There is no truer adage to me than nothings is perfect. And when it comes to anything related to Discord it’s no different.
Discord itself to me has been an issue for years. Its use of data collection, the obsession of companies trying to buy it all were concerning. For me the latest age verification just further reinforces my beliefs. That being said the majority of users who ignored all this and kept going, really nothing would change. Most people I know use Discord lightly and aren’t in large chats that use hentai gifs. I still would tell anyone who would listen to get out of dodge. But if you never cared about data usage then you’re probably not going to start now.
For all the alternatives out there truth is, none are really anywhere near perfect. Matrix and most of its clients while encrypted don’t offer true jump in /jump out game chat. More a kin to Skype really. Foss Discord implementations like Spacebar are to all over the place and for me are not really functional. Stoat while probably my favorite is still really small and not holding up to the stress of the user influx. And of course it’s missing “discord features” and the new kid Fluxer while appealing is still to new and it’s monetization model a little to concerning. 300 bucks as a backer for unproven project ? And of course with the exception of Matrix none of the other projects currently offer encryption.
Truth is no option really is ideal. Truth is all the options have some pretty serious flaws. And truth is getting your large swaths of friends to move might be close to impossible.
So if you are looking to move please do some digging. Ask people who use the apps their opinions. Try to as a group of friends chose to make a move.
And the final truth is it’s a really good thing we finally have some options. No matter the flaws having competition brings innovation.
I hope this posts helps clear up some things for people who might be confused or concerned.
my solution is Zulip/XMPP/IRC/Jitsi, none of them can replace every functions of discord but they partially can and it seems like they’ll work for my use case.
The Movim client for XMPP can do all of those functions as a one-stop shop. It can even do screensharing with audio passthrough (though you need to use a chromium based browser to pass the application audio in the stream). I think it’s easily out best option right now.
thanks. i guess it’s as good as the other electron/web based clients on desktop, but on mobile is PWA okay to use? my phone is too old and suffers with everything but well optimized native apps, so my experience doesn’t match others’.
It’d be pretty easy to quickly test. If it runs okay in your phone’s browser, it’ll run okay as a PWA.
Alternatively, you could use a native XMPP mobile app, which would allow you to access the same servers and chats as you could from Movim. The only downside is that the mobile apps available are lagging behind Movim’s feature set. They can do 1 on 1 audio/video calls, but cannot yet join a group call or screenshare. Depending on your needs, that may or may not be adequate.
it runs like crap on my phone since it’s 12 years old. conversations.im works but it’s features can’t completely replace discord, at least for my friends.
Oh wow, I wasn’t expecting it to be that old. That’s actually quite impressive you’re able to keep it functioning that long, are you still able to get battery replacements?
Sucks that the PWA isn’t able to cut it. Perhaps you might have better luck with Fluxer when that releases a mobile app? (I think its only offering a PWA for now as well).
unfortunately i can’t get new batteries, the battery life isn’t good but it’s usable as i don’t really use my phone much. also have 6 replacable batteries that i carry sometimes.
for now my group will migrate to zulip and their app works on my phone, i was just trying to attempt xmpp too since it’s always great to have more options (and possibly setup xmpp as a backup to the zulip room with matterbridge on physically distant server)
That’s the other thing, everyone’s use case is slightly different, which honestly I’m kinda glad there are so many options for even if all of them have their flaws.
Just curiousity: why not Matrix?
the clients still feel extremely buggy to use and has poor ux, there are too many frictions overall. surely it works for some people, but it feels not optimal for me. i even tried it with a quite techie friend once and they had extremely bad experience with it that they’re now skeptical of any alternative chat systems i ask them to try out with…
For me it’s purely the voice chat issue. I rarely use chat rooms anymore. Arguably something like TeamSpeak would work just fine for me.