Discord was already succumbing to enshitification. Now with their intention to be owned by Wall Street, that trajectory will certainly accelerate at warp speed once the change of hands happens.

Anyone already get ahead of this and find a solid alternative?

Right now I’m on the fence between Element for Matrix, and Revolt. Both seem to have their pros and cons and I can’t find a clear “winner”.

  • katy ✨
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    2419 days ago

    if discord is going public they don’t need my turbo sub anymore

    • @GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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      419 days ago

      Cancelled mine when they redesigned the mobile app anyway. I don’t want a different interface on mobile vs desktop. I want a unified experience, which was their original purpose.

  • Drew
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    819 days ago

    Matrix is nice, and you can have jitsi for calls integrated. It seems to be pretty popular; Lemmy has a field for matrix @ in user profiles. Never heard of revolt before.

    • @ErrorCode@lemmy.world
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      619 days ago

      I use Jitsi for a non-profit, and I like the mute someone else function, but oh wow the noise cancellation needs improvement. So many voice comm apps have disappeared (there used to be one our group used all the time, then the devs dropped it (the client app) and just became on API or something).

  • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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    820 days ago

    Why use Element for matrix?

    From what I can tell it collets and links data to you: Location, identifiers and contact information.

    How is that private or better than Signal?

    • @tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden
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      420 days ago

      Does it? On Android, it never asked me to grant location permission unless I try to share my location to another user. Similar with contacts and calendar, it’s working perfectly fine without them. Where exactly does it link those identifiers and with what?

      • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        This is what shows up when I check Element. Every other Federated app that I use doesn’t collect any information. Voyager, Pixelfed, Peertube, Mastodon all come up with “No data collected”

        • @tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden
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          119 days ago

          Ah! I don’t know what exactly these mean, would be interesting to see what Element says what those mean. I don’t think Element actually adds these to your messages etc but I don’t know the protocol enough.

    • @Link@rentadrunk.org
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      420 days ago

      Isn’t the data sharing optional? I’m pretty sure it asks you on first startup and you can decline.

    • Possibly linux
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      319 days ago

      The Element web client will break encryption when you clear your browser data.

      • @tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden
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        219 days ago

        Does it? I think it logs you out and after logging in again, you need to provide your encryption key/verify with other device again in order to access the history. Or wdym with breaking?

    • @doodledup@lemmy.world
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      1220 days ago

      I use Signal for private and personal messages. I use Discord solely for gaming and voicechat. A good alternative doesn’t need to be overly private (although that would be a bonus of course). It just needs to have a good UI and feature parity with Discord.

      • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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        620 days ago

        There is a difference between willing information that you put out there and data gathering that goes on without your consent.

        Location data is something I don’t want anyone collecting without my consent.

        Why does Element need to know where I’m located? Why is that being gathered with my identifiers?

    • @Nikelui@lemmy.world
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      2820 days ago

      Because people don’t use discord for privacy. They use it for gaming, voice chat, communities and streaming.

      • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍
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        1420 days ago

        @Nikelui is 100% right: a chat room may be private, but it’s not secure. Even in an encrypted room, every additional person you add reduces your security. I’m sure there’s some paper out there that studies this, and that the graph of # of members vs security is an inverse power ratio.

        If it’s a public chat, there is no security.

        However, with Matrix, if you run your own server and restrict access to your friends, at least you can be fairly certain your chat room isn’t being used to train an LLM, or to harvest information about you for advertising.

        • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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          420 days ago

          There is a difference between willing information that you put out there and data gathering that goes on without your consent.

          Public chats are not my concern. That’s information I’m putting out there willingly.

          Location data is something I don’t want anyone collecting without my consent.

          Why does Element need to know where I’m located? Why is that being gathered with my identifiers?

          • I don’t know. I don’t use Element; I wasn’t aware it requested location service access. I switched to FluffyChat ages ago; it only asks for notification.

            But that’s just for group chat. I’ve been using Jami lately, and it does ask for location access; that’s because it has a “share location” feature, that - if you use it - shows a little map with your location to the person you’re sharing with. Maybe Element has implemented something similar?

            • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              This is what shows up when I check Element. Every other Federated app that I use doesn’t collect any information. Voyager, Pixelfed, Peertube, Mastodon all come up with “No data collected”

              • Huh. I just checked Fluffy, and it asks for location, camera, and phone. I just denied it everything but notifications, so VOIP won’t work, but all I use it for is chat rooms anyway.

                In any case, it doesn’t look any better than Element, in that respect.

          • @zod000@lemmy.ml
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            320 days ago

            Are you specifically referring to the mobile client of Element? i wasn’t away of anything with the desktop client that has anything to do with location.

            • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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              19 days ago

              This is what shows up when I check Element. Every other Federated app that I use doesn’t collect any information. Voyager, Pixelfed, Peertube, Mastodon all come up with “No data collected”

              • @zod000@lemmy.ml
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                219 days ago

                I just looked in detail through their privacy policy, and it looks like if you use their “service” they are collecting quite a bit of data, certainly more than I would have expected. I only use stand alone, non-federated homeservers and I have everything disabled as far as telemetry, etc, but I think you’ve convinced me to keep an eye on the other clients. I last test drove several last year and all of them were either lacking features I needed or had issues.

      • @BroBot9000@lemmy.world
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        118 days ago

        That’s bullshit.

        A) Privacy =/= anonymity

        B) They have usernames and the option to hide your number from searches for those interested.

        C) Signal has absolutely no way of accessing any of your information: https://signal.org/bigbrother/ They publish all their subpoenas and there is no information that are able to collect. It’s all encrypted.

        D) Phone numbers are an easy way onboard the normies and Meta addicts that don’t value privacy.

    • @farcaller@fstab.sh
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      719 days ago

      Matrix is spectacularly cursed to the point of being unusable if you self-host it. The protocol is dumb enough to lock you out of rooms hosted on another server forever if anything goes wrong with the key rotation.

  • Stop Forgetting It
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    2720 days ago

    man I wish mumble had a better interface and a chat function, it could real FOSS competition with Discord, but the lack of a chat feature is holding it back

      • Stop Forgetting It
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        320 days ago

        Its been ages for me, so I may be incorrect now. I think the chat is not persistent and I am pretty sure there is no channels. Its most definitely not set up how discord is where its more of a chat client that has voice rather than a voice client that has chat.

    • @BlessedDog@lemmy.world
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      319 days ago

      Started hosting a mumble server for gaming maybe six months ago and have been using it daily. Really happy with it.

      • Stop Forgetting It
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        119 days ago

        I don’t have a guild to host for anymore, but I used to host one years ago and it was solid as a rock. I am glad mumble is still going strong

      • @splendoruranium@infosec.pub
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        1720 days ago

        It’s so much easier to set up and install than Matrix.

        Unbelievably so. Mumble is… basically one setup command. Don’t even need a domain. And it needs absolutely no resources, can run on a Pi Zero.
        Setting up my own Matrix server was honestly one of the most difficult things I’ve ever attempted in decades of non-professionally using computers and I’m still not sure I’d be able to properly take care of the installation if it breaks. Sooo many moving parts. All the federation-oriented projects that rely on adoption rates reaaaaally desperately need setup wizards before any other additional feature.

        • The Bard in Green
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          19 days ago

          I’ve set up Lemmy, Forgejo, Nextcloud and Mastodon. Forgejo is unbelievably easy, Mastodon and Lemmy both are complex but if you follow the instructions you get there pretty quickly.

          Matrix is like “Follow a book of documentation, then when it doesn’t work anyway, spend hours of your life troubleshooting a bunch of stuff that’s NOT in the documentation. Why is this so hard?”

          • db0
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            419 days ago

            Sounds like this is part of their business plan. Make hosting it so onerous, you’re better-off using their servers, or paying them to do it for you.

          • Possibly linux
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            519 days ago

            You forgetting the part where the server starts using crazy resources because you entered the main Matrix chat. Does the server need to send you everything that’s ever been said? Apparently yes

  • @assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works
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    4320 days ago

    I’m running a Matrix server with a FB Messenger bridge via mautrix-meta and that makes it a clear winner. Half my group chats have migrated entirely since I’ve set my close friends up with accounts in my server and they also use the bridge. The fact that people can slowly migrate chats without losing messages or groups is killer for adoption imo.

  • @Turnbomb@lemmy.ml
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    Is there any option to stay on discord but better? Like vencord or something similar through Linux? I cannot imagine being able to get my friends off of discord ever.

    • @RichardDegenne@lemm.ee
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      2419 days ago

      I guess that’s the biggest hurdle, especially when it comes to social apps. One tech-savvy person wanting to migrate is usually not enough to start moving a community, even as a small as a group of friends.

      • Richard
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        719 days ago

        Had to experience that first hand. I tried to get my best friends to register on my Matrix server last September and join a room for our group, and they did, but I rarely see any of them online and I only get responses days later, if at all. One even stopped using it entirely, lol. Ah well, but at least I got a Matrix server out of that that I can use to federate with other like-minded people.

      • @waz@lemmy.world
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        419 days ago

        I am certainly not one of the younger folks and had never seen that before. That is awesome, thank you for sharing.

        • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          419 days ago

          Oh man, Basshunter was huge in the chronically-online gamer space in the 2000s. His other songs are pretty good too.

          To put it in perspective, the fact that they’re gaming on laptops and LCD monitors was an enviable flex when his songs released.

      • @BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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        219 days ago

        I still have my copy. I cannot believe that song is like, 18 years old now. It was such a staple of my college experience.

      • EchoCranium
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        219 days ago

        Used to use Vent playing Eve Online 19 years ago. Worked great back then. Apparently it’s still around, but still no Linux support after all these years.