this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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there already exist discord clones like fluxer and stoat, but not a lot of people are there yet
I run a trans discord server for an IRL group. We've looked at alternatives for obvious reasons, but we're still on discord. All the alternatives we looked at come with some compromises. Often they lack some critical feature of discord. And while self hosting is great for an individual, it becomes a liability for a group as now that one individual has a great deal of responsibility and power over the rest of the group. And some alternatives are no where near as approachable as discord.
None of these problems are insurmountable, but they're also not something that is as easy to brush aside as a lot of tech enthusiasts claim. Our current stance in our group is that we'll stick with discord for now. If they start flagging our channel as adult content and demand ID to access it, at that point we'll select one of the alternatives. The drawbacks of the other platforms aren't deal breakers for us. But at present the hassle of discord's bullshit isn't enough for us to overcome the hassle of the alternatives and the transition. We're aware of alternatives and keeping them in our back pocket, but for now we're sticking with discord.
I'm no discord user so unlikely I will have an answer, but if you genuinely looking for help you should list what those critical features are (I mean the fact that those services don't have these features means they weren't critical for the devs that created them).
Ideally you could list service that was closest to what you want and the features that it was still missing.
I wouldn't say Stoat. Too many missing features. Fluxer doesn't have Federation or E2EE yet.
Sable currently is the best drop-in replacement for Discord.
Why does a Discord clone need federation?
Discord is about persistent text chat and non-persistent voice chat. The medium is way more limiting than a single server's hardware. Each virtual chat server only being on a single (maybe mirrored) physical server shouldn't be a problem.
The big thing that made Discord so popular is being able to make one account and join multiple communities, often about specific subjects. To use that exact same account to freely communicate, including direct messages, with members of these communities, and have one friend list attached to your account.
Only ways you can have this is either through centralisation or Federation. Centralisation has proven to be junk.