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Current situation on FOSS Discord replacements? (beehaw.org)

submitted 8 months ago by jherazob@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

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A couple weeks ago Discord announced their plans to go down the IPO route. This means that there is now a ticking clock until the platform goes full-on enshittified like so many others before them.

Last time i checked last year there weren't many options to migrate to, mostly Matrix communities (which are not quite the same thing) and Revolt Chat (which is a non-federated but FOSS and self-hostable drop-in replacement for Discord). Revolt sounds like the logical route as it's clearly designed for just this exact role, but it seems it's still early in development and not yet ready for the average Discord user (looks like the voice functions in particular are still in development)

Has this changed or improved since then? I feel like the use case of "IRC servers, but modern!" should have been solved years ago but feels like it hasn't, i have lots of non-technical people who heavily use Discord who I'd love to rescue from it before it starts actively burning, a replacement that isn't complicated and has all it's features would be welcome.

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[–] powermaker450@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

the most "drop-in" replacements I know of aimed towards users (not companies) are

Matrix + Element Client: Supports E2EE and voice + video chat, it works very well, but the onboarding experience of federated platforms is still confusing for some, and along with that they have to change knowledge of guild/channel type chats to space/room. I don't use this.
Tailchat: Very similar experience to Discord while not being it. It's functionality is extended through plugins. Integrating all the services I use into one app is not as bad of an idea as it sounds, and I like the implementation very much, as do my friends. That being said, it's, very bare-bones in it's current state, and not much you can add through said plugins besides voice + video chat and bots. This is what I use right now.
Spacebarchat: Very very alpha, but the end goal is very promising, that being complete backend compatibility with anything designed for Discord. The official client will not be finished anytime soon, so you have to bring your own Discord-compatible client and modify the endpoints to connect to and get any major use out of a Spacebar instance. Voice and Video chat still isn't there yet, but most all other things work as expected. I keep my eye on it, and will probably use it later on in it's more finished stages.