I really hope indie developers will start moving off Discord. I always really disliked their UI, but it's becoming clear that Discord is not viable in the long-term.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Enshitification ensues.
If you're looking for an alternative: https://revolt.chat/
Or Matrix. Lots of clients, all kind of meh, but it's federated, and has e2ee.
Is just setting up a matrix.org account fine or should I like find anotherone/Selfhost?
I'm personally on matrix.org, but it's like with Lemmy. It's federated so you can do as you please. I think self-hosting requires a decent amount of resources, but I haven't looked into it all that deeply.
You can self host on a PC or VM with as little as 1GB RAM and 1 CPU core (although you'll want closer to 4GB RAM and 2 cores if you join really large public rooms, since it takes more resources to talk to hundreds/thousands of other instances). Fairly easy to stand up too, if you use something like this ansible script.
That’s not so bad! Thanks for the info.
desperately needs screen sharing. it's basically the only reason me and my friends use discord still.
Not only that but noise cancelation Discord use sounds better according to my friends.
Sadly, it does. I hate fucking discord since I've started using it, the quirky facade and everything. We use it as webrtc and I would gladly drop it for anything less clown shoes, but the noise cancelation just works.
Element already has screensharing.
element feels very difficult to use in my opinion. screensharing is the perfect example, because you need to first initiate a video call by first choosing between two types of video calls. one type is video chat only the other has extra features like screensharing that aren't in any sort of tooltip. then you most likely will want to turn off your camera, and so does everyone else, then you need to click the screenshare button and there you go. i forgot to mention this all needs to be done with someone as you can't screenshare to a lobby, it needs to be part of a video call.
there are other things i dont like, such as the fact that on android i cannot adjust the volume of a specific persons voice while on a call with them (or at all as far as i can tell), and adjusting the volume on my phone doesn't affect the call volume either it is always max requiring me to hold my thumb partially over the speaker to keep my ears from ringing when talking this loud people. i also find that notifications especially for phone calls don't work well, and if 2 people try to initiate a call at the same moment it will not register either until you completely close the app and restart.
signing up and logging in, especially on multiple devices is quite annoying as you need to set up so many security features, which aren't necessary for those of us who aren't super concerned about the privacy of our gaming chats. it's very frustrating to not be able to see your past messages when switching from one device to the other without dealIng with all the encryption settinga first.
discord, for all it's flaws, for the most part nails all the basic functions right out of the box. me, my friends regardless of tech savyness, and even my parents who are approaching 70 years old can use it just fine.
I'll disagree with it being too complicated, I've successfully managed to move my gaming community over, friends and even some family members, and response has been favorable over the past year (we had another attempt in late 2022 early 2023, but that didn't go well, so it's come a long way), and know of other similar situations from other HomeServers.
But I agree it needs some improvements and currently has some quirks, but all these are actively being worked on. From personal experience even those quirks are generally accepted however, when confronted with the sad reality of what is sacrificed by users using platforms like Discord. But one step at a time.
Edit: Forgot to add - You can screenshare without being on a call, it's currently in testing and works well but can be activated under Labs (Settings).
The problem is, I am using Discord because that's where the communities I'm part of are. We already use other tools in my friend groups.
For everything else I can use Discord or I can leave the community, and that's a far worse outcome.
Came here to ask for an alternative, so thanks. I didn't have Revolt in my open source/federated alternatives list. But I've added it now.
Any advice on how to move a server over to a matrix/element based setup?
I have a feeling there will be resistance to change, because many of the core people there seem to be discord fans and are longtime users.
I have a feeling there will be resistance to change, because many of the core people there seem to be discord fans and are longtime users.
I only use it (discord) if I really have to now, been encouraging my friends/peers to contact me on matrix if anything, which hopefully pushes the user base.
Already moved my community to Matrix/Element last year. Haven't looked back.
Lol, they want to go public in this disastrous economy.
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