was an ok meme shitting on discord, but most platforms suck ass
Posted this as a reply to someone else, but seems they have deleted their comment, but here is a spreadsheet someone is working on that compares the different options now: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14vicw-V9Z5m7ckuburP5wxyDIIb_fFJFEjnxxHk8qRw/edit?gid=0#gid=0
I don’t really get it. Every time I’ve reluctantly used Discord, I’ve gotten absolutely lost in UI. And I don’t know what’s wrong with just using Steam calls (for games) which works great tbh.
But the really annoying thing about Discord is when open source communities use it. Open source projects have no business using closed platforms like this, where I can’t even browse the discussions without signing up, and you can’t find bug reports by search engine. Just use some open discussion forum software. GitHub discussions is fine…
Just use some open discussion forum software.
GitHub discussions is fine…
Pick one. Github most certainly is not open.
Tbf it’s still better than locking it behind discord but you are very correct.
Go team Codeberg!
Twitter is the new 4chan
Teamspeak is actually insane in 2026. Just goes to show what kind of progress in online communicators can be made if you invest into anything reasonable and not surveillance.
I mean TeamSpeak did only one thing, and it was good.
Steam had 90% of the tooling just needs polishing
I said this like 2 years ago and people called me an idiot, but I’m glad more people are seeing this now.
Steam has all the infrastructure to be a social network platform the same way Discord or Facebook is, it has most of the distinct components already present, they’re just clunky, not as well integrated as they could be, UI still has a lot of legacy stuff that’d need to be refactored.
It would just need an overhaul… and of course, Valve actually deciding they want to deal with all the insane bullshit that comes with trying to run a social network explicitly as a social network.
I never thought about that. I use the voice chat a little bit, but you are right that it works well enough and I can stream my games.
The only pain point would be for people that don’t use steam for whatever reason. Discord offers the web interface which is useful when video chatting with non gamers.
TeamSpeak can only replace the voice chatting aspect. The vast majority of people use discord for text chat.
It’s really such a different beast. You can chat in a discord server while you’re on your phone when you’re unavailable to chat on voice. I know teamspeak has an app, but it was clunky last time I bothered with it, and it’s still not that type of experience. People love discord chat, they love the emotes, they love their profiles. I just can’t see a lot of people giving that up.
And like I’ve said earlier, I’m not even sure if most people are aware of the changes or if they even care. The people from Aus or the UK that I’ve seen on discord lately seem like they’re just dealing with the id requirements.
This is my issue with finding a replacement, text and voice in one with specific channels.
I like to segregate my topics so things don’t get too cluttered, it’s why I moved from Skype to Discord originally. But I also want my voice chat and text chats to be in the same program.
I’ve used Ventrilo and TeamSpeak before for voice and I liked the self hosting option, but no text. IRC is text without voice. Matrix looks… complicated to self host.
So I’m looking at Stoat (formerly Revolt)
Just throwing out that Matrix isn’t particularly complicated to host, BUT I don’t think it is a 1:1 replacement for Discord. Discord is honestly a bit odd in some ways, which was probably on purpose as it made them standout and be harder to replace.
This is my issue with finding a replacement, text and voice in one with specific channels.
Currently, Movim offers very good text chat (even offers optional encryption!), as well as group video/voice calls as well as screensharing with audio (must use a chromium browser to share the audio for now). It also has fully fleshed out and working federation, which is super important in the long-term. it works across all platforms, and runs in the browser.
Downsides: It is currently missing Discord-like servers with rooms, but the dev is actively working on implementing those, and later drop-in voice rooms. They also just launched a funding drive to help accelerate development. It’s not quite as polished and smooth as Discord in the UX department, but it does work reliably, and it’s available right now.
If those tradeoffs aren’t deal breakers, than I’d say it’s definitely worth a try. It’s very quick to sign-up to test, as it doesn’t require an email.
So I’m looking at Stoat (formerly Revolt)
Currently, Stoat cannot yet perform video calls or screenshare, though I believe they are working on that. It is also not federated, and I don’t believe there are plans to implement any federation, which is personally a big knock against it.
I’d say if you find that Movim isn’t workable for you, you may want to wait for Fluxer to improve, as that does plan to implement federation and limited encryption, the downside is it’s quite buggy at the moment, and it could be a while before it’s ready.
Hope that helps :)
I’m checking out Fluxer and Movim. I don’t NEED video chat, sometimes we steam games while other people are just chilling out so they can watch, but it’s uncommon. It’s a small group of friends so huge support isn’t massive either.
The federation stuff would be very nice since that’s a big oof on Stoat at the moment.
Fluxer. Literally just fluxer. It’s being made by a ex security tester for discord. Already 90%+ feature parity with discord.
The free user experience is solid and its funding is a rather simple and straight forward sub model to support centralized hosting for the less technical users or larger communities. With an option to self host, self hosting is free provides all the same benefits as the sub as it should since you arnt using their bandwidth.
The only problem with it is it just rolled into beta and is being overloaded with new users.
The mobile app is under development but has a bunch of flutter devs working on it. And the pwa app works extremely well in the mean time.
That being said from what I’ve seen teamspeak has had a big redesign from what it used to be. It echos discord a lot more now in design
I used to be on TeamSpeak, and I actually switched over to Discord. Oh the irony. Those were quite the times, people went straight for the voice chat, and I learned to be brave and speak proper English in chat (people chatted less than they talked).
I unlearned that almost completely since.
My group never left fortunately. We still have a dude paying to host a ts3 server and we always get weird comments when we occasionally invite people we play with
TeamSpeak had their chance, but they decided to be complacent after getting popular. Now they are playing catchup and very slowly. Discord has given them multiple chances now to take back market share, but TeamSpeak was never ready. This time some other project will take over instead.
Its also closed source as i recently learned…
How did that go unnoticed? I always remember them requiring a license in order to have more than a small handful of people connected to the server you are running locally on your own computer.
The last time i used teamspeak i was like 15 i think. So i just forgor i guess.
So seriously, what’s going to replace Discord? Everyone wants to leave, but to where?
And no, Matrix is not and will never be a viable alternative
Someone has made a large spreadsheet of discord alternatives, with comparisons of features, that might help people decide: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14vicw-V9Z5m7ckuburP5wxyDIIb_fFJFEjnxxHk8qRw/edit?gid=0#gid=0
I’m interested to know why matrix isn’t viable for you? I’ve been trialing it recently with friends and it seems to tick all our boxes. I do admit I don’t do large communities personally
The problem isn’t that there are no alternatives. It’s that there’s like 50 alternatives. Centralization makes us vulnerable, but it’s also super convenient.
There’s a reason we preferred reddit and now Lemmy instead of different forums with different logins for everything.
The biggest problem with getting off Discord is fragmentation of communities.
Reddit can’t die fast enough. I miss niche subreddits
Fluxer is the alterative it does 90% the same thing. Has a sub model for the users who need a centralized option or large communities they can’t self host for
And it offers self hosting for free if you don’t want to pay the sub. Self hosting has no restrictions.
But Fluxer is one dozens of platforms that do what Discord does. If it was the only one, it would be easier to move.
But as it is people who are on 20 discord groups don’t want to deal with migrating to 20 different platforms, so they’re just staying where they are.
Honestly I’d love different forums with only a centralized login system that can be optionally used, sorta how ezboard were at one point.
First one of those contenders that solves federation in a nice way would be a winner. Quite a lot of them has it on their roadmap so my hopes are not completely lost.
I could probably just google this… but I think I just want to hear a real person explain something this time :P
What do you mean by “solves federation”? As in bringing disparate groups together under a single app?
bringing disparate groups together under a single app
Yep, that’s pretty much how I’d like to see it done. Similar to lemmy/piefed, where I can reply to your comment from different server. E.g. Fluxer have something like this in their roadmap, fingers crossed.
My, probably very bad, understanding would be something along the lines of a shared, decentralized API. Almost like a specialized internet that only serves the functions of the apps.
Fluxer. Literally just fluxer.
Just looked at fluxer’s website. That shit looks prime for a copyright lawsuit; it looks exactly like discord.
There’s Stoat (formerly Revolt) and Fluxer. Additionally, Steam has many Discord-like features in app.
I don’t like how fluxer is already paywalling features that other platforms don’t. It feels like discord all over again
Fluxer is AGPv3, recently promised to remove their CLA so the software stays free forever, has an ambitious roadmap with federation, and is currently being worked on by one 22 yr old dude.
It’s very different than Discord.
This chad needs help. I’m more than happy to support him. This is an investment in Open Source™ and the future. If he can’t work on this full-time or near full-time, he’s gonna need to work for Google or some shit. Then it’s never going to be able to compete with Discord.
They’re also not going to be able to run Fluxer on powerful enough hardware. Take a look at Stoat. Similar idea. No funding. Their main server is HELLA slow, which I don’t think it’s their fault. The app is written in Rust, but it feels like it’s running on a potato.
paywalling features that other platforms don’t
I might be wrong here, but I thought you could self-host Fluxer to get around the paywalls. So you could do that. What a gift! And federation is on the way, so maybe one day you can self-host AND talk to other instances! Amazing!
The cla removal is already done I thought on the Canary branch.
I’ve seen mentioned these:
- Stoat - pretty much same UI, based in UK, not sure where they get $$
- Fluxer - looks virtually like 1:1 Discord clone, based in Sweden, has paid tier pretty much like Nitro on Discord on official server
- Nerimity - a little different UI, but still very Discord-y, based in UK, sourced from donations
- Movim - this one is interesting, but it’s not really Discord style app; it looks more like cross breed between IM and social network (FB/X), origin in France
- Strafe - looks like Discord, supposedly have e2ee
- Spacebar - reverse engineered Discord, IDK about maturity of this one
- Adapt - another wanna be
but it’s not really Discord style app; it looks more like cross breed between IM and social network (FB/X)
It has a built-in blog feature that communities or individuals can use to post announcements or articles to the whole instance, but it’s pretty easily ignored by just clicking the messages tab, which doesn’t show them at all, and makes the interface look more like Discord.
Saw this a few days ago.
It’s literally on Fluxer.
Pros:
- AGPLv3, WITHOUT a CLA
- Familiar Discord UI
- Text and voice channels
- Images, attachments, gifs
- Emojis, reactions
- Screensharing and video calls
- Main server runs decently fast
- Federation is coming
- Not based in UK or US
Cons:
- Only 1 dude working on it
- You can optionally buy Plutonium, which isn’t necessarily bad, they need money, and the code stays Open Source™
- No mobile app yet (they’re working on it)
- The main server has had some downtime… which I think are just growing pains
- I don’t have friends to invite to Fluxer
Considering how many people are literally demanding and harassing the dev of fluxer to let him let them help him. I don’t think the 1 dude working on it is going to be a problem for long lol
This looked perfect! Right up until the no API support. By no means am I asking of that either, just happens to look really nice but also lack that feature.
Seems like they have something: https://docs.fluxer.app/
Oh cool my bad! Didnt dig deep enough into it. I’ll have to give it a look
The MIT license of Voltage is a big red flag for me, as it could allow for either a corporate takeover, or for the company to abandon the open-source version in favor of a closed-source version that they can sell or enshittify.
Roomy has pretty much the same problem being licensed under the MPL license, which allows for the project to be packaged into a closed-source proprietary product. I’d avoid it too, despite it being federated. The license is just too risky, and the only reason not to choose GPL is because the devs likely want that capital purchase exit strategy.
There’s a lot devs who know there’s potentially a lot of money to me made in a successful Discord alternative. They smell the blood in the water, know the venture capital vultures it attracts, and they’ll try to exploit the free labor that open-source projects bring, only to sell us out down the road after all the work has been done.
I’d say any option we move to must be licensed under GPL as a hard requirement, as that ensures it can never be exploited by corpos, and will remain owned by the community forever so that we don’t have to migrate again any time soon.
The two best options on the table that fill that niche are:
- Movim (Pros: GPL, federated, encrypted, can do chat, voice calls and screenshare, based on the battle tested XMPP open standard. Cons: is currently missing discord-like rooms, but the dev is working in it)
- Fluxer (New kid on the block, still very buggy, but is AGPL licensed and plans federation and encryption in the future. Backend is still unproven, don’t know how well it scales, but one to keep an eye on)
Stoat still doesn’t have screenshare. It’s also a bloody stupid name - I have no idea who thought that re-brand was a good idea.
Fluxer seems to support it though.
BNoth can be self-hosted, which is a nice bonus.
Do people really use screen share that much? (Sadly) I use discord to reach a lot of my friends for multiple years and we actually used screen share maybe twice? Three times?
I use it daily for both work and play.
In 3d work and game dev it’s often far easier to just show people things quickly through it.
When playing coop games our group will all stream so we can see everyone’s PoV. We’ll also occasionally use it to watch a movie together.
I personally use it quite a lot, as do my friends. Typically use it to stream a movie to watch together, or to share the game they’re playing while we talk.
It’s one of the single most used features there are outside of voip and text.
It’s Mandatory for a discord alterative.
This is a big reason why every alterative keeps failing. Linux and open source users are so fucking out of touch with normal users it’s absurd. They want and focus on all the wrong things and then complain when their apps don’t get popular.
Like federation is cool and all but literally fuck and all people give a single flying fuck about it outside of the nerdy in crowd.
Screen sharing on the other hand is a hard line the majority of normal users either refuse to live with out or have friends that do. Thus making it a make it or break it for most groups.
I’m honestly surprised it’s used that much. My guild (mostly working fathers) used to use TS3 and once discord appeared we switched there for the ease of it. Still used it mostly as voice chat with text channels being nice to have. But screen sharing? Pretty much non existent, quite a few people streamed on twitch, so we never really needed it.
Same with all the other groups I’m part of there. It’s always text + voice, also GIF and meme spam and stuff. But screen share? Virtually zero.
That’s why I’m so surprised.
I have used it multiple times every day this week.
Why is “one-to-one clone of Discord” the goal for everyone? Why not set your sights on a making a good UX instead?
Well, Discord’s UI is certainly not the holy grail, but it’s quite functional and people are used to it. So it’s pretty much logical you copy the concept to some extent when you want to appeal to these people?
ngl, discord kinda had the best UX before the enshittification began
Hard disagree, but there are millions of people using it so what do I know.
I don’t think it’s necessarily the goal — Discord is just a helpful yardstick to compare things to as a baseline (and some people are looking for something that replaces Discord as closely as possible). Having to switch services is a pain, and whilst it’s not optimal in the long term to just try to replace a thing with a clone, I can see why people don’t have the executive function energy to think too hard about this.
So you’re saying there are options.
Doesn’t Stoat charge far out the ass?
There are actually many, many options. It’s hard to guess which one will get the momentum and lift off though. You probably don’t want to convince all your friends to switch to another platform just to see it die in half a year…
Matrix is not
With LiveKit for calls / screen share, it is for my group. Though I’m not saying it doesn’t have issues.
will never be
Community-developed homeservers like continuwuity have gotten a lot of new support on the last few weeks. Clients like cinny are getting pretty close to a replacement ux wise (if you look at PR2599 on Cinny’s GitHub, they are working on and will soon merge support for LiveKit in a way that is very close to voice channels).
I also generally think that the only way to replace Discord as an ecosystem where you talk to many people from different communities is a federated protocol, not a bunch of new silos, one for each community.
I have no first person experience but I’ve read Matrix’ lack of “Discord-like server” grouping is terrible for moderation where you have to manually set permissions for each “room”. If that’s actually true it’s literally impossible for it to become proper discord alternative.
A discord server-like would be a space, containing channel-like rooms. The main difference is that rooms can also exist independent of spaces, if you just need a single chat for some people instrad of a group of chats.
You can set permissions for a whole space, it’s just that they currently work differently than Discord. Members have a power level, and you set the power level from which each function is available. So, e.g. Sending messages from Pl 0 (representing normal users), banning users from PL 50 (representing moderators), changing server settings from level 100 (representing administrators).
It sounds complicated, but once you get used to it it’s pretty easy.
I’ve moved to Matrix from Discord for two small friend groups (<6 people each). Matrix is a fine replacement for the small friend Discord. But it has awhile to go before it can replace 1000+ people servers
The bigger issue is that reports currently don’t federate. A report will always go to the admin of your homeserver (which might be you) not the admin of the homeserver the room you’re in is on, nor the admin of the homeserver of the other users.
Most larger (1-2k people) communities get around that by just having you ping the mods in reply to the offending content, which is a band-aid.
A spec for federated reports is apparently being worked on, but not yet available.
IRC never left.
Does irc even have voice? Or game streaming? Or emojis? Or persistent chat where if you’re out of service or offline but then you come back into service/online you can see what you missed?
My group left about 5 years ago (give or take a couple) when there was a hostile takeover of freenode. I haven’t really looked into it at all since then, is freenode back or where did everyone move to?
Everyone moved to libera. It literally happened right as the freenode fiasco happened, so I am surprised you and your group didn’t hear about it.
Slack seems cool to me and my friends, is it not cool to other people?
Slack is the polar opposite of cool.
Might as well go with Microsoft Teams at that point
Ouch. It’s not that bad.
Slack is a subscription per user so far as I know
It’s owned by Salesforce. Big ick.
I still prefer to open my window and just scream for the person I’m trying to reach. Fuhgedaboutet
I use two tin cans and some string.
They got trounced by Ventrilo, which had the saddest looking UI I’ve ever seen on a commercial product.
There was something kind of special about how simple Vent was. It didn’t need a bunch of bells and whistles, it did one thing and it was relatively easy for people to use. Discord feels so cluttered and it’s full of shit I don’t want.
I liked it, it reminded me of AIM
Bring back Mumble!
If only Mumble contained more than 10% of the features Discord does.
I’m tired of people suggesting replacements that only do one small part of what Discord does. It’s like needing a new car, and all people keep suggesting is new engines. I don’t care if the engine is better than my current car, an engine alone does not solve my needs.
In recent years, I started to feel differently. Sure, it’s nice if you have 1 app/1 tool to do a lot of things, but it comes at the price of dependency. When a service/tool turns to shit (which seems to be a matter of time in most cases), it’s so much harder to find something new.
So I tend to prefer a lot of different simple tools that can do one thing only, but they can do that one thing right. And if it turms to shit, I can just replace the single tool instead of having to find an alternative that can do everything.
Tool vs Platform.
Tools can focus on specific things and you can judge them based on how good they at doing the thing they do.
Platform?
Platforms create network effect lock in and breed complacency far, far more than a tool does.
Tools, sure, can induce a kind of brand loyalty type of squabbling, but platforms are an entire way of life, they become a default part of your identity and worldview. It becomes ludicrous, rage inducing, for you to imagine or consider not using the platform.
Oh you want the omni tool?
Omni tool requires you upload your soul to it, as collateral.
I feel the exact same way… Sadly I don’t think the perfect option exists, it would require something that’s both an encrypted IM program and something you could self host servers on and plug into so users could join based on a link. Like Skype/icq meets teamspeak.
Mumble is alive and well amongst Project Reality players. Same with Teamspeak for the Arma community as well as some roleplaying communities like on RedM.
I self host a mumble for my people I games with, works great
Mobile app is dogshit but the Teamspeak 6 desktop client is decent.
Ultimately my group is using Steam for now and checking out Fluxer self-hosting once the refactor gets done.
I hadn’t heard of Fluxer before this post, but after looking it looks like it’s basically everything I’ve been looking for. Hopefully that refactor gets sorted relatively soon.
I’m in the same boat. Fluxed looks really good! I was able to check it out this morning but I’m assuming their website is getting hammered because I can’t access it now. More people to FOSS self hosted projects! Woo!
There’s also https://movim.eu/ which might suit your needs
