Can you? Can I? Best I understand it’s a world of pain. If there was a clear winner in the discord-a-like OSS race all these alternatives wouldn’t be coming out of the woodwork. Maybe it’s matrix (with an actually good client, proper decentralization, easy containers), maybe stoat, maybe … I’ve always hated discord anyway and have little need currently, I can wait.
The problem is that there are very few people who are familiar enough with both Discord and Matrix to give a meaningful answer.
Personally, I use both, but for completely different use cases. I do not understand how one could be used as a substitute for the other. Perhaps I’m missing something, or perhaps everyone who thinks Matrix is a good substitute for Discord just don’t use Discord very much.
If you have a small group of friends who occasionally hang out in chat, sure, Matrix is fine. If you’re in dozens of Discord servers, each with dozens (or even hundreds) of channels, and hundreds or thousands of users, no. At least, not with Element. Perhaps there’s a better client out there for that?
This is spot on. Discord and Matrix are, IMO, quite different. Matrix is more like Slack or Teams. You can do voice and video calls, if you configure it to do so, but it isn’t like Discord in that regard at all. If you don’t use Discord for that and mostly just chat with your friends then sure, but you have a lot of choices in that case.
Perhaps I’m missing something, or perhaps everyone who thinks Matrix is a good substitute for Discord just don’t use Discord very much.
Seems likely, certainly Matrix has some pretty evangelical supporters. I think you nailed it with discord being more useful for mid sized numbers and having a client that handles it pretty well. I’d also add pretty painless onboarding. An OSS offering that matched it’s primary features (and has E2EE) or has a good framework, roadmap and people to get there would come in pretty clutch as discord goes public and starts monetizing everything in sight. A million (or thousands) independent FOSS ‘discords’ in the night would be a sweet sight.
Normally my policy is “E2EE or GTFO”, but the concept only applies to a subset of Discord use cases. A good Discord alternative needs to handle the same variety of use cases as Discord.
E2EE for a public forum makes no sense. Lemmy doesn’t have E2EE either, obviously. That’s an absurd idea.
Discord is mostly used for public or semi-public spaces. I’m in Discord servers for some of my favorite games and game studios, for example. The only barrier to entry is clicking a link, which is usually publicly advertised. I’m also in some semi-public Discords that are locked behind a membership of some sort (like Patreon), but those are still full of an arbitrary number of people I do not know. It’s not a private space. E2EE would be counterproductive.
That said, I have a few friends who habitually DM me on Discord, and I’m like “dude, I know you have Signal. Use it FFS”. One thing I like about Lemmy is that when you go to send a DM, it literally warns you against using it for DMs:
Warning: Private messages in Lemmy are not secure. Please create an account on Element.io for secure messaging.
I admit i mostly use matrix as an instant messenger, but it works fine for when i need comms with my friends while gaming or when i want to share my screen for something. Sure it still has some jank to it, but if you look at how janky it used to be even just a year ago, the trajectory is pretty clear to me.
I havent used discord for like 8 years, because i simply dont need all the random features that discord has, but maybe thats just me.
Fair cop, sounds useful, and I have used it in the past for similar. I was however looking at it in the context of Selfhosted.
its being used basically everywhere at this point. Government, healthcare, military, university, private industry, schools, etc.
True, and I have good hopes for it, partly because of the adoption, you will however note the scale of your examples, basically it’s an IT department project rather than a set and forget selfhosted container (I recognize there’ll always be moderation to do). We shall see, I’m in no hurry.
I have, and am, selfhosting Matrix, and it isn’t that big of a deal if you’re someone that, you know , self hosts things. That is just outside of what most people can or are willing to do. That’s totally fine, but finding a FOSS platform that will host a VoIP/video server for you and not try to monetize you is almost certainly going to be rare or short lived.
I see. I havent selfhosted any matrix servers yet, so i havent looked into it too much. I know that there are a few server implementations besides synapse that are mature and stable (and supposedly much more resource efficient) and they do support docker deployment.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Can you? Can I? Best I understand it’s a world of pain. If there was a clear winner in the discord-a-like OSS race all these alternatives wouldn’t be coming out of the woodwork. Maybe it’s matrix (with an actually good client, proper decentralization, easy containers), maybe stoat, maybe … I’ve always hated discord anyway and have little need currently, I can wait.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
The problem is that there are very few people who are familiar enough with both Discord and Matrix to give a meaningful answer.
Personally, I use both, but for completely different use cases. I do not understand how one could be used as a substitute for the other. Perhaps I’m missing something, or perhaps everyone who thinks Matrix is a good substitute for Discord just don’t use Discord very much.
If you have a small group of friends who occasionally hang out in chat, sure, Matrix is fine. If you’re in dozens of Discord servers, each with dozens (or even hundreds) of channels, and hundreds or thousands of users, no. At least, not with Element. Perhaps there’s a better client out there for that?
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
This is spot on. Discord and Matrix are, IMO, quite different. Matrix is more like Slack or Teams. You can do voice and video calls, if you configure it to do so, but it isn’t like Discord in that regard at all. If you don’t use Discord for that and mostly just chat with your friends then sure, but you have a lot of choices in that case.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
Seems likely, certainly Matrix has some pretty evangelical supporters. I think you nailed it with discord being more useful for mid sized numbers and having a client that handles it pretty well. I’d also add pretty painless onboarding. An OSS offering that matched it’s primary features (and has E2EE) or has a good framework, roadmap and people to get there would come in pretty clutch as discord goes public and starts monetizing everything in sight. A million (or thousands) independent FOSS ‘discords’ in the night would be a sweet sight.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
Normally my policy is “E2EE or GTFO”, but the concept only applies to a subset of Discord use cases. A good Discord alternative needs to handle the same variety of use cases as Discord.
E2EE for a public forum makes no sense. Lemmy doesn’t have E2EE either, obviously. That’s an absurd idea.
Discord is mostly used for public or semi-public spaces. I’m in Discord servers for some of my favorite games and game studios, for example. The only barrier to entry is clicking a link, which is usually publicly advertised. I’m also in some semi-public Discords that are locked behind a membership of some sort (like Patreon), but those are still full of an arbitrary number of people I do not know. It’s not a private space. E2EE would be counterproductive.
That said, I have a few friends who habitually DM me on Discord, and I’m like “dude, I know you have Signal. Use it FFS”. One thing I like about Lemmy is that when you go to send a DM, it literally warns you against using it for DMs:
B0rax@feddit.org 1 month ago
Sure, pick a server (like you did for Lemmy) and register. Choose any of the supported apps and start.
matrix.org/try-matrix/
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Yah, did so long ago. Comment still stands. We are in Selfhosted…
B0rax@feddit.org 1 month ago
You didn’t selfhost your Lemmy instance…
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
I admit i mostly use matrix as an instant messenger, but it works fine for when i need comms with my friends while gaming or when i want to share my screen for something. Sure it still has some jank to it, but if you look at how janky it used to be even just a year ago, the trajectory is pretty clear to me.
I havent used discord for like 8 years, because i simply dont need all the random features that discord has, but maybe thats just me.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Fair cop, sounds useful, and I have used it in the past for similar. I was however looking at it in the context of Selfhosted.
True, and I have good hopes for it, partly because of the adoption, you will however note the scale of your examples, basically it’s an IT department project rather than a set and forget selfhosted container (I recognize there’ll always be moderation to do). We shall see, I’m in no hurry.
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
I have, and am, selfhosting Matrix, and it isn’t that big of a deal if you’re someone that, you know , self hosts things. That is just outside of what most people can or are willing to do. That’s totally fine, but finding a FOSS platform that will host a VoIP/video server for you and not try to monetize you is almost certainly going to be rare or short lived.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
I see. I havent selfhosted any matrix servers yet, so i havent looked into it too much. I know that there are a few server implementations besides synapse that are mature and stable (and supposedly much more resource efficient) and they do support docker deployment.
forgejo.ellis.link/continuwuation/continuwuity
github.com/matrix-construct/tuwunel