obey the law: they don't listen to people's private conversations and they give up complete user info on request by law enforcement. There is nothing more they can do. Discord has built the capability to read every message, public or private, that any user sends. So they ar…

> Whatsapp/Signal have built their platforms so they can't read user private messages, so they have no ethical obligations to stop bad things happening on their platform

Why draw the line there? Why don't those platforms have an ethical obligation to build the features that would allow them to stop bad things happening on their platform? Especially if they knowingly developed the current implementation specifically to avoid ethical culpability?

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#467

Post by extraduder_ire »

butz wrote: post #260

Why even build an app? This app should've been a website. Better pester browser developers to implement "Add to desktop" feature.

There is a webapp version. It's the grey button just to the right of the download button. Looks like their main desktop client is the same as their webapp.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#468

Post by grotorea »

josteink wrote: post #343
das_keyboard wrote: post #185

Looking at https://rvlt.gg/discover/servers it seems that all reasonably active servers are either turkish[0] or anime related. [0]: Turkey banned Discord in 2024: https://www.reuters.com/technology/turkey-blocks-instant-mes...

So like Mastadon then. Every time I’ve looked into it, every server I’ve checked has been filled with furries and anime-avatars. I mean, I’m glad they’ve found a community where they feel at home, but it kinda makes it a hard pass for the rest of us ;)

Well, I guess it's better than the reddit alternatives that are full of communities who got banned from reddit.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#470

Post by remram »

carlgreene wrote: post #451

Can we stop building communities in non-indexable locations? The death of forums and hence “google-ability” for problems and solutions is so depressing. The UX is worse in every way

Nowadays "indexable locations" mean "crawled by big tech to feed your likeness to their AI". It's hard to advocate for now.
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