I don’t really like discord, but my gaming group have been using it for rpg stuff. Chat channels, video calls and easy to setup bots have all been really useful.
But I get the feeling the enshitification is going to get worse, so I was looking for somewhere else to migrate to. The video stuff isn’t as important, we could switch easily to other services. But before I start a new campaign, and spend time setting up bots with routines for rolling dice and calculating tables, I’d like to do it somewhere that isn’t in talks for an IPO.
I’m not really up on stuff like this, so I don’t know if there’s some obvious similar choices or an alternative medium that I haven’t considered.
Features-wise, Guilded has all of the same features that discord has (and maybe slightly more).
I wrote a stupidly long “Introduction to Matrix/Element” comment for someone here recently. If you arent paranoid, then you can ignore the sections about not using and removing the web client session after account creation. Let me know if you have any trouble.
The comment in question: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/16768943
Matrix. But if you want something that looks and feels exactly like Discord, there is Revolt. It’s FOSS.
If only revolt added federation. Then I’d be behind it 100%
In the FAQ, they state that federation is not in their roadmap, but if someone can do it, then they are willing to merge it. Since Revolt is written in Rust, we can use Lemmy devs’ activitypub federation crate. I might take a look at it someday.
I’ve even thought about it, but I don’t know rust and right now just don’t have the time, but it seems like it’d be fairly simple. Matrix and revolt have a lot in common, it’s just translating between the two
Oh no like I meant using ActivityPub to federate between different Revolt instances or even other future software that might be an alternative to Discord and is federated using ActivityPub.
I think Element/Matrix could do the trick
At least that’s what I intend to do with some friends for our gaming sessions and daily mindless chat
I mean, our friend group still uses IRC. Go back to the roots, discord is merely a fancy IRC anyway. Quakenet is still up and running, working as smoothly as ever! (So at least one netsplit* a day… :D)
First i hear of this one, interesting, how far along is it?
Not sure tbh
Jabber, a.k.a. XMPP. It’s decentralized, featureful, standardized, and low on server resources.
Here’s a user’s guide I wrote.
https://contrapunctus.codeberg.page/the-quick-and-easy-guide-to-xmpp.html
If you want a different level of shitty platform, You could just move to a VTT like Roll20.
FoundryVTT or bust
Matrix.
Matrix? I think you can setup text channels and also do voice/video/screen sharing in the channels as well if you’re using element, though I havn’t been able to convince my friends to jump ship yet, so don’t know how it compares to discord
https://revolt.chat/ it is from UK and is GDPR compliant.
Remind me… is that the same UK that currently tries to force apple and google to include governement backdoors into their encryption?
Its open source and you could selfhost a server.
No need to use UK webspace.
I’ve never felt a desire to move off old-school IRC.
Funny enough, Skype is dead now, just like ICQ, MSN, and many others. But IRC is still alive. Decentralized protocols <3
Unfortunately, it’s only alive as long as you don’t close your client.
The community had solved this problem decades ago. Of course, bouncers, relays, and other solutions are not for everyone. But there are also modern web clients like https://thelounge.chat/ that always stay online. You can use them pretty much like discord for text chats.
I’ll be that guy in 2051.
Too soon, add 500 years.
There’s Revolt, if you’re happy being on an empty platform that none of your friends will ever move to.
Why this over matrix which has similar features, actual users, and is federated?
Revolt has better feature parity with discord.
If all you’re looking to do is replace discord with a friend-group who is already on board, it’s ideal.
For gaming-related use cases, matrix isn’t there yet. It doesn’t noise gate voice calls, or support audio chat rooms, just to mention a few things.
Never say never, once Discord goes IPO and the enshittification goes bad enough to annoy gamers Discord is fucked, and Revolt is a drop-in replacement, the fact that it can be self-hosted will also be a plus for some people, mass migrations are rare but they DO happen
Hah, that’s fine, because it would be for our group activity they’d be fine with making accounts. I never used discord to chat with people outside my small group of irl friends.
Oooh! This sounds like me!
