Would a fediverse alternative of Discord be possible?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨enchantedgoldapple@sopuli.xyz⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

There seems to be a serious lack of a Discord equivalent fediverse platform unlike other social media alternatives. Most of the closest options are either too overwhelming in UI/UX for majority of people coming from Discord, missing deal-breaking features like video calling or are not federated.

Could it due to some technical limitation of the ActivityPub protocol? I skimmed through its documentation and I get the impression that content may not be accommodating of instant messaging without unconventional modifications. It would also be troublesome to federate massive bunch of messages across (physical) servers in real time.

If it were truly possible to create a Discord alternative, what would it take to make it compatible with the fediverse while also ensuring it feels functional and intuitive for migrating users and not pose too much of a resource drain for self hosters?

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Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Isn’t that Matrix?

ActivityPub wouldn’t work because it’s not a messaging protocol. It’s a publishing protocol. The closest thing you have is Lemmy- where you have a server (instance) with channels (communities).

It’ll be easier to achieve something like this using SMTP (email protocol) than with ActivityPub.

Matrix and XMPP are your best bets (although XMPP doesn’t necessarily natively have video call, usually you’ll have an accompanying TURN server)

What you can do with email, xmpp and the fediverse is have the same username. It is possible for someone to make a platform which gives you one name and it accepts email, xmpp and fedi. Unfortunately, Matrix, for some strange reason uses the format of @name:server instead of the standard name@server (activitypub might use @name@server but that’s close enough and a lot of lemmy frontends don’t even care for the initial @. In reality that initial @ is probably just being used to ping them, now realising.)

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- RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Everyone complaining about matrix are just complaining about front end issues, they are absolutely fixable.
  
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- Skavau@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Matrix just isn’t up to it. It doesn’t function the same really. It doesn’t feel the same.
  
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  - SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    That might not be a bad thing. I hate Discord. That might come due to its usage though. It’s just not made to organize technical support.
    
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  - Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    In what ways?
    
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  - Grail@multiverse.soulism.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You can’t choose what order channels are in, for one thing
    
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- poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  although XMPP doesn’t necessarily natively have video call, usually you’ll have an accompanying TURN server
  
  The same is true for Matrix and the popular Ejabberd xmpp server has a Stun/Turn server built in, which makes it even easier to setup than what you have on Matrix.
  
  P.S.: Matrix also isn’t a messaging protocol. It is a distributed database protocol that has been abused for making a messenger with it.
  
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  - Blaze@piefed.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    P.S.: Matrix also isn’t a messaging protocol. It is a distributed database protocol that has been abused for making a messenger with it.
    
    Harsh, but true
    
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  - fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Right. This is why you CAN do video, audio, messaging, 3d object data, etc using the same backend servers. It does require some complexity on the dev side too because of that
    
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AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

too overwhelming in UI/UX for majority of people coming from Discord

Uhhh, Discord’s user experience is one of the most chaotic fever dreams I’ve ever come across, and is a large part of what makes me want to get away from it (among many other reasons).

One of the really frustrating things about Discord is that people are using it for things that it’s not good for. Like documentation, or really anything where a new reader is looking to find a persistent source of information. Chat should be good at chat, and wikis should be easily accessible on the open web - not in an obscure digital group that has to be joined to be seen.

It’s like when people start a business and then use facebook as their “site.” No that is not a site, and you know what, I don’t want to shop there anymore either. Same energy.

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lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Discord? UUUUGGHHHHH. For chat, XMPP already exists.

But overall, one of the issues of “why does an alternative to XYZ not exist?” is that usually, when we talk about those corporate jails, XYZ does too much for anyone to up and create a 1:1 alternative. This is valid both in and out the Fediverse. Discord is currently a chat platform, a video platform, a streaming platform, a documentation platform (ugggh), an issue tracker (UUUGHHH), an FBI / ICE honeypot, and a picture gallery.

For unreasonable people (the majority of the internet as it would seem), even lacking one of those features is somehow a “deal breaker”, when it actually makes perfect sense in terms of maintainability and independence to design and work up an alternative to characteristics such as chat or videos individually, rather than to platforms. Text chat? IRC / XMPP. Video calls? Jitsi. Picture gallery? phpgallery. Documentation? Wikis. Issue tracker? Forgejo / Chiselapp. ICE? Get Kirk’d.

So for people who create solutions for their own scale and usually without a profit or a means to operationally maintain the project, they are at a severe disadvantage that people won’t put up the effort to even learn there is an alternative. I’m guessing partly it’s because YT, TikTok and ChatGPT have turned people’s attention span to brainrot to such a degree they can’t follow a simple instruction pamphlet with pictures.

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- Skavau@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No-one wants to use these things at scale and the interconnectiveness between different instances on these things are just non-existent.
  
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gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If i understand correctly, Discord is a chat application for private and group chats. There is Matrix chat that works reasonably well as a replacement.

It’s decentralized, open source software, and i’ve used and tested it for at least a year now. It works well enough. It does not use the ActivityPub protocol though.

Mind that Matrix chat tends to private/group chats, which means they’re not typically visible to everyone else. Which means it would make little sense to try to embed them into the rest of the fediverse, which is openly accessible.

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bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
What about Matrix and XMPP?

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nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Just fyi there is matrix which is federated but it doesn’t use activity pub protocol and it’s not directly a drop in replacement discord. Voice/ video/ screen sharing aren’t quite on the same level as discord.

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julian@activitypub.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Discord has both private and public channels. I won't bother considering their threaded discussion offerings, because they're absolutely horrendous.

ActivityPub is primarily public. You have scoped visibility that enables things like private messaging, but there is no implementation that allows for federated private group discussions.

There are proposals and a few implementations, but they all rely on everybody else to implement the same proposal, otherwise messages leak out, and that defeats the entire assumption of the private group.

It's not an unsolvable problem, merely one that hasn't been successfully solved yet.

As for whether AP is a good fit... It'll work. At the end of the day you're exchanging messages. Whether they're long form or chat messages makes little difference.

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- gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I think the reason why Matrix doesn’t use AP is mostly to draw a clear line between public and private activity. Because if you use one protocol for both, the temptation is high to mix them and that leads to unclean implementations which leak messages. I think it should stay divided.
  
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artyom@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
It’s totally possible to make a true 1-1 competitor to Discord but no one has done it yet.

Nextcloud Talk is probably the closest thing with federation. But Nextcloud is notoriously complicated to host. And for some reason super unpopular outside of Europe.

Stoat (formerly Revolt) is very close, both in functionality and UI. But is not federated (and has no plans to) and for some reason not very popular. Also doesn’t come with the wealth of configuration and moderation tools that Discord does.

Matrix works but it’s super slow, bug-ridden, and complicated to use.

Zulip is similar but I’ve used it fairly extensively and still have no idea WTF is happening. Also not federated.

Of course there’s always IRC and whatever other ancient comms tools that still work fine but are very dated and lack functionality.

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- Skavau@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  The Stoat development cycle is really, really slow. This is why it’s just fallen away.
  
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- snowykitty@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  matrix is only slow if you use the synapse homeserver.
  
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  - artyom@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I don’t use the Synapse home server and it’s still very slow.
    
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- oeuf@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Nextcloud talk has federation?
  
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  - artyom@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    sho does
    
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Steve@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Is Discord social media? Social sure, but not media really. It always seemed to be more a live communication/chat app to me.

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- Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Many people use it as social media.
  
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  - julian@activitypub.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Except it's completely gated behind Discord corporate servers, unsearchable outside of Discord, and all ownership lies with... you guessed it, Discord.
    
    But oooh aah Nitro....
    
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  - gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    which tbh is a bad idea from the start
    
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Pamasich@kbin.earth ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There's actually shoot.

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captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I’ve barely ever used Discord, I’m not entirely sure I understand how it works, because individuals host their own servers? “Join my Discord server.” So, Discord as a business provides software and…user account brokerage? In terms of functionality, it does basically what an IM client/forum engine and Ventrilo did?

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- fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  A discord “sever” is a community space running on Discord’s servers. There are forum areas managed by the community owner, including permant voice/video channels, DMs and group chats are enabled through shared community involvement or direct friend requests but otherwise external to the communities management. Moderation is handled on per community basis barring servwr ToS violations.
  
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