this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Discord was already succumbing to enshitification. Now with their intention to be owned by Wall Street, that trajectory will certainly accelerate at warp speed once the change of hands happens.

Anyone already get ahead of this and find a solid alternative?

Right now I'm on the fence between Element for Matrix, and Revolt. Both seem to have their pros and cons and I can't find a clear "winner".

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[–] Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Not entirely related, but why do so many people use Discord? What's the appeal? I only ever used it as a replacement vor teamspeak or ventrilo. And I honestly hate most online games.

[–] pathief@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I've been using it for several years. I have a small server I use with my IRL friends and it works great.

  • Near 100% availabily
  • Nice sound quality
  • Supports multiple servers for your multiple interests
  • UI is amazing
  • Works fine on every platform
  • Screen sharing / streaming is easy
  • Cool to see what your friends are playing
  • Free plan is more than enough, you can pay for cosmetics or higher stream quality.
[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Yaky@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago

And Snikket for super-easy setup and management

[–] Kuvwert@lemm.ee 126 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Ah this is so exciting!

Discord 'existing' has held back development motivation on Foss Federated Communication alternatives.

When they go public only good things will happen for projects like matrix :)

I'm very excited!

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 33 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

Matrix is cool but it really suffers from complexity.

The spec is a mess because they keep expanding it.

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[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

mumble is great for VOIP.

Matrix seems interesting, but i think it might be a little bit too heavy handed, im not personally a fan of web tech, though there are other things like xmpp as well.

revolt is meh, apparently their dev team is hostile to self hosting, so there's that. There's also spacebar, which is a reverse engineered implementation of the discord API, could be interesting.

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[–] pory@lemmy.world 127 points 3 days ago (6 children)

it's Element/Matrix if we're lucky. Revolt is just another Discord - surely this single company will last! With Element/Matrix being an open protocol, it won't be a "platform" you have to leave when it goes corporate.

[–] kitnaht@lemmy.world 79 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (11 children)

Revolt is F/OSS

https://github.com/revoltchat/

It's not just a company with a clone of Discord, all the server back end, etc is open.

[–] renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 89 points 3 days ago (10 children)

Yes, which is good, but the lack of federation is a deal-breaker. It means that you either:

  1. Use their servers - This requires entrusting them with your communities, just like Discord.
  2. Host your own private instance - You can control it, but the lack of federation means it'll be isolated from communicating with other communities. This makes it really difficult to convince people to use your self-hosted servers.

Until Revolt adds a way for different instances to federate, Matrix is really the only other option.

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[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Time to dust off my old Mumble server!

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[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

if discord is going public they don't need my turbo sub anymore

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[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 24 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Matrix is the way. It's federated and you can have your own server.

[–] Forester@pawb.social 93 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (16 children)

Honestly, I am ready to go straight back to TeamSpeak.

I miss hosting my own server and having full access and control over it

I used to just host it on a piece of shit. 2003 Dell XP machine I put Ubuntu on

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[–] msage@programming.dev 10 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Way too few mentions of Jitsi.

I use it with friends, it has good server config, and I'm pushing it on businesses.

[–] nammi@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

they are owned by a Nasdaq-listed company. does that not the defeat the purpose when OP is trying to avoid Wall Street-ownership?

[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Discord is a completely proprietary walled-garden that bans third-party clients to maintain full control AND (soon) has Wall-Street-ownership.

Jitsi is open-source built with multiple open protocols BUT has Wall-Street-ownership.

Neither is great, but these are two distinctly different situations.

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

Just self-host it? It's open-source, that will last you a lifetime.

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[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

I've also been comparing Element and Revolt. Both seem really solid, both are open source and both are self-hostable. Hard to find any downsides there.

There's a discord server that me and a bunch of friends use as our main hangout. They've raised the prospect of bailing before things enshittify, and of course I've been tasked with pitching a replacement. For my money, Revolt is the way I'm going to go, specifically because it's basically a one for one clone of Discord. The people I'm pitching this to are a mix of technical and non-technical, so I think something that looks and feels like what they're used to will be the easiest transition.

It also feels like Element is geared pretty heavily towards being a replacement for Slack / Teams rather than a replacement for Discord. Their pitch seems a lot more focused on the enterprise market. Revolt seems more focused on gaming, casual hangout, that sort of thing.

I like Element a lot, but for me it doesn't feel like the right solution to this specific problem. But if I was pitching something to my work as a Teams replacement, Element is definitely the way I'd go.

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 23 points 2 days ago

Man I wish my online friends were that easy to switch.

As soon as I mention Lemmy "what's wrong with reddit". As soon as I mention element "but everyone uses whatsapp/discord".

It suck that 90% of the people are stuck in their old ways and refuse to try anything new.

Hell I almost got banned for even mentioning lemmy once.

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[–] Wolfizen@pawb.social 22 points 3 days ago
[–] shym3q@programming.dev 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I've started my self-hosting journey having Matrix in mind - especially the Matrix bridges to cut off the need to use social media clients like Discord.

Today, I'm slowly convicting my friends to join my instance. So far, that's just one of the closest ones (still win for me).

I hope one day decentralization in social media would take off!

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 days ago

I JUST managed to get my closest ring outside my family to join Signal.

We have a total of 7 people now.

I'd light up a server and host matrix/frendica/lemmy/mastodon/headscale in an instant if I thought I could get those 7 to join.

[–] xelar@lemmy.ml 20 points 3 days ago
[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)
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[–] MilitantAtheist@lemmy.world 49 points 3 days ago (9 children)

An alternative would need screen share, just voip is not enough any more.

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[–] assaultpotato@sh.itjust.works 42 points 3 days ago (9 children)

I'm running a Matrix server with a FB Messenger bridge via mautrix-meta and that makes it a clear winner. Half my group chats have migrated entirely since I've set my close friends up with accounts in my server and they also use the bridge. The fact that people can slowly migrate chats without losing messages or groups is killer for adoption imo.

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[–] crmsnbleyd@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Matrix is nice, and you can have jitsi for calls integrated. It seems to be pretty popular; Lemmy has a field for matrix @ in user profiles. Never heard of revolt before.

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