Discord Alternatives
- Stoat;
- Matrix;
- Rocket.Chat;
- Zulip;
- Discourse.
Beginning with a phased global rollout to new and existing users in early March, users may be required to engage in an age-verification process to change certain settings or access sensitive content. This includes age-restricted channels, servers, or commands and select message requests.
This is the point where you need to teach a short, sharp lesson to companies by burning it to the ground.
I am almost 70. I will just use a pic of good ol Harold. Will be funny to see if it accepts him.
Goodbye, Discord. It’s been real.
One of my friends hit me with the “they already know everything about me” line on this one and literally said they’d give Discord “anything”, so I don’t think I’m gonna convince my group to move y’all. At least my best friend is educated enough at this point to be interested in moving so I’ll still be investigating options.
I heard it suggested that you can possibly trick the face scan using screen grabs of video game or tv characters. Anyone know if this is actually possible?
“It appears you are Fred Flintstone.”
Well I’d definitely be allowed on the adult stuff because I’m at least thousands of years old at this point.
Unless they trade me a face scan of each Discord employee and member, I’m out. Enough is enough, nothing is free.
Seeya ✌️
Discord was always an overhyped crap.
I think a big thing that made it catch on was the ease of joining. Just send someone a link and boom, they’re in the intended server. No immediate registration process, no buttons or commands to use, just a single click and entering a username. For all that I dislike Discord about, they did that part really well
I hope that discourages open source projects and similar communities from using discord as forum / user support.
Yep, hate when I want to follow some project and they link you to X, Reddit and Discord lol
I’ve had to dismiss several potentially-useful projects for this reason. In fact nearly every FOSS project I come across has no open platform for discussion.
Sometimes there is a Discourse forum but those are just awful from a UX perspective, and even then the devs rarely reply to anything there, mostly leaning on GitHub.
Need support? Contract us on @SupportThatNeverReplies on Shitter (the nazi-everything app)!
I can say as a member of the PCSX2 project that I understand why we and other FOSS emulators use it as official support – but nevertheless wish that we didn’t. We’ve discussed practicalities before, and the project doesn’t stay there just from inertia or because of personal preference; there are major practical reasons to prefer it over a forum (which we have), a wiki (which we have), or Matrix.
I’d be willing to endure the pain points and to scale back support in order to be off of that shithole, but I also get that’s a fringe minority sentiment shared by only a couple others. All of us would be tech-literate enough to use a client like Signal or Element for intra-project discussion, but very few people would come to Matrix for support (nor would we probably want them to due to the much greater moderation burden per end user), and the chatroom model – to most of us – is much easier for support than a forum. The only reason I’m still begrudgingly on Discord is for PCSX2.
I share your hope, but I seriously doubt this will come even close to dislodging us. Smaller projects, perhaps.
Putting valuable help, trouble solving and FAQ stuff into a discord is … annoying. You cant find it again. So it will only help the original poster
We do also maintain docs. I put a lot of effort into the Setup ones but got burnt-out before really getting into the other ones (which need a lot of work). And for actual bugs, we use GitHub.
Discord’s search functionality is reasonably robust, and as long as you’re already there, you can usually find old conversations about the problem you’re having. The biggest problem is that it’s gated off from the wider Internet, which is shitty.
I think what we all like about it over forums for providing support is that it’s closer to real-time communication, it’s more flexible (conversations can flow in and out of each other instead of being permanently stuck in one subject-specific thread), and it’s more casual.
Maybe they’ve changed something since I last tried getting help via Discord, but I found the search feature extremely lacking. I never have trouble finding someone else with my same question/problem, but there’s no means of viewing replies to the message in question, or even whether anyone replied at all. One is required to manually browse potential hours or days of messages in the hope of following a conversation chain that might not even exist. This is made even worse by the fact that replies to a message aren’t necessarily registered as replies because they’re just subsequent chat messages.
Damn it. I did not come here for a reasonable and valid explanation.
ಠ_ಠ
Begrudgingly puts away pitchfork
I get it, but if bigger projects don’t move to alternatives, those alternatives have a lot less pressure to evolve. If a big project bites the bullet and moves, then there are more technically minded folks with a vested interest in making the platform better.
Thanks for the insight.
Stoat looks promising as an open source alternative
Absolutely not.
Stoat (formerly Revolt) is an utter shit-show of alt left and right extremists and the development is dead in the water. They’ve claimed to be working on feature parity with Discord for years now. Not to mention the developers jumping ship and the whole “Stoat” rebrand. Not to mention, their email verification server is just hosted on a homelab setup which has lead to a plethora of users being unable to receive their verification emails, resulting in them requiring a manual approval via emailing in… which guess what… those are also failing to come through!
Don’t touch Revolt/Stoat. It’s no better.
Honest question, would something like stoat allow forum threads like in discord but being accessible through a classic forum style webpage through matrix protocol in order for it to beindexed by the wider web?
but being accessible through a classic forum style webpage through matrix protocol
Why would you do this though…
Because one of the things I find most annoying about discord is how the information is much less accessible. Before you could search something on google and find some niche forum talking about it. Nowadays that forum is probably a discord server and the information is hard to find
How does running it through Matrix solve that problem?
It doesn’t, I just like the matrix protocol for privacy.
Looks promising…
but why is it always electron?
Because people want fancy animations, images, videos, stylized text, etc. And the easiest way to accomplish that is to just use a browser under the hood.
FOR REAL BRO
Theyve been around for a few years and I’m still not really impressed. No E2EE, No federation if the people running it go belly up. You might as well use signal ATP.
As far as I understand it can be somewhat federated using the matrix protocol? https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/stoat/
This isn’t federation, its a bridge. Theres also a bridge for Discord, Telegram and Signal, but none of those are federated either
Ah I get it now!
I just tried to sign up for it. Installed app and signed up, it wouldn’t go through. So I go to web interface and create an account there. I’ve waited ONE HOUR for email verification, and NOTHING. Asked to resend verification, they made me click through 5 captivas, and still NOTHING. Moving on from stoat.
Misconfiguration with SMTP is likely or their SMTP server is under maintenance and you just tried at a poor time.
Granted for a production environment there should be some notice to users.
It’s even simpler than that… Their SMTP server is just hosted on a homelab and has notoriously been terrible for uptime. They’ve had consistent issues with emails not being sent or received and that’s not even the icing on the shit sundae for Revolt/Stoat.
Which is a great reason to dump SMTP altogether. It’s a messaging platform FFS. If you need to send someone a message, do it on the platform.
There are layers to this.
Persistent chat rooms are here to stay.
As a user? I dislike this. I am sure you do too.
As a developer who gives a shit about the users? The number of times I have had to spend sometimes upwards of a dozen back and forth emails trying to explain to someone that I am not lying to them and the answer they found on the forums are for a bug that was fixed 5 years ago… Let alone having to, politely, tell a greybeard to shut the fuck up because they keep telling people to search instead of ask for help…
Whereas a more ephemeral approach that actually encourages people to ask questions? Yes, it does cause long term issues when someone is trying to debug a project that has been on life support for years. But, by and large, just checking the current FAQ and then asking in a chatroom results in a better experience for the users, the devs, and the community managers trying to bridge the gap. And… you should really try to avoid being dependent on said EOL software. Not always possible but… yeah.
And that isn’t going to change. So they’ll either stick with discord or use something MUCH less stable… like Matrix.
This is bad.
Whereas a more ephemeral approach that actually encourages people to ask questions? Yes, it does cause long term issues when someone is trying to debug a project that has been on life support for years.
It isn’t just long-term, it causes issues right off the bat; no fix is searchable. All fixes require a community member to respond.
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For the user this causes significant delays. A problem that could be solved in minutes with a search now requires hours or days for someone to respond to their specific problem. A problem that likely was already solved 10 times before. And god help you if the server is active, your problem might get burred instantly and no response will ever come.
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For the support people, they have to answer the same questions over and over and over because there is no way for users to search for and solve their own problems.
These issues compound on each other as support staff burn out and users get tired of waiting. Leads to people just going elsewhere.
For me, a lack of support forums signals the creators don’t care about the software working right and don’t care the software will be unmaintainable the moment they step away. Ie: a lack of support forum is a strong signal to find greener pastures.
It also causes the problem that no fix is searchable. All fixes require a community member to respond.
Incorrect. While I find the search capabilities of Discord (and the Discord/Teams likes) to be… bad, it isn’t THAT much worse than a phpbb in a lot of ways.
What you lose out on is the ability for search engines and, increasingly a concern, LLMs from being able to index it. I shouldn’t have to explain why that might be a “pro” as far as the folk actually doing support are concerned.
As for delays? If it is a well supported bit of kit, a quick search and a skim of the FAQ (Discord is actually really nice for having a way to aggregate questions like that in an almost ticketing like system) is going to cover the major stuff. And my experience (on both sides) with Slack et al is that users are generally glad to help out.
It does suck because, unless it is a super common issue, you need to actually ask a question and interact with a human. But it also tends to mean that people are a lot faster to have you run a few tests rather than respond once a day to a thread.
For the support people, they have to answer the same questions over and over and over because there is no way for users to search for and solve their own problems.
Tell me you’ve never provided support without telling me you’ve never provided support, heh.
What you lose out on is the ability for search engines and, increasingly a concern, LLMs from being able to index it. I shouldn’t have to explain why that might be a “pro” as far as the folk actually doing support are concerned.
You think it’s a PRO that nobody can search for your support info!? No you absolutely need to explain that…
They likely mean because LLMs will scrape it hard and give the forum the hug of death. This is a real issue, but seriously fuck Discord. I have specifically excluded many potential solutions for both work and home because I saw that their support was done in Discord. I refuse to use it, and thus any project that makes it mandatory for support.
Yeah, I have to back you up here. This person’s alleged experience is completely divorced from my experience working on PCSX2 and tells me they have no idea what they’re talking about. We have to answer questions over and over and over again, but usually there’s a command to quickly give a canned answer.
And the questions aren’t repeated because there’s no way for users to search (there is); it’s because it’s usually lightning-fast in that kind of environment to just ask and because dedicated help forums are a form of selection bias. You’re generally going to get more thought-out questions from users who use dedicated, thread-based support forums because either a) they needed to make an account just to ask that question, b) they already have an account and so are more dedicated than the average user, or c) all the others who didn’t want to make that investment either just gave up or found the answer some other way.
Edit: I guess people who have no experience with FOSS user support are upset at reality. Next time, give me a list of things you want me to say, and I can bring that along with some choccy milk and some ointment for your sore ass.
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Well, the day it asks me for ID/face scan is the day I delete my account. Their days are numbered.
You think they’ll let you access the account settings to delete the account without scanning your face first?
If they want to be spammed with gdpr takedown requests sure…
If they don’t they would open the door to people committing spam or abuse intentionally to receive a suspension as the next best thing. I know I’ll do it if they don’t let me delete my account.
They won’t let you send messages without finishing verification
Then I’ll email their support and be rude to them until they get fed up. I’m sure I can be nasty enough in some way to get them to suspend me no matter how bad they want me.
Just log in with a third party client where people in the Issues are complaining about being banned. Or use your Discord token and spam their API with illegal calls until they ban your account
It seems like the restriction should be lifted for accounts without verification after 5 years. After all, you’re not even allowed to sign up if you’re under 13, so by 5 years you have to be at least 18.
I love how photo-based age verification scanning is the worst of both worlds - it destroys your anonymity, but not in a way that makes it easier to run a community where you can ban a person by their digital ID since they can just make a new one with the same face since facial recognition is too crude for that.
Discord genuinely thinks they got the users by the balls… Thing is, people move platforms extremely easily. It happened to MSN Messenger, it happened to Skype, and it’ll happen to Discord too.
For those who are looking for something very similar, look at Stoat (formerly known as Revolt). Their URL is https://stoat.chat/.
Thing is, people move platforms extremely easily.
LOL WTF are you talking about? The only reason these platforms are able to abuse the absolute shit out of their users is because they refuse to leave. If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last 3-4 years it’s that users absolutely do not leave platforms no matter what (at least not in any significant numbers). Not Reddit, not Xitter, not Facebook or IG or Threads, not Windows, and not Discord.
People left MSN Messenger and Skype before, my dude. There’s just so much the average user can take.
Remind me: how many million users did those platforms have?
Enough to matter.
Except it doesn’t. Twitter and Reddit etc. has done everything they can to drive users off their platforms and still they don’t leave.
Actually, they did. 90% of Twitter’s activity now is bots. The only people left are either artists who are completely delusional about their numbers (they have like 13k followers but barely get 200 likes), or mega nazis. Everyone else is no longer there and has moved to places like Bluesky or Mastodon. In fact, I myself never made it past 150 followers on my old twitter account and I had that one for 12 years. My current one has 82 followers and never climbed past that. Bluesky tho? I already have 170+ followers in less than two years of owning the account, and many other artists reached their Twitter follower count in a tiny fraction of the time.
A good portion of reddit threads are also riddled with bots, so it LOOKS like nobody left.
90% of Twitter’s activity now is bots
LOL is Joe Biden a bot? Clinton? Obama? Corey Doctorow? Molly White? Every politician and public figure in existence? Where’s your evidence for this?
On one hand yeah sure, people ditched Skype and MSN as soon as something better came along but that was a long time ago. Discord has sadly been the go-to for people for over a decade. Many users literally grew up with it. They are conditioned. A lot has to happen for them to leave their comfort zone. It‘s like asking someone to stop drinking coke or get McDonald‘s after they‘ve had it for their entire life.
I‘ll say this probably won‘t be the straw that breaks the camel‘s back but there is a silver lining. Discord will lose revenue over this and might change course quickly. This already rolled out in Canada and from what I‘ve heard many users cancelled Nitro at least. That‘s a start. Discord may also try to milk remaining users even harder as a result very soon and that will definitely put them into a down spiral.
One problem will be that there are way too goddamn many software projects that use Discord as a shitty replacement for a blog and documentation, and they’re gonna be a pain to move to proper content platforms.
Sometimes the only way thru is shitty. And those devs might have to learn the hard way not to overcentralize- or to not use a damn chat software for what is way more suited to forums.
I’ve been complaining about this for years. Hope we’re finally starting to see the end of it.
“Look, Discord requires me to upload a pic of my face or ID, to which i can’t legally agree to. Please provide another channel or i can’t contribute.”
That’ll work for individual users, but getting all that chat history out will be a problem for the owners once the users dry up.
And I’m sure Discord will do their best to make it impossible.
Serves them right for picking chat software in the first place, let alone one they don’t control.
I’m in like a hundred of those. Honestly, they’re not that useful. Burn it all down and start over.
They absolutely have their users by the balls and I guarantee most people will continue to use the app after this, unfortunately.
Yeah, my group of friends will be very resistant to moving away from discord. They’re all aware of the issues with it, but It’s too convenient of a platform. Personally, I will give up most of the comforts to not be under the thumb of a corporation, but I’m an outlier in my friend group with that perspective.
I’m in this boat too. Most of my online friends I only really get to talk to via discord. Not sure what I’m gonna do, because they won’t end up budging.
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I did. That’s my opinion, most people won’t care I care, but most people don’t.
Mass migration like that occurs (from my memory at least) when the newer alternative has much better functionality, performance, and ease of use compared to the status quo service and has a low barrier to entry (sign up is quick and straightforward). Do any of the decentralized Discord alternatives fit these criteria (honest question, not rhetorical)?
Well, Stoat has the same features as Discord, including many premium ones for free, the ability to write HTML/CSS for your own server, with the only thing missing being video feed. Otherwise, it functions the same while being much faster.
Also sign up is very quick, but right now they’re getting hugged to death, so sign up emails might take a while to arrive.
Sign up is QUICK? It’s been more than a hour. I’ve tried through the app, through the web, it hasn’t sent me back NOTHING for verification. Still not signed up. What’s quick for you? 10 hours to sign up?
I literally fucking said they got hugged to death. Why are you mad at an app/website that literally had its email crash from everyone trying to sign up at once??
If they can’t handle this small surge in volume, they are too small to handle any issues that might come up down the road. Not trusting my web of friends with an app like this. Because I have to onboard OTHERS onto this mickey mouse unreliable operation, that’s why. Downvote me for all you want but THAT is a simple fact that exposes them for what they are. Amateurs not ready for it.
Revolt (suppose stoat) had problems with noise cancellation and people complained to me the UI wasn’t intuitive.
I just went through an EXASPERATING experience installing and signing up for Stoat. It DOES NOT WORK. Don’t recommend it.
Sounds like everyone and their dog trying to sign up at once due to this Discord news is overwhelming them, give it a while and try again later. I’m waiting a bit before I try. im_doing_my_part.jpg
