this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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askchapo

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Asking because I value opinions here.

Personally I don't think anyone can influence what the general audience of chat users ultimately coalesces around. That's going to happen, and it's going to be out of anyone's control as people discuss and compare and decide which they prefer of the dozens of alternatives appearing.

This however looks interesting to me. I know it's not Matrix and thus not secure like everyone here wants. But it is fully open source and it is AGPLv3.

It feels like it's getting some traction and interest. If it has problems that anyone here can spot (besides the full encryption which isn't something the rest of the discord users looking to leave are going to demand), I am interested in hearing them.

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[โ€“] spectre@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Right that's the vibe I have too. I've heard deltachat is a decent replacement for self-hosted messaging.

Edit: after reading more about deltachat, it seems like it is pretty well suited to being Hexbear's main messenger instead of matrix, no? It is almost a Signal replacement where I don't need a phone number to sign up.

I might give it a go, but it sounds like it isn't a replacement for a heavy duty messenger like Discord/Slack, unforuntately.

[โ€“] Inui@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago

I would say it's more of an instant messenger replacement for something like Signal or WhatsApp. I migrated all my family to it from Signal. I mostly brought it up to mention that it really seems like the Matrix developers are bad at their jobs when other apps are out there that don't have the UI and encryption problems Matrix has.