this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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Escape the Discord IPO (fedia.io)
submitted 1 day ago by daskye@fedia.io to c/degoogle@discuss.tchncs.de
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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm sorry, but signal is absolutely not discord replacement. It covers maybe a third of what discord does well. It's a features issue.

Revolt is the closest in terms of ui and function, with matrix being slightly closer than signal in terms of working the way a discord user might expect, but still not as close as revolt.

Heck, teamspeak and mumble both have android apps, and would likely be better than signal specifically for gaming and casual chats. Since desktop signal can be iffy, at least those options cover three out of four platforms (no idea if there's iOS/mac apps or not). Disclaimer is that I've never used either on Linux, just know that they have options for it.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think it's the non-"gamer" crowd that always suggest things like Signal and Matrix as alternatives to Discord. If you only use Discord for calls and private messages, then yeah then perhaps Signal could work. Discord is a platform of communties, with chat channels, voice channels, activities, screen share, the lot.

There's no direct competitor at the moment, something like going back to Teamspeak could fill the space, but it is more of a self-host platform that will be harder to gain take up on.

Revolt is an open-source alternative that would probably serve as the best right now, a simple sign up and it's exactly like Discord, just missing features that would surely get built quickly with people migrating and helping out.

I think something like Revolt, but with federation added for self-hosting servers would be ideal.

[–] daskye@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bit of an assumption there... I use Discord primarily for games :)

However, I hop on a mumble call for talking to friends while gaming nowadays

[–] warm@kbin.earth 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Of course it's an assumption, hence the "I think". I could swap to another service easily, the only real things I want is voice, text and screen share. I don't care about the community aspect, I'd like to see the return of forums for that! But alas, my friends use it as a community space too, participating in multiple servers, so it's not easy to convince them to switch at all. Discord has dug it's nails in deep, consolodating communities to a single space and it sucks.

I just don't agree Signal/Matrix offer any sort of alternative product for the masses of Discord, but keep seeing them suggested.

[–] daskye@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago

My goal isn't to ask people to swap, it's to get myself into a position where I'm using Discord less.

Some friends will use Signal if you ask them to, and not even leave Discord. I asked all my friends to use Signal/Matrix to talk to me, and some did. This allows me to not use Discord as much.

[–] daskye@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago

Hi! This post I made was to give some people the pros and cons of alternative chatting applications.

Personally, me and quite a few of my friends have a Discord server we chat on with many different channels and their respective topics. We also have Discord bots and voice channels. We recently did an experiment as a server to try branching out to various different alternative chat applications like Matrix, Signal, XMPP, and we even tried Revolt at some point.

We found that, even though Signal doesn't have feature parity, that's the chatting application that we all gravitated to. Some gravitated more to Matrix, which has more feature parity with Discord, but I guess we ended up not really needing all of the features that Discord offers to achieve what we wanted (a community of people who like talking to eachother). We went from a Discord server with many channels, voice channels, and bots, to a single group chat that is now feeling refreshingly active.

So when I list it here as an alternative, keep in mind that for many people, it can be if a community thinks they like it.

Either way, the point of my graphic that I made was to give people some perspective on the landscape of chatting applications that might fit their needs if they currently use Discord. For a lot of users and communities, Signal might, which is why I included it.

I personally also use Mumble to talk to my friends alongside Signal/Matrix. Mumble is great for voice chat, and since I self host it, it's not as prone to being down in a way that I can't investigate and fix. I totally recommend it for voice chats.

And finally, I find the Signal app perfectly serviceable and fits my needs :)

[–] mydude@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Revolt.io seems like it could replace discord when it's out of beta.

[–] daskye@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Maaybe but it's not got any way to have an encrypted DM and the development is also pretty slow. The devs don't seem interested much in supporting the self hosting aspect of it either.

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

The devs don't seem interested much in supporting the self hosting aspect of it either.

And federation. Basically Discord 2.0

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

And I've had a look at the project every now and then. And all the special Discord features like voice chat (which would set it apart from the plethora of other text chat solutions with groups/channels) seem to lack features or are a bit buggy. It's a bit sad, because the project does look nice and promising. But I don't think this project is going to take off in the near future.

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

What about https://spacebar.chat/ then?

[–] daskye@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

This is a very early beta project and half the functionality is buggy

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Also wanted to mention this. Though their FAQ says there is no support for voice or video features. And I've seen a lot of people ask for this in a Discord alternative, since we already have a lot or text chat platforms.

[–] Dezorian@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That domain isn't in use (yet?)

[–] daskye@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago

It's actually revolt.chat

[–] daskye@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I know this isn't DeGoogle but let's be honest, Discord is just as bad at this point.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

... it is?

[–] daskye@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I meant my post

[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago

I meant Discord.

[–] SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Mumble and Teamspeak come to mind as well. Mumble as the open source option seems better, but I haven't used it yet.

[–] daskye@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

Mumble is great for voice calls! I use it for that, but it's not amazing for chatting, which is what I use Signal or Matrix for

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Signal has "desktop" support. Though it still needs a phone. Good graphic tho.

[–] daskye@fedia.io 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes I did mention you need your phone number to register

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Sorry i missed that. Cheers

[–] idyllic_optimism@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago

Last time (a few months ago) when I searched for a discord alternative, screen sharing function alternatives couldn't even come close to what it is offering, sadly. I've been ready to jump ship for some time. Used Steam voice chat as a quick replacement, since almost all my friends who are on Discord are also on Steam.