Co-founder Jason Citron is stepping down, but will remain with the company as a member of the board of directors.
im on a year paid sub but ill be cancelling that shit
Great time to plug that https://revolt.chat/ is coming along nicely! The Android app is being reworked and is in rough shape at the moment, but the biggest feature missing from the desktop app (where I figure it matters most) is screen sharing. Otherwise it’s an entirely serviceable Discord clone that is FOSS and would benefit greatly from additional support. I, for one, will be taking the money that was paying for my Nitro and donating it to Revolt instead.
Does it have e2ee messages (even in group chats) and calling? One reason we never used discord is because it lacked that (except in calling towards the end).
Edit: Seems they are “working on it”, which makes us a bit nervous but hopefully it’ll be implemented everywhere: https://github.com/orgs/revoltchat/discussions/597
No, it should be treated as what it is: a public forum. The only app I would trust to keep my messages truly private is Signal.
They are working on it: https://github.com/orgs/revoltchat/discussions/597
Also we disagree as not all groups on even discord are public since many require invites or accepting requests to join.
Edit: Also, even if they are public I’d rather the server not be able to see my messages even if the users in any given group can. Yes, I know it’s a minor difference but I can probably trust the other users, I cannot necessarily trust the server.
I certainly won’t say no to additional privacy! But until I see cryptography experts call it secure, I’m going to continue to treat it as a public forum.
Fair enough.
Did they fix the self-hosted option? If it works well, I would immediately jump to it.
I don’t believe so, and honestly I don’t think it needs to be. It’s already FOSS. And honestly self-hosting would just complicate the process more for normies who apparently can’t figure out Mastodon as it is. Maybe if we have at lest one thing that’s dummy simple and familiar that’s FOSS, maybe it’ll be the foot in the door to getting them more comfortable with the FOSS world and out of the corporate sphere.
And honestly I just really want my friends off of fucking Discord, and the more Revolt continues to literally, in every way be “Discord but open source,” the better the odds of that happening is.
Whenever there is a single party controlling critical infrastructure, there is a potential for enshittification - even if it starts as a FOSS endeavor.
Ability to self-host a full copy of the service is the best protection we have so far.
While that’s true, the nature of it being FOSS also ensures the potential for forking and going our own way. So for right now, maybe it’s better that it’s not self-hosted, long enough to get a large number of Discord users on-board, then fork it if it does enshittify and make the fork self-hosted. At the very least, again, this is an opportunity to get a large number of normies to see the value of FOSS projects and enter the FOSS world. And that has immense value not just for Revolt, but for the FOSS world as a whole.
I see your point!
And I do see yours as well! I agree self-hosting gas greater resistance to devs going rogue when all the hosts can just stop participating. But the beauty of Open Source is that if it’s ever truly so bad, the project can always just fork.
How is this app supposed to ensure its continued existence? I see no mention of donations, federation, or advertisement
The desktop app has a donation button in the settings. There’s also links to their donation pages on their github, but I do think in both instances they should have their donation link more front and center; it’s proven to work out well for multiple other FOSS projects.
Ah, I see. I was only looking at their website
if revolt puts out a ppa repository they’ll already be better than discord
It’s not an official packaging, but it is on Flathub, so maybe they have somewhere?
My friends and I can always find 50 other apps for voice chatting, texting and screen sharing. What pisses me off royally is the thousands of companies/groups that decided instead of making forums or websites or GitHub pages, they would just host EVERYTHING from within Discord’s walled garden.
While it sucks for us users, I do hope discord will continue to get more and more shit and force these losers who chose to host documentation on Discord to rethink their choices.
The thing is that discord has fostered fantastic communities in the way that forums never could have. I have personally witnessed no less than 5 communities that are thriving due to primarily using discord. Their forums were an utter shit show.
The fact that you can’t seem to understand why people have done this means that you do not understand the fundamental issue at hand.
Wild response. Why don’t you kindly suck both my dick and my balls?
Yes… mY rEsPoNsE was “wild”. Ok dude.
And so the hell-loop continues. Matrix seems like the closest successor, but having used it for awhile I would describe the experience as janky-but-workable. Signal’s good, but requires a phone number. I hear that Mumble’s good, but it’s overly focused on VoIP. Hopefully the alternatives polish themselves up before the enshittification gets too bad.
I use Matrix, but like a lot of the Fediverse (I know it’s technically a different protocol, but still), it’s not normie friendly. If it were more plug n play it might take off. I just don’t look forward to when they’ll have ads or start making us pay. It’s so tiring shuffling from platform to platform because of some greedy CEO.
There’s a huge opportunity not just for Matrix, but also for other open source or distributed players here, if they can move quickly enough.
They won’t, though.
You can nowadays create a signal account without a phone number, you’ll get a user name instead
Oh? When did they change that?
I also thought you could create an account without your phone number nowadays, but since I already have a phone-connected account, I haven’t tested. Only thing I found in their blog was this: https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/
Until now, someone needed to know your phone number to reach you on Signal. Now, you can connect on Signal without needing to hand out your phone number. (You will still need a phone number to register for Signal.) This is where usernames come in.
There are some newer post about other changes, but I haven’t checked them in detail.
Pretty recently I think
A former Activision CEO. Can you announce “hostility to our users” any louder, Discord?
Well, that’s that ruined then.
This whole “spend a ton of money to get your foothold, take over a market, then enshittify to bilk the users” shtik is getting very very old.
That’s tech companies for you.
Why else would they make all this for free?
Might finally open the doors for viable alternatives. If Spacebar (former fosscord) garners tractions for example due to mismanagement by discord they might make the transition over from discord to an open source, decentralized alternative for the everyday discord user viable. Although I haven’t tried Matrix in a while… But convincing users to switch to a completely separate service is way more difficult.
That’s Jason Citron for you.
I can’t tell for sure, but it doesn’t look like Revolt has voice chat yet? Which was what attracted my friend group to Discord initially.
Yeah, sadly most open source alternatives to discord either cannot do voice/video chat or cannot do it as well or seamlessly as discord did, partially because federated voice/video chat is not really a solved issue and partially because of money. Though even most of the centralised ones don’t really have voice/video chat that works well except for a few like Signal because they have the resources.
Another problem is it’s based on p2p a lot of the time, whereas I think things like discord partially use their servers to facilitate it, I’ll check on this though.
Discord routes over their own servers and uses a private I3Dnet backbone to spread the signals across the world. The latter is one of the reasons why discord video is very good.
If discord did any p2p there would be stories all over of people getting ddos-ed after joining a voice call / screenshare.
In general, discords tech is pretty solid overall. The platform itself is just getting shittier.
Thanks for the info!
Yeah, sadly.
Matrix could’ve implemented it with classic TURNS for a while now so the feature at least is there for those needing it, but they dug their own hole instead and focused so hard on their idea of a protocol they created software that hardly can do anything, and what is should be able to do it does really badly. Also for some reasons it was more important to throw away he concepts of “Communities” and build… “Places”. Now Element is a convoluted mess that <Error Decrypting Second Part of this Message>
Yeah, the people behind it always seemed to be more interested in getting corporate funding and thus gave corporations more what they wanted/needed instead of typical users and mods. This is part of the reason why I’m no longer interested in matrix main and more hard forks of it.
Matrix uses TURN, and the Matrix protocol is not used for carrying voice/video.
Element is an independent client developed by Element, and not part of the Matrix protocol.
To my understanding they’re pushing those TURN connections through your home instance though? Wasn’t that the whole reason it takes so phenomenally long?
Otherwise implementing WebRCT with TURN would be rather easy, there are ready-to-use modules and frameworks to do so in basically any language. Whatever it is that’s wrong with the teams behind Matrix, it causes Matrix (especially when used with Element) to be just awful and buggy.
The legacy jitsi-based rtc used turn, and so does matrixrtc I believe. I haven’t tried it myself, though.
Jitsi
Jitsi doesn’t have e2ee except in a few situations and they don’t seem interested in bringing e2ee to all platforms, or they can’t. It also is somewhat buggy with disconnects etc. Also it’s meant for one off calls or meetings compared to discord, but yeah, it’s okay for some situations.
I’m not sure, either. I haven’t used it yet, though that might come sooner than later after this announcement.
Small note on Revolt: You can’t chat with other people which are on other servers. Revolt does not federate and is not encrypted!
I’ve got 2 gaming Discords I want to bridge with Matrix (and maybe Revolt too?) can you suggest an instance? one is for Deus Ex Randomizer, and the other is for The 7th Guest fan club
Note that when you join a Space, you are not automatically joining all the rooms inside it.
this is going to be a bit painful for people who are used to Discord
you can search public rooms but not public Spaces? how do you find Spaces? they should’ve copied the good parts about Discord lol (EDIT: I found the way to search public Spaces, I guess it can’t search across instances though which is a shame, it probably wouldn’t require much disk space to index the name and description of every Matrix Space)
I don’t even see rooms linking back to their Space?
tchncs.de has a lot of public spaces, I created my account using my Google but it just assumed my username :(
Three, before there was Discord there was TeamSpeak and they’re still fighting
Ventrilo would like a word as well
Have they had any recent developments?
TeamSpeak has been working on a new TeamSpeak 6 client and server that allows users to set up effectively their own personal federation of gaming servers with text, voice, and video chat rooms in a modern cross platform client that supports Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile operating systems.
They’ve also built up their own infrastructure so less technical folks can directly rent servers from them rather than needing to buy through a third party.
Never heard of Revolt before, nice.
As a community I’d use Revolt if my game/mod/whatever is built upon extensive bot functionality, and Matrix if not.
Well it was nice for a while there.
No it wasn’t
deleted by creator
Everyone loves Activision and what they’ve done for gaming. There no way this could go wrong.
It’s joever fellas 😔
Fuck you, byeeeeeeeeee
So glad I never got into that thing.
Just doesn’t understand why so many people prefer Discord over forums. In terms of information preservation Discord sucks!
It’s even become mandatory by communities in some games, which is something I hate with passion. For instance, many MMORPG communities are on Discord these days (e.g. Guild Wars 2, more specifically the raiding scene).
So I subscribed to these communities and started using Discord. I still don’t get the appeal, it’s a cluttered mess all over the place and it doesn’t feel intuitive to use. Maybe I’m getting old…
I hate how discord has replaced this forum culture in many places for this reason, but overall it’s incredibly good for participating in communities in real-time, especially smaller ones. I agree with the forum part, but aside from that it has also replaced IRC, Skype/MSN/ICQ, TeamSpeak, etc. all in one place, while even expanding on their features. It’s unbeaten for friend groups or smaller communities to create a space just for themselves that features text chat, voice chat, screen/video sharing etc.
Unfortunately though the open source alternatives, even the ones trying to be fully compatible with discord, have not yet reached this featureset and usability level. Also one big issue with communications tools like this is they rely heavily on adoption. Doesn’t help me when I can convince my closest friends to switch to Matrix for example, when there’s so many more people that I interact with on a daily basis through discord who I have no control over. Especially when the alternative just doesn’t cut it for all these normies who don’t understand the implications of big companies controlling such exclusive spaces.
I think the main thing is that it’s the lowest friction for just sending a message, making a “post” gives people pause, but sending a message people will do no problem, so small communities get more activity in Discord than anywhere else
Hey, listen I know it’s bad and all but discord makes it really easy to create your own channel, customize it however you want and organize study/gaming with friends.
Since it’s convenient and easy to setup and use, people use it for things they really shouldn’t.
To bring back forums we need another equally easy to setup and host forums system that modernizes the bbs.
Modern BBSes aren’t an issue – they’re out there, and they’re pretty good these days – but the lack of VC funding that lets them fund massive user growth isn’t there, so the level of friction re: setting up your own remains high.
Discord’s advantage is that it’s not just easy to set up, but also free. You’re not going to get that in the forum space anymore. ProBoards isn’t going to invest the money into making them sexy anytime soon.
How the fuck are blizzard execs still getting fucking jobs?!?!! Jesus Christ people, could you find a worse person to run the company?
Because he “has experience managing a public company” and in his portfolio only focuses on cherry-picked KPIs and no mention of any negatives at all.
I hate that our society encourages failing up and instead of punishment because of poor management skills and decisions, they do mass layoffs and give themselves fat bonuses because of “cost savings”.
Frankly, if a company fails, they will ruin other companies; it’s never their fault because of “complicated reasons”.
Probably the point, honestly. If they lose money from it, at least they made it worse for the cattle who stuck with it!
Sounds like a good time to reinstall ventrilo
Mumble is where it’s at.
I just have to find a linux distro that likes my network device so I can install my local server, but I honestly never left Mumble, the sound quality is higher that Discord (imo)
Adding that to my list, I was looking at element (matrix), revolt and fosscord
I assume that one was a joke, Ventrilo looks very out of date
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventrilo
Revolt is nice though. Once they finish upgrading the app, it would be an easy switch
I didn’t know about Fosscord (now called Spacebar it seems), it looks cool https://github.com/spacebarchat
Spacebar is a free, opensource selfhostable discord-compatible chat, voice and video platform.
- Discord-compatible (Use all your custom clients/bots with minimal changes)
- Selfhostable (Server)
- Open Source (GitHub Organization)
- Configurable (Configure every aspect and limits to your needs)
- Decentralized (no abuse of power and doesn’t have a single point of failure)
- Extendable (secure and cross-platform plugin system)
- Themeable (cross-platform theme system with design editor)
- Secure (publicly audited and hosted FOSS software for transparent foundation in terms of security)
Ventrilo is what everyone used like 20 years ago it’s the OG of course it’s outdated
Spacebar looks to be exactly what I’ve been looking for! Unfortunately, according to their FAQ the voice and video features aren’t implemented yet but here’s hoping that someone comes on-board to help set it up 🤞definitely an easy decision for a self hosted Discord alternative if that comes to fruition!
Fosscord changed to “spacebar” a while back. If you want a more Discord-like experience, try the Cinny or Comet Matrix client. And on mobile the SchildiNext Chat client. Although I really can’t recommend Matrix as a replacement at all.
I just want an experience my friends aren’t too stumped by. I’ll give them a look! Thank you!
Matrix authentication process is confusing and annoying. If your friends aren’t technical, they’re going to have a bad time.
Ye, it is. I liked it but I don’t think many will. A non-paranoid mode or service for matrix would be nice
Do those have push to talk?
Uhhhh I’m not sure, I only use the text functions
“Get off vent, or I’ll have you bent.”
I wish those stupid videos weren’t the first thing my brain goes for when I see the word “Ventrilo.”
I immediately go to vent pranks from like 17 years ago where they recorded people’s voices in public chats, then played it back to them and cause some amazing confusion
‘found a ring in there last night…dropped your pants?’
4 STRENGTH 4 STAMINA LEATHER BELT! AAAH OOORHG!
MANY WHELPS! LEFT SIDE!
