With the recent news about discord asking for face or ID scan, what other alternatives are there that we can recommend to our less tech-savvy friends?

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
    601·
    1 day ago

    Looked around for a while now, these are the alternatives I found.

    • Zulip: More like a Slack alternative for an organization/team/group, can be self hosted, seems to be pretty mature and well made. Has good client apps. No screen sharing/voice chat.
    • Stoat: Seems to be mostly similar to Discord, doesn’t seem mature though, self hosting documentation doesn’t seem refined, could be okay if you use their server, not sure about mobile apps
    • Spacebar: 1:1 Discord clone, voice chat features seem to be incomplete but seems pretty good otherwise, I tried to install their server but it doesn’t run for me…
    • Matrix: Feature complete, but kinda buggy, may work well enough for some but my friends complained for poor UX
    • Mattermost: Gotta self host or pay, there seems to be some weird limitation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861331 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46594673
    • IRC: maybe not for non-techies, but IRCv3 has some “modern” features and Goguma(Android)/TheLounge(Web) looks quite decent
    • XMPP: Seems like it should be good, but I’m having trouble setting it up so can’t tell
    • Tailchat: UI looks just like Discord, but I just heard of it now so haven’t tried
      • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
        3·
        3 hours ago

        same, i see IRCv3 is pretty good on paper. it’s pretty hard to find and configure it to work like discord with persistent history and file uploads though… would be nice if i can convince my friends to switch over.

    • redsand@infosec.pub
      81·
      9 hours ago

      I’m downvoting everyone who suggests stoat because it means you haven’t tried your recommendations or looked at git.

      Jitsi, Matrix, Simplex and Mumble all work well.

      For matrix use one of the newer clients like element X or schildi next.

      Simplex is the most secure but also newest and least optimized / mature.

      • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
        1·
        3 hours ago

        i agree it’s very in beta state but i’ve known them since revolt days and tried it numerous times. it could work for some people that only needs basic chat and discord-ish UI. haven’t tried simplex or mumble, i agree jitsi works well but the UI is not like discord (idc but my friends do), matrix is too buggy but could be fine if it actually works.

        edit: i’m looking at zulip rn as the discord replacement for my friend group, since it has native ios/android apps and such. the only problem is the lack of voice chat/screen sharing. there’s kinda jitsi integration (button to create meeting link) but it’s not as well integrated as discord though. (on discord, one can see on the channel list if there’s someone in voice chat and if their mic is on, screen’s being shared, etc)

    • naught@sh.itjust.works
      24·
      1 day ago

      Ive spent hours configuring stoat and spacebar and I have to say they are absolutely not ready for self hosting. They also lack vital features my friends and I use, like high quality screensharing or video.

      I’m trying my hand at matrix, but it’s rife with problems too. If you want high throughput video, you need to set up Jitsi alongside. I haven’t been having a good time.

    • loanrangerofpeanuts@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 day ago

      I did the same search today and found out that teamspeak just got updated to a more “modern” UI and feature set. While it is still proprietary software, it’s more feature complete than a lot of the other FOSS alternatives.