I have a anonymous IG to keep up with activist events. The dumb asses post their actions on Meta FIRST!!! I've already deleted or am in the process of deleting all META accounts and even though I use the Aluicord version of discord, it still has trackers. I never use discord. I enjoy Cleotri more. But I just straight up told people I'd be deleting them altogether. If they won't move off then they can hang themselves without me.

Can't speak to the other apps but I have like 6 or 7 Discord servers that I'm actively involved in and a half dozen others I use sporadically. Even if I got all my friends to switch apps for our group chat I'd still need Discord for the servers I use and I'd rather not juggle two apps that are doing the same thing (actually already doing this with Discord and a text group chat and it's annoying as fuck). Also, switch to what?

Asking people to leave things means they're losing a line of communication to friends, family, and interest groups who still use those things. It's probably more productive to ask people to add the services you prefer rather than leave the ones they're used to.

I've encountered some resistance from Americans who use iPhones and hate the idea of adding a third-party messaging app. None of them seem very interested in justifying that position.

For me it's Discord, I can't find a good enough self hosted alternative with all the features me and my friends want.

Imagine it's the 90s again, everyone has a phone number, but one person will only talk to you via ham radio. Same energy.

For communication, people will prefer what everyone is using, simply because it's easier to reach someone else. Herd behavior. You can try to get them in, but pressure will mean that it'll be you who will have to either give up and cave in to use Discord, Whatsapp, etc, or get removed from the talks for refusing to be where they want to.

I wish I could leave whatsapp, but it's a literal case of "everyone uses it" in Brazil. Even the short, justice mandated wpp blackouts couldn't keep people on telegram for more than 2 days.

Because on every occasion – at least in the case of Signal – they tried to switch, it was a far inferior experience for them, and the leadership behind the app/service took such puritanical decisions that it became evident that the ideology was more important than the people those tools were supposed to help/protect. I don't even bother asking my friends now. In fact, now, for me as well, those (Signal, Matrix, etc.) are just things collecting dust on my spare phone.

I less have an issue with people getting trapped in software they understand is insecure, and more with people who will push shit like telegram and pretend its the most private and secure thing ever invented. If they want to use discord, sure, fine with me. As long as they know not to do their activist work on discord I'm fine with it. People doing activist work/planning over telegram will never make me not cringe.

Signal isn't something I personally want to use, but its tolerable, and it was doing a good job of replacing telegram in activist spaces I felt, but I've recently seen a few different groups using telegram again because they don't trust signal.

xmpp with omemo is what I wish I could get people to use but uh, well, that just will never happen.

Networking effect

People use whatever is most popular even if its the shittest thing such as Facebook.

Only time people will care is when it personally and tangibly affects them.

For Facebook/whatsapp watomatic can be used to remind people you are leaving or such.

Yes, I understand. The annoying thing is that you end up with two or more apps for the same purpose. Mid-term, I think the only way to go is to go cold turkey at some moment, but it will costs you some friends and family contacts.

It's hard - give them a compelling reason to leave. I use Telegram, Signal, Discord and Session... Discord is rarely used - I use Telegram and Signal the most. Session is quite new.

But what we need is for someone like Mozilla to make a messaging app - someone with the users best interest at the heart, and who don't share anything with anyone else... And at a reasonable price... Privacy isn't free - if anyone should be in doubt.

The crux is that all the alternatives suck. I don't have a problem going App hopping, I just have a very hard time finding ones that don't fundamentally suck, and I am not talking about little implementation issue, but garbage like Signal that violates the GDPR, wants your phone number and is proud of it. Always grinds my gears when that gets celebrated as the "alternative". Same with the Fediverse, where user owns nothing and server operator controls everything, how again is that different from Reddit, Facebook and Co.?

Nostr and Tox seem ok so far, but really the amount of true alternatives that improve on the original in significant ways is pretty damn rare.

Discord is a hard one because it has some uniqueness to it.

It has bots, text channels, voice channels, and hundreds of thousands of people can join it if you need to.

A lot of my college clubs use it and there are a few thousand students in our biggest ones

Totally get you. It's why I roll my eyes anytime someone say "Be the change you want to see" as if I wasn't trying to and also getting a burntout from doing so. Easier said than done.

Sadly, people are simply just so comfortable with whatever massaging & social media app they used that trying out other alternatives is immediately dismissed as a inconvenient before they even tried it. And also we are so used to corporation taking so many of our data that some are just numbed about it and see it as a losing battle or they don't know how much valuable their information is which you often get the infamous "I got nothing to hide" BS.

I have got few my friends to use Signal when I was about to delete my Instagram. Still in contact with them which is a small victory for me.

I think the way we are trying to make technology sound sophisticated and our refusal to reinvent language makes technology become much less accessible than what they should be.

It's hard to get people to care about things. I've gotten a couple people to switch to signal (which I hope is good), but I have one holdout who keeps saying "ill switch later". I don't understand why "take 3 minutes to install signal" can't be done right now, but I'm not a mess of depression, anxiety, and debt, so I've just been giving them gentle reminders every so often.

Discord is fairly unique, there isn't really a replacement for it that works well.

I have the same issue, but got 2 Discord users to try Jitsi Meet with me (a friend of mine on my Snikket server invited her friend). After a while, her friend asked me why it looked so much alike Discord and my friend agreed. I gave them a big smile and said, "because this is awesome".

Jitsi Meet + Snikket has been my saves since I deleted my Discord account during the pandemic.

I convinced my friends to get Discord so we could communicate as a community without Facebook. Now I have figured out it is just as bad. I tried Matrix and couldn't figure out how to log in before I heard it's enshittification is underway.

I think for my friends it's just what we have been using for literally a decade since we were kids, combined with apathy towards privacy - although of my friends does use duckduckgo. I don't judge them for that since I've been pretty bad with privacy. I do worry if we get into more activism that we will need to secure our privacy

What are some good alternatives to discord?