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Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

revolt.chat

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Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#471

Post by remram »

hbosch wrote: post #370
bryanhogan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Discord, especially when it was new, had amazing UX and UI. Nowadays it definitely became bloated and new features don't integrate that well into the existing UI, but it is still on a perfectly useable level, currently.

Discord's UX is a testament to the fact that people will learn complex systems if they believe all parts of the system are valuable. This is the same truth as, for example, spreadsheet software. The only thing "bad UX" means anymore is that you have parts of your app that people don't find valuable, and you're showing it to them anyway.

Spreadsheet software don't have bad UX? I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#472

Post by remram »

moiz41510 wrote: post #225
diggan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backend seems to be a fairly standard Rust project, you basically run `cargo build --release` and then deploy the binary. For the frontend, it seems like a pretty standard frontend project, you install dependencies, then run build command and you have a bunch of website assets you deploy to your server. Overall, seems pretty standard and easy to deploy. Most complicated would be to also run the various services t…

I think it's pointless to selfhost if you have to recompile an app in order to connect to your server. The team should have a field box to add a server URL.

It doesn't look like this is the case? I'm looking at https://github.com/revoltchat/self-hosted/blob/master/README... where you are told to update 2 config files.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#473

Post by remram »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #219
esafak wrote: post #211

It's been in development for five years. https://github.com/revoltchat/backend/tags?after=0.2.6

Are they using exiting protocols and networks? Or is it entirely bespoke protocols?

Looks like their own protocol: https://developers.revolt.chat/developers/events/protocol.ht...

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#474

Post by abdullahkhalids »

hiatus wrote: post #466
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

That's a political statement. The position is that one should have the right and ability to communicate with other people in a secure fashion. If you deny this right, and build structures to monitor all communication, when "bad" people take over the government, you end up in a dystopia. Then building any sort of anti-government political movement become very difficult because they can hear whatever you say.

So I am glad that software like Signal/Whatsapp exist that allow secure communication [1]. And I would take the harms causes by them being unmonitored rather than the harm of future dystopian governments. Due to how crypto works, I don't think there is much middle ground here.

[1] I would prefer open source, more community owned platforms take over than these two.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#475

Post by tiltowait »

stevage wrote: post #454
brnaftr361 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI is awful, Discord volume isn't exposed, no option to do it, either, so you have to adjust game audio or individual user audio. They put the whole kitchen sink in, for some reason, too, there's a text chat in the voice rooms that needs to be user-revealed for some reason, instead of being exposed by default. Most of it is unintuitive at first use. Then there's the many contraindications e.g. privacy policy, wal…

Weird, I have never noticed a single one of the issues you mention. There really isn't much I don't like about discord, though I wished threads worked more like Slack.

Funny. Every day at work, I lament that Slack's threads don't work like Discord's. What do you like about them?

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#476

Post by moltopoco »

kibwen wrote: post #368
dmonitor wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

discord needs to abandon the notion that every message in every channel deserves to be read by every user. it’s absurd in servers with >50 users

It's annoying UX, but unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that the alternative is worse. When channels are opt-in, it makes discoverability effectively infeasible in practice. This is what the Element clients that I've seen do (following the IRC convention), and it just means that everyone clusters in the default channel and the others all wither on the vine. That said, maybe there's a middle ground. If a serve…

Another alternative would be to use threads more. But they are terrible in Discord, even worse than in Slack. When two Discord users are chit-chatting about their dogs all through the night, a mod should just drag-select all of these messages and put them in a "dog chat" thread.

I still want to try Zulip to see how well it works.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#478

Post by Capricorn2481 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #474
hiatus wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

That's a political statement. The position is that one should have the right and ability to communicate with other people in a secure fashion. If you deny this right, and build structures to monitor all communication, when "bad" people take over the government, you end up in a dystopia. Then building any sort of anti-government political movement become very difficult because they can hear whatever you say. So I am g…

Sorry but you were arguing that Discord should snoop even more into what we're doing for ethical reasons, and now you're saying privacy is a virtue. Do you have a reason to think Discord doesn't already do these things and just doesn't get it right every time?

Phone and email aren't more private than Discord either. Arguably less. Difficult to get a phone these days without buying it on camera. And a phone company will give up all your messages.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#479

Post by Capricorn2481 »

elif wrote: post #457
aryan14 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t fair to say. Any platform that’s popular will have its share of undesirable users, out of the company’s control. Discord has very good moderation in contrast to other platforms (Constant banwaves on illegal/shady servers, terminating accounts frequently, etc)

Haven't heard of any other platforms that use cartoons in the UI, actively associate with kids hobbies, and also make it one click to join active pedo grooming communities. "very good moderation" makes me believe you work for them because that is a laughable notion. I would bet that Big Balls swatting/SIM swapping/ddos community "the comm" still has dozens of discords that have been up for years

Any social app with one click to join communities (all of them) will fall under this.

And how out of touch with teenagers are you that you think cartoons in the UI (whatever that means) are why they use it. What is a kids hobby? Gaming? You cannot call that a kids hobby.

Re: Revolt: Open-Source Alternative to Discord

#480

Post by Capricorn2481 »

bsenftner wrote: post #129
Mashimo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is where enthusiasm is met with "bad girls" energy. What does that mean?

Group mentality that picks and chooses who is "cool" and then bullies everyone else.

So basically Hacker News.
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