Roomy is an open-source Discord alternative built on the AT Protocol (ATProto), the same protocol that powers Bluesky, with ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma, and others) planned for the near future. Currently in alpha, it sits somewhere between Matrix and Discord in terms of its practical position in the broader chat ecosystem.
That said, it aims to fill the niche currently dominated by Discord, while remaining a free, fully federated solution for full user freedom and greater privacy. In this article, we’ll look at what Roomy is today, what it’s aiming to become, and what it could bring to this space.
Hey, I was working on something like this (with AP; fuck ATProto).
Due to the anxiety and depression, probably won’t ever finish; but hey.
ATProto isn’t federated or decentralized in any meaningful way.
Well, it is, just not in a good way that BSky implements
But
ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma, and others) planned for the near future. Currently in alpha
If they do that, then it will be for sure, it’s still alpha so hopefully they mean it when they say “near future”
I think you can use AT in a decentralized way, it’s just that Bluesky as a network doesn’t practically achieve that
If they spent as much time working on the software as they do on the website, they might have a viable product by now.
I read Bluesky, I read centralised.
I’m not holding my breath until more protocols are added.
Can’t check much of it now, but one thing that concerns me in Discord, and that I’ve already seen happening, is entire chat histories getting nuked, either by accident or by moderation’s dishonesty. With AT Protocol’s middleman-style of delivery system, I don’t trust it for preserving a chat history, but with ActivityPub and its nature of more easily being self-hostable, backing up suddently becomes far more reachable. So for that, I’ll be waiting until ActivityPub compatibility is added.
Also, on a more positive light and pondering on design possibilities, I wonder how channels will look like for platforms not inherently compatible with such. Maybe Mastodon and Misskey will treat as private mentions? Also maybe Lemmy and Mbin will treat each channel as a separared DM? Also makes me wonder about other platforms within the fediverse. 👀
