I use Matrix, but like a lot of the Fediverse (I know it’s technically a different protocol, but still), it’s not normie friendly. If it were more plug n play it might take off. I just don’t look forward to when they’ll have ads or start making us pay. It’s so tiring shuffling from platform to platform because of some greedy CEO.

There’s a huge opportunity not just for Matrix, but also for other open source or distributed players here, if they can move quickly enough.

They won’t, though.

You can nowadays create a signal account without a phone number, you’ll get a user name instead

That’s Jason Citron for you.

That’s tech companies for you.

Why else would they make all this for free?

Might finally open the doors for viable alternatives. If Spacebar (former fosscord) garners tractions for example due to mismanagement by discord they might make the transition over from discord to an open source, decentralized alternative for the everyday discord user viable. Although I haven’t tried Matrix in a while… But convincing users to switch to a completely separate service is way more difficult.

Did they fix the self-hosted option? If it works well, I would immediately jump to it.

if revolt puts out a ppa repository they’ll already be better than discord

Does it have e2ee messages (even in group chats) and calling? One reason we never used discord is because it lacked that.

How is this app supposed to ensure its continued existence? I see no mention of donations, federation, or advertisement

Nothing comes close to the feature set offered by Discord, Matrix’ bad priorities unfortunately made sure of this. There currently is a project to fix their shit even if it means to break some bad decisions, Tuwunel, however it’s neither ready nor is it clear where it will end up. The previous project it forked, Conduwuit, got bullied into giving up.

You’ll probably be best off with a classic 2-way approach for now. Stick with Mumble for Voice and get something nice for Chat and Organizing like Mattermost or Revolt (or even IRC if you’re a purist). With some luck Discord’s strong enshittification will give projects like Tuwunel the necessary push it needs to force Matrix to finally care for more than just the needs of governments and their perfectionism that gets them nowhere for years now. That or we’ll see some kind of soft-fork with even more bad blood.

Matrix is probably be the best bet atm, although I’m hoping for Spacebar to get more mature as they are aiming for feature parity and compatibility with discord. This way you can host your server with Spacebar, use their client and still be friends with discord users/be in discord servers that haven’t switched yet. Only thing impossible with Spacebar is discord users joining your self hosted server, but once they reach feature maturity (esp in regards to voicechat and videochat) it’ll make switching super seamless.

Mumble is where it’s at.

“Get off vent, or I’ll have you bent.”

I wish those stupid videos weren’t the first thing my brain goes for when I see the word “Ventrilo.”

Adding that to my list, I was looking at element (matrix), revolt and fosscord

Shareholders want quick profits & they don’t care if the service shuts down in 10 years, or becomes largely unusable in 3-5.

Cause things that make most money for shareholders make the worst experience for the end user.

Public companies have to account for the shareholdres’ expectation of, well, making money (and more money, and more money, and growing the numbers as much as possible). Shareholders have some degree influence on how the company works, depending on how many shares they own, e.g. they can vote for the CEO. This usually leads to the company to introducing more aggressive ways of making money off the users/customers, enshittification, etc., as it has to satisfy the shareholders and not so much the original customers.

For me, the huge value-add of Discord is for gaming (and is what Discord was created for). In college, my friends and I were originally using Skype calls when we’d play League together, but it was super annoying; essentially in order to not have to create a new call and add everyone who happened to be playing every time we just had one giant call with everyone we’d “redial” when playing. The downside is that if you were on Skype but not part of the game (in class or something) you’d get the Skype call invitation and have to decline it.

Switching to Discord was fantastic. We’d just have a persistent voice channel for different games, and you could chill in there to indicate it’s what you were playing or wanted to play, and if someone wanted to join they just jump on the call. It was also nice for organizing our text chats into different subjects (using different text channels), so if you were trying to ask if anyone had any advice for a certain class, you wouldn’t have your messages drowned out by people talking about news about a upcoming game. We just have a “games” text channels and a “classes” text channels and a “weekend plans” text channel, etc. This became particularly important as the server grew from friends to friends of friends and would’ve been overwhelming to have everyone stuck in one chat.

That’s pretty much been the extent of my Discord use, and I’m continually amazed to hear how others have been using it. I’ve seen the “join us on Discord, X, Facebook, etc.” for different games coming out, but never thought much of it or ever considered doing that.

im in a bunch of twitch streamer communities

Personally? The vast bulk of my interactions with people online. Voice chat, DMs, servers for pretty much everything. Being involved in roleplaying communities in DayZ and Conan, the vast majority of the behind-the-scenes stuff is taking place on discord. Servers for particular game servers as well as groups make up a pretty big portion of my list, along with smaller private discord servers of networks of players from various other servers. It’s how I stay connected with dozens of people I’ve known for years.

I’m also in quite a few discords related to modding and game development. Nearly every modder has their own discord, which is extremely useful if you’re running your own game servers and need to be in contact with them or if you make mods yourself and want to seek advice or information for compatibility. The same is true of a lot of other non-gaming software, with many developers having their own servers where they post updates and where you can find advice or post suggestions.

I’ve got a few queer community servers on my list, which were particularly helpful when I was early in my transition before I really had gotten around to rebuilding my social network and finding accepting people. There’s even a discord for a group of animators I used to spend a lot of time with back in the mid 00s; back then we were using forums and IRC mostly, and a little bit of Skype, but these days it’s been a good way to keep in touch.

If I’m home and on my computer, I’m almost always in a discord voice chat. It’s basically the modern equivalent of AIM or ICQ or Facebook, but with loads of added features and without Meta being involved. I even use it for note taking and storing images and screencaps.

Even something like Matrix, at the moment, doesn’t really cover all the voice and video chat features that Discord does. It’s close, but it’s missing essential components like push-to-talk, and it requires workarounds to enable things like screen sharing.

Discord turning to shit would be a real pain in the ass.

what do people use discord for exactly?

Too much.

It’s a chat platform geared towards gamers, with voice chat, screen sharing, and streaming options… that’s been coopted by vloggers… but most unsettlingly, it’s being used for customer support and documentation.

A lot of knowledge bases are buried in the walled garden of servers, and a labyrinth of chat rooms.