There’s been quite a bit of…unsettlement (totally a word) regarding the news that Discord has a new CEO and the company is going public (typically a sign of things going shittier than before).
I’d just like to re-post this which I shared some time ago, if you’ll indulge me in my rare post which isn’t a Steam Deck / Gaming News # post - a rarity for me.
In the end, this is not the be-all-and-end-all alternative, it won’t be for everyone. Matrix exists of course. But this is a nice place. And I thought considering recent events I’d recommend it regardless!
Following is just a copy of what I posted last time. It’s mostly Linux chat, gaming, handhelds (like the Steam Deck), movies and…general chats. Anyway, here’s the post:
So…this one is a bit left-of-field.
A friend of mine (Gardiner Bryant of YouTube - who reports on Linux and the Steam Deck) has started a Revolt server.
What is Revolt?
It’s kinda like a FOSS alternative to Discord. You’ll see the layout is almost a direct copy, and it’s far less polished…but then again you haven’t got the downsides of Discord’s constant upselling either:
Why is this relevant?
…I can hear you ask? Well, so far its just a few developers and creators in there, but I thought of all spaces…maybe those very devs and creators whose work you use and watch…well it might be nice to join in there?
My personal friends who are in here so far are:
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imLinguin whose GitHub is here - but you may know most as a developer of Heroic Games Launcher
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Lazorne whose project is RetroDECK - my personal fav emulation option for the Steam Deck
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Eben Bruyns whose GitHub is here - but you may know best as the dev of Junk-Store
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Kyle Gospo whose project is Bazzite
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Gardiner himself, of course whose YouTube link is here,
What is the damn link to the damn server, woman?
I mean, you will have to make an account on Revolt, but it might be interesting to some here. You’re all very welcome!
If Discord is going to be abandoned by people, I wish we’d go back to proper forums that’s much more accessible and searchable. Continuing down this road is just going to lead to the continued burying of useful information behind these services.
I think there’s room for both, as in the old days there was typically an IRC channel along side forums that was typically a secondary channel (but not always).
But yeah, forums would be ideal, preferably with federation support so there is no need to make an account with every single one.
Well, you see IRC and forums went together because they filled two different needs and we understood that back in the day.
IRC was for chatting, short, quick real time communication that would be lost to the ether as soon as you signed off, unless you had a bouncer or log bot.
Forums were for long information, be that long posts or posts that needed to endure for a long time. Sure you’d get some one liner responses to those posts, but forums were not at all instant like IRC. Though the information did stay much longer, and was much more searchable and organized.
Discord has spoiled us, being quick and chatty while also allowing for longer posts and being searchable. At least within the Discord client. Shoot they even added those “forum” channels to replicate the old forum feel. But real time.
discord is not a forum (even if they want it to be with the forum channels), its never been a good location to store information. That being said, its amazing for real time communication unlike forums. I hate that devs use it for FAQ and bug forms and stuff. I stopped reporting bugs if it requires me to join a discord.
Forums are just not great for real-time interaction like discord chat is, not to mention the integration of voice chat, video streaming, etc is just too convenient to give up without replacing it with something similar. I too wish discord/whatever replacement gets attention was more searchable and kept stuff long-term, but… if you want to post info that lasts, post it on lemme and link it on discord or whatever.
True, but I can’t help having nostalgia for ye olde forum days.
Edit: Not sure why I keep being downvoted. I never said forums would replace anything. I was merely acknowledging my nostalgia for old forum boards from a now bygone era. Didn’t realize having fond memories of a time period on the Internet was a bad thing. Jesus.
Fair enough.
I kinda don’t though. I quite enjoy real-time chat and voice and video with friends. It’s not like forums don’t exist at all anymore tho - you’re on one right now. I get my forum experience from places like reddit or lemmy, and I use them for very different things, so I’m glad both exist.
Reasonable, but you’d be fooling yourself to act as if forums will meaningfully replace Discord for most users.
We need both for different purposes. Discord is amazing for voice, video, and IM chatting. All things that happen in real-time. But forums are intended for a vastly different use case. Forums are play-by-post. They’re asynchronous. They’re meant for responding at your earliest convenience, not for talking to someone right now. The fact that so many people began using Discord as a forum replacement is a travesty, because Discord is a fucking atrocious medium for forums… Not due to any fault of Discord’s, but because they’re completely different use cases.
You’re on a forum right now, no? I think a lot of Discords have accompanying Reddits and vice versa, hopefully they start using Lemmy. But forums are still popular. Just not Ye Olde BBS
Revolt isn’t federated, encrypted, has no video chat, claims privacy but that claim seems to be simply because they are based in Europe. The layout is nice and ui is better than element but that’s the only upside i see. I hate the matrix client ui’s and chat sorting options.
Exactly. I wish they would have just built a great UI on top of Matrix or even XMPP, but they insisted on doing it this way. None of my friends want to switch to something that they’re boxed-in with, they don’t want an app just for one server. Matrix is the only option we have, but all of the UIs are… meh.
Yeah, they kinda screwed up Element with combining mobile and desktop features into one app. The first time I tried creating a call on desktop, it was suddenly apparent how confusing they had made it, because you can do it in multiple ways (normal calls & conference calls).
There are other UIs that look very nice, but sadly don’t support voice chat. Hopefully these other clients can catch up, but it’ll likely take a while.
So, I briefly tried out Matrix some four years ago and left because it was utter trash and from what I gather from your comment it is still pretty much trash now. But despite there not being a single usable client, people still try to convince everyone that Matrix, by some obscrure metric, is superior to all other chat programs.
Sorry to say, but a chat protocol on its own is a tech demo at best and as long as there isn’t a single feature complete and usable client, it’s an alternative for no one except hardcore tech enthusiasts.
When I last used Matrix/Elements I had to deal with “lost keys” issues multiple times in just two months. This issue is a dealbreaker if it happens just once in a year and apparently, it’s still a semi regular problem for some of my friends.
Just accept it, Matrix will never be a replacement for Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram or even just Microsoft Teams.
Also, revolt self hosting is broken. The web call functionality (WebRTC) is being rewritten but that effort is stale and out of the box it simply does not work. There is no real documentation about this either. It just won’t work and you need to invest a lot of effort to figure out why. The moment self hosting properly works, I’ll give it another shot. Not being able to connect without a fat client is a show stopper for me. There’s no way I can get enough traction for my groups if the barrier to switch is higher than a sheet of paper.
When self hosting all the shortcomings you mentioned are perfectly acceptable for me.
Revolt hasn’t added federation because it can be a major complexity increase in the codebase, but apparently they might be allowing instance owners to integrate polyproto support (polyproto is a work-in-progress federated chat system). If you want a discord like interface for Matrix, Cinny exists. I personally prefer revolt in some ways as Matrix feels like it doesn’t fit the use case for discord as well.
Cinny hates me. Failed to load module xapp-gtk3-module and then unable to complete frame buffer.
Screenshots look nice though!
Saying that the client is FOSS, but the server is proprietary, I like saying you have a chastity belt - with a ventilation hole in the back.
You finna get effed in the a.
In addition to the mentions that this isn’t encrypted, doesn’t have video chat, etc, it’s also difficult to set up with little documentation and an enormous tech stack. They also had some recent controversy about open source licensing that gives me a bit of worry. I decided to go with a self-hosted synapse server.
I really hope indie gamedevs start moving off Discord. Sometimes it’s the only source for finding help or reporting bugs.
Yeah, and it’s doubly infuriating because Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. It isn’t searchable via search engines, and even the built in search is fucking dog water.
Let’s say I have an error, so I google “{Program} {Error code} Solved”. With a forum, I would find a thread that is already talking about the specific error, with comments regarding troubleshooting steps or a solution… But with Discord, all I get is a generic link to the program’s server.
And even once I’m in the server, there often isn’t a good way for me to find existing threads about my specific error. Maybe I check the pinned messages, but some servers have dozens of channels; am I expected to check the pins on every single channel? Oftentimes that seems to be the expectation, because asking a question will often just get a “check the pinned messages, ya thud-fuck” type of response.
Or maybe I search it, but (again) am I expected to search every single channel? And since Discord doesn’t use fuzzed searches, searching for “Error code 0x00548327” won’t return any results if the thread simply uses “Error 548327” instead. With Google (or any half-decent search engine, really) you get results for both. But not with Discord.
So instead, I ask in the support channel. And that leads me to my final gripe… My response takes actual effort from another person in order to solve. Maybe I get lucky and they have a bot set up to respond to a keyword/error number in my comment… But if not, or if I didn’t use the specific keyword that the bot was searching for, then I need to rely on other people. If there are 200 people with the same issue, that’s 200 times that someone needs to respond to what is essentially the same message. With a forum, you could simply find the post, and read the responses. No human interaction necessary, because it has already been done. The question and answer process has already happened. But with Discord, I’m forced to wait on someone to actually respond, and the devs/admins actually need to dedicate time and resources to ensuring it gets answered. That constant vigilance takes a lot more time and effort away from actual mod duties.
It’s a comically bad experience.
I get it that it’s probably easier to setup a Discord server, than to run your own forum, but you can always get a managed solution or use reddit (I would prefer if Lemmy was used, but I am also realistic).
I’m actually against companies running their own subreddits, purely because I’m an old redditor who remembers when it was specifically disallowed by Reddit. The original intent was for the site to the run by the people, not by companies. Companies were actually prevented from moderating their own subs; the worry was that they would use their mod powers to suppress any sort of negative press or criticism, no matter how valid.
For instance, maybe there’s a popular TV show. The company wasn’t allowed to have a hand in moderating the official fan sub for the show, because it was left up to the public. If the show did something unpopular, the broadcasting company shouldn’t have the ability to suppress the criticism about it.
But Reddit has since done a complete 180 on that topic, and now goes out of their way to install corporate moderators. Subs are now run as an extension of the company’s marketing and/or PR departments
I normally like GitLab issues as a place for bug reports.
A FAQ and an old style forum works pretty well for help.
In fact, just make a community on Lemmy for the forum part and you’ll have what’s required.
GitHub also has this new “Discussions” thing which should do some good, for those that want to stay on GitHub
