Alternatives
Stoat chat is still and likely always will be a flaming pile of mismanaged trash.
Matrix doesn’t actually support the features people actually use discord for. It’s a great alterative to teams or business communications but as a discord alterative it’s fucking awful.
I see rocket chat is used by the US Army and Air Force.
Not sure how secure that is.
I looked in stoat’s issue tracker and there is an issue asking for video chat which is 5 years old and still open. Safe to say it’s a dead project.
Matrix is mature enough, and has a better philosophy. Just the best choice atm.
If I understand correctly, they recently rebuilt all of the voice/video stuff. Video should be coming soon, it’s more of a resourcing issue for their servers.
I looked at self hosting, but it’s a bit of a mess currently.
Teamspeak, Mumble? These were popular for gaming communities, not sure what happened to those
rainbowbunny@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Keep in mind everyone that Stoat still doesn’t currently protect it’s users information and is centralized. It doesn’t use encryption but it is very seamless.
You can host your own Stoat instance but it doesn’t communicate with the main one.
The devs have said they plan to add more security features in the future yet still don’t make it a priority. The host of Stoat should be able to see everyone’s messages, including in DM’s, due to the lack of E2E encryption.
Once they add more security features I imagine they will be much more popular in general.
SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
In my view, security isn’t a feature, it’s a design choice.
I have no ill wishes towards Stoat, but I’ve never seen a developer convincingly implement security after the fact.