Alternatives to Discord

[Kissasta]

Hey y'all, heard recently via Castle Super Beast (a podcast I enjoy) that Discord is going openly traded soon, meaning its most likely to follow the drum beat of the tech/gaming market, IE: Enshittified  

Figured I'd shoot a question here for recommendations and alternatives that y'all may know. Many of my friends are fairly busy so user friendliness is preferred, but I'm open to ideas and suggestions. I'm somewhat familiar with Teamspeak and Mumble though I havent used them much. Telegram exists but I'm rather iffy on it at best. Thanks in advanced!

[virtualpet2001]

The only one I know of is escargot.chat the MSN revival... but ive had mixed results with getting it to work. it also doesnt have big public chatrooms like discord does...!

worst comes to worst we could just go back to irc i guess. i used to hang out in the dragon cave adoptable website IRC of all things...not my first rodeo...melonland irc channel...imagine it...

[zomboid]

i also recommend IRC, it's genuinely just the grandfather to discord, slack, etc etc etc. it's not necessarily the most "user-friendly" because people need to know what network to connect to and they need to understand that a lot of IRC networks will place a channel ban on someone if they're rapidly connecting and disconnecting in a short time. (i say this because one of my friends was trying to use it on mobile and her phone was disconnecting her every time she tabbed out of her web client and she got herself banned. she literally noticed it was disconnecting and reconnecting her and didnt do anything about it and got banned for spamming the chat with join/leave messages)

if you have any of your own technology you can set up something called thelounge which acts as a simplified irc front-end. it stays connected for you and you basically connect to whatever device is running it and it automatically forwards all messages when you reconnect.

i do plan on getting an instance of thelounge running on my own - i have a raspberry pi and i just need to get an SD card to get it functional - so if you want, i would be very happy to let you use my instance of thelounge to access IRC and let your friends use it too ^_^ it'll be a webclient, accessed through something like lounge.zomboid.pro, so it should be a lot easier for people to use <3 i can let you know when i get it running if you'd like!

[Kissasta]

i also recommend IRC, it's genuinely just the grandfather to discord, slack, etc etc etc. it's not ...

i do plan on getting an instance of thelounge running on my own - i have a raspberry pi and i just need to get an SD card to get it functional - so if you want, i would be very happy to let you use my instance of thelounge to access IRC and let your friends use it too ^_^ it'll be a webclient, accessed through something like lounge.zomboid.pro, so it should be a lot easier for people to use <3 i can let you know when i get it running if you'd like!

Honestly that'd be lovely, thank you. I've dabbled in IRC channels before but never really stuck with me since I was more of an AIM/MSN messenger kid lol. My friends mostly have been using discord for gaming chat and sending book recs so maybe this coupled with a VOIP or something similiar will be the ticket.

The only one I know of is escargot.chat the MSN revival...

And speaking of MSN, thats sounds cool, I'll check it just to see :D thank ya

[zomboid]

Honestly that'd be lovely, thank you. I've dabbled in IRC channels before but never really stuck with me since I was more of an AIM/MSN messenger kid lol. My friends mostly have been using discord for gaming chat and sending book recs so maybe this coupled with a VOIP or something similiar will be the ticket.

oh, yes, i was also considering setting up my own Mumble server since it's also open-source! i was asking around some lounge hosters and it seems it generally takes up ~400mb of space so i'll need to see if a raspberry pi zero 2 would be capable of running thelounge AND mumble at the same time, or if i'll need to get my hands on another one to get it working!

i'm similarly super pissed about everything with discord lately - i can only assume you saw the survey they sent out, asking how people would feel about more ai features being implemented, and i was so upset about it all my responses were "i actively do not want this" and when they put in the short-answer segment i was straight up like "if discord implements more ai i am going to cancel my nitro and all of my server boosts i do not want ai in here ai sucks"

so i've been actively looking into the alternatives (and preferably the self-hostable and open-source alternatives) and As Of Now IRC & Mumble would probably be the best text/voice combination because Teamspeak is proprietary!

if you're desperate for an on-hand alternative to simply Get The Fuck Away from discord until my server is set up, i know that Stoat (previously known as Revolt) exists and has largely similar functionality to discord :) https://stoat.chat/

[Kissasta]

oh, yes, i was also considering setting up my own Mumble server since it's also open-source! i was asking ...
if you're desperate for an on-hand alternative to simply Get The Fuck Away from discord until my server is set up, i know that Stoat (previously known as Revolt) exists and has largely similar functionality to discord :) https://stoat.chat/

I had a friend mention Stoat with similar wording actually lol. I dropped my nitro after they doubled down on the ai bs and been using venkord/vesktop to circumvent some of the limitations in the meantime. Thank ya! 

[noahie]

I recently heard of Tincan and that seems pretty good. If you can get your friends on it, then it might be a good thing to use.

I also like XMPP, but there's not really a good client for it. I was using Gaijim, but it wasn't the best. I use Thunderbird as my XMPP client now, but only because it's in the same place as my email and RSS feeds.

A lot of people like Matrix but I haven't tried it. Same thing as Tincan, but Matrix is a lot more mainstream.

Regarding Discord's impending IPO, I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. The app is already enshittified to me and the only reason why I use it is because that's already where a lot of my friends are and if I were to try convincing them to move to an alternative platform, it would be met with deaf ears.

[CosmicRot]

In my opinion the app is already HEAVILY enshittified. Like It's only been going downhill the past 2 years really.. especially the more and more people use it as a replacement for forums or hosting info on websites discord starts leaning more and more into shitting the bed. It can only get worse, so I'm genuinely surprised anyone still pays for nitro they could just use vencord instead of giving money to discord.

I've heard decent things about stoat like mentioned but I couldn't get a single one of my friends to move to it.. I really miss discord from like 2017-18, and I used to love using skype and xatech and other such chatting stuff so it's sad to see how everything keeps going and I hope we can find a decently mainstream [enough so that people I know will use it] but it seems like people are so comfortable with familiarity and things being TRULY mainstream these days not as many people are willing to change or start over.

[lakes]

Someone mentioned IRC, but XMPP is another old protocol. Not as old as IRC (it's from the 2000s while IRC is from the 80s), but it's easier to use in my opinion. However research the server/website you're signing up with and its rules.

Another decentralized protocol that's more recent is Matrix. You should also research the website you're signing up with and its rules here too, but a lot of people just use matrix.org for their accounts.

As for what apps to use, I use Hexchat for IRC, Gajim for XMPP and Nheko for Matrix. But Element's the more popular and polished app for Matrix. So it's up to you.

Edit: I forgot to mention there's also this "cross-protocol" & cross platform app for instant messaging called Pidgin. It can use IRC, XMPP, Discord, Slack, Signal and Matrix.

[grubbyfox]

I've honestly never understood how XMPP works or what it is, lol.

From what I remember with ancient IRC /mIRC, is that you had a username but you didn't really have an account? Like you could just log in every day with whatever username you wanted, so anyone could pretend to be you? i dont remember but i know my friend just used her real first name, like..just a random first name that prob a million people already used and it was no problem? so yeah i always felt like, there was no real "user account" tied to you? Just an IP and a nick.

Anyway, there's also Hexchat but I always had issues with it. Half the time it just gave me a bunch of problems to deal with, lol.


There's Crosstalk for those that want that nice MSN feeling. I'd say it's better than Escargot (which imploded due to drama anyway, but the program still works.) Crosstalk's goal is for you to down the line be able to chat between programs like MSN, Yahoo and AIM (and maybe ICQ too? idk). So far I'm not sure how far they are with Yahoo/AIM, but you can download MSN from their website and it works. ^.^ Of course MSN is not the same as Discord if you want groupchats and channels and such. But to keep in touch, it's sooo nice.

As for a pure discord clone, I would say Matrix is the closest. Tho I haven't tried it myself.

If you want a groupchat but dont care about channels within a group etc, there's also Signal.

[lakes]

I've honestly never understood how XMPP works or what it is, lol.

The way XMPP works is that you sign up with a XMPP server/website and then you can chat with people & join group chats from other XMPP websites. So kinda like how Matrix works except the group chats can only have one channel or room.

[grubbyfox]

The way XMPP works is that you sign up with a XMPP server/website and then you can chat with people & join group chats from other XMPP websites. So kinda like how Matrix works except the group chats can only have one channel or room.

So it's not an actual program, you chat on websites? Is your account unique worldwide or like, to each server/site? Is the chat just like, how old web chat rooms were? So any chats are just gone when you close the browser?

[lakes]

So it's not an actual program, you chat on websites? Is your account unique worldwide or like, to each server/site? Is the chat just like, how old web chat rooms were? So any chats are just gone when you close the browser?

If you open whatever app you use XMPP, it will actually load messages from after you closed it. XMPP was made in 1999. I was able to find some that are still relatively active like an LGBTQ+ chat I found, but not as active as Discord or Matrix. Some of the other questions I don't have answers for. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

[virtualpet2001]

There's Crosstalk for those that want that nice MSN feeling. I'd say it's better than Escargot (which imploded due to drama anyway, but the program still works.) Crosstalk's goal is for you to down the line be able to chat between programs like MSN, Yahoo and AIM (and maybe ICQ too? idk). So far I'm not sure how far they are with Yahoo/AIM, but you can download MSN from their website and it works. ^.^ Of course MSN is not the same as Discord if you want groupchats and channels and such. But to keep in touch, it's sooo nice.

ooo i never heard of this...or that escargot had drama for that matter >_> definitely looks super cool though. ill share this to some of my oldweb friends

[grubbyfox]

ooo i never heard of this...or that escargot had drama for that matter >_> definitely looks super cool though. ill share this to some of my oldweb friends

Yeah, basically the people behind Escargot had over a long time kept asking for donations (fair), for upkeep. but they would often ask for quite large sums and now it seems that those donations may have been, well, we dont know... but it started feeling iffy. One day the entire discord was deleted and information was sparse, lost of drama and just overall weirdness.

This explains some of it

https://wink.messengergeek.com/t/nina-escargot-from-the-inside/26336

So yeah, now Escargot just gives me a bad taste in my mouth and Crosstalk seems like a better option.