The “enshittification” continues
Matrix has always been a great alternative. Any service that is owned by a corporation will eventually be monetized. I never liked discord in the first place.
Matrix rules, but I can’t get my friends to leave Discord because that’s where all their friends are, they run servers, etc. it sucks.
Getting friends to leave facebook messenger for discord 8 years ago already, never underestimate how much the average person can ignore. For the time being I’m on discord, but if they start cracking down on small servers I’ll be spinning up alternatives overnight
Matrix won’t seem to let me on via my vpn so I can’t even download the client on my computer. Makes it hard to see what the fuss is about.
You’re comment makes no sense. Matrix is a federated chat protocol, and works kind of like lemmy. Matrix itself has more in common with ActivityPub, the protocol that the fediverse uses. What’s more comparable are the matrix clients.
There are many, many matrix clients to choose from, and even more instances, including the option to set up your own.
My instance is discord bridged. When discord user wants to voice chat, I fire up discord just for that.
But my discord text chats and servers? All in matrix baby.
Makes it a lot easier to convice friends to swap, too. Especially when I show them that telegram and whatsapp can be bridged, too.
Everything one app.
I have that too, but you have to be admin to be able to do that, and I didn’t figure out how to connect the 1-1 chats in Matrix yet.
Once you have the bridge plugin set up, you need to talk to it in matrix to set up your stuff. Just open a chat with whatever your config says its username is. I set mine to be @discordbot
I have it set up with rooms where several people are in but have no idea how to set it up in 1-1 rooms.
Oh, you’re using it for just bridging group chats.
For one to one you need to link your matrix account to your discord account using the !login command. After this you can access everything that your discord account can access. Manually managing anything except for which server you want bridged is completely unnecessary.
this feels like back in 2015 when I was trying to get all my friends to go from TeamSpeak to Discord because it had Text & Media Channels and you didn’t have to pay for the server
The trick is to not have friends sucka
I’m loving Matrix.
I really need to get on Matrix, but I haven’t put the time to learn it.
The Element app for it works pretty well. There are some edges to smooth, but it functions.
And if Element isn’t to your tastes (like it wasn’t for me), there are other clients to choose from. I use Nheko on PC and FluffyChat on my phone.
Oh cool! Thanks for the heads up on FluffyChat!
Revolt.chat is far nicer than Matrix usability-wise
What’s to stop Revolt from becoming the next Discord?
Edit: I just logged into my account to see that Revolt had removed a “server” for breaking foreign (unjust) laws. That seems to go against everything the fediverse stands for.
How can revolt “remove” a server since you can connect to any custom hosted server? It’s like saying lemmy removed an instance.
And besides, I’m pretty sure that is something that federated instances will have to worry about too, you might not care about your local laws but the ISP or hosting provider of your server where possibly illegal data is, will care.
If this is an isolated issue I don’t mind.
1.) because Revolt isn’t trying to do federation. It’s community driven open-source project not backed by a company.
2.) you can easily self-host a Revolt server. Then you can make your own rules.
Not everything has to be federated
bad idea when revolt exists and is basically exactly the same software but open source and self hosted
Second this. Revolt looks exactly like Discord except it’s open source and privacy focused.
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That’s an exotic synonym for “dank.”
it’s the opposite of dank
Stank memes?
Rank memes
rank
I honestly don’t mind this. This is really useful for small creators in not needing to do workarounds for Patreon or Patreon roles and this makes it easier by being baked into Discord itself. I get the worry of stuff being paywalled but since it is entirely set by the server owner/creator, it would be something to take up with them instead. The 10% cut is a bit rough but I know other platforms also take a cut, but I’m not too sure if 10% is high or low. That would be my own biggest concern since it only makes sense if it is comparable or lower than other platforms like Patreon.
This is essentially where I am with it. I get the outrage but for now I don’t have an issue. But likely as with many things lately, we should maybe pursue the federated option.
I created a Matrix account as Plan B now that the link is back in the sidebar. I was very active on Discord a few years back, but a week before joining Beehaw, I was ready to ditch it, since I can chat with my college roommate on Steam and I no longer DM with anyone else (also, all my servers from then are now dead).
I don’t think I’m the target audience for Discord, so other than a few longstanding UI gripes, I’m kinda content to let them do whatever. Monetization won’t hit me until you have to pay to be able to send text messages.
I use discord for 2 things, my personal group chat with friends that I manage, and keeping up with Mechanical Keyboard artisan shops and manufacturers. So I mean it wont be a huge leap for me to migrate to something better.
The 10% cut is a bit rough but I know other platforms also take a cut, but I’m not too sure if 10% is high or low.
I have a Patreon and their cut is about 3% there (at least for me, it varies depending on what services you use through Patreon). This is a very easy pass and the only people I see utilizing it are creators like Twitch streamers who already have a large Discord server/presence to build off of. It’s a bad deal though 10% is real rough imo.
I imagine 7% isn’t that much of a “loss” when compared to how much larger the market on discord is and how convenient it’s going to be for these users to start spending on MTX.
Discord. God I hated how I was one of my friends that got everyone to switch, and now I’m the first one out. I don’t think they have added a feature that hasn’t been an annoyance for a while, and after a year of no mobile notifications working and their staff being incompetent (especially if you are a free user) I’m just over it.
Everyone worshipping it is kind of a turn off too. It’s a service y’all, I’ve had everything from AIM to Slack and I’m sure there will be a million others. Worshipping a corp is gross.
A question I was asked interviewing for my only marketing position: “What’s a brand you admire?” I would have turned right the fuck around were I not supporting stepkids and looking at a 50% raise.
I don’t understand the ability to have an emotional connection to a corporation.
Omg I would have absolutely no script for that. They would get the blankest expression and something snarky like “it was impressive how Nestle was able to get market share on water and baby formula in the African market” but knowing my luck I’d probably get unironicly hired with that line when I was trying to be sarcastic. 😭
Learning the truth about Nestle made finding out about Santa seem tame.
“Chiquita Bananas’ ability to manipulate the government to further their own ends is admirable.”
At least tell us what you made up lol
I looked at my clothes and said Eddie Bauer and then came up with a wildly embellished tale of how I grew up with their sleeping bags in my closet, and now they’re the only jacket I’ll buy because they make quality products. I don’t know … I did well enough through the blind rage to get the job.
Turned out my new boss’ background was in journalism, so what I thought was a liability was actually an asset. The job wasn’t terrible. I hated coming up with flowery descriptions of pedestrian English muffins and exhausted any and all citrus and citrus-adjacent puns known to man. And then we lost the contract less than a year later.
I found out about that the day I got back from hauling a truck from New Mexico to get my stuff out of storage.
I’ve set up matrix and element to replace discord. I even bridged discord so my users can even still talk to people they have on there.
But damn, does it feel good to self host shit again like in the days of TS3 and Mumble.
The bridge concept made me really excited! I can keep up with the few friends I have who enviably stay on discord long past when it looks like the Vegas Strip. 😂
As long as I can still use all the current free functionality then I don’t mind these things. It’s when these things become the only option ala Reddit killing 3rd party apps that it becomes a problem.
Yea, I don’t have a problem with a company, whose service I use, try to sell additional services or create a paid tier that basically pays for me to use it for free.
I like discord. The name change hubbub was…a nothing burger. If people want to pay for extra emojis or whatever for their server…cool? How does that impact me?
Good. Discord is the cancer of the free searchable internet.
If you really need communication, use XMPP or Matrix.
And for everything else use stuff like forums and Lemmy and mastodon reddit Twitter whatever. But not closed walled gardens that are not searchable on the net. It’s astonishing that so many people gatekeep content behind this Discord crap.
It sucks that Discord is being used for a bunch of large communities that would be better served by a forum for future access, but for just groups of friends, it’s way easier to use than anything fediverse. And if I’m chatting with my friends, I don’t NEED my shitposting to be easily searchable on Google.
I’m not against using Matrix, but I could only get select people to join me. Discord is where all the more tech-illiterate gamers live and sometimes I wanna hang out with them too. It’s not the same as Lemmy, where I want to talk to complete strangers, so it doesn’t matter too much if more than half a community is lost by migrating from reddit to lemmy.
Yes, that’s my reason for still having it too. All my friends are on there. And getting them to change platform is almost as hard as getting a woman to like you.
yeah, I particularly hate when mods and romhacks require you to join a discord server to download them
Seriously. The worst is when developers distribute their software on Discord. WHY.
lol, that, or when they insist discord is the best place to store documentation…
🤮
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Discord is a chat and the default setting of every server is that to see the content of it, you need to join the server.
It make sense for a chat.
However, companies and communities have largely misused discord and basically turned it in forums.
Lots and lots of knowledge is spread on these chats with no way of finding it unless you know which server to join and provided they do not shut down at some point.
On top of that, the discord search feature is barebone at best.
This is the problem with discord.
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use XMPP or Matrix.
XMPP is mostly dead these days. The protocol is very inefficient (it’s all XML) which isn’t ideal on mobile devices since it uses more bandwidth to transfer and more processing power to parse.
I work at a big tech company, and at work we use Mattermost hosted outside our data center for cases where our internal stuff doesn’t work. It seems fine and I think it’s open-source, but I don’t know a lot about it.
I’ve heard about Matrix but haven’t tried it yet! Is it good?
What about IRC?
This couldn’t be more wrong actually.
Xmpp is far from death. Just because many started to use matrix instead doesn’t mean it’s dead. Even though matrix is a Ressource and performance nightmare much more so than xmpp will ever be.
I’m an IT specialist and work in IT too. I also selfhosted a lot of stuff publicly.
XMPP is used by many companies like Facebook , Google, Nintendo, GitHub, zoom, WhatsApp, Apple etc.
Xmpp is a an official Standard.unlikr things like matrix.
And if you think that xmpp has battery issues.oeadays then that tells me you used any xmpp app like conversation/snikket etc. like many years ago.
My xmpp Apps use way less battery than any matrix app ever could.
XMPP is fast, reliable and just works. Matrix is a nightmare to selfhost, too.
IRC? Irc has no E2EE whatsoever. Therfore isn’t even comparable to xmpp with omemo or matrix.
Xmpp is far from death. Just because many started to use matrix instead doesn’t mean it’s dead. Even though matrix is a Ressource and performance nightmare much more so than xmpp will ever be.
How is matrix a performance nightmare? been running a matrix server for years with almost no issues. I guess the only exception was the few times I ran out of hdd space, but that’s it.
Xmpp is a an official Standard.unlikr things like matrix.
What’s an official standard? Matrix is a protocol just like xmpp and the specs are public, just like with xmpp.
Matrix is a nightmare to selfhost, too.
It’s literally as easy as running a docker container and editing a yaml file, at least for synapse.
XMPP is used by many companies like Facebook , Google, Nintendo, GitHub, zoom, WhatsApp, Apple etc.
Facebook doesn’t use XMPP; they use a custom protocol built on top of MQTT. WhatsApp was using a binary equivalent to XMPP (keeping the same stanzas but removing the XML), but I’m not sure if they still are. Do you have a source stating that the other companies use XMPP?
Matrix is searchable through https://archive.matrix.org/
Are XMPP or Matrix really any more seachable? I’m all in on FOSS, clearly, but do they fix that complaint? I feel like the real solution is separating chat and longer term info, and putting the longer term info on a wiki or other public and indexable format.
Not all discussions should be public.
Yeah, Cinny does look like Discord anyways but it’s lack of voice chat is a bummer
I really disliked my cinny experience, element was much superior
Totally, I too think that one should prefer Element for multiple reasons (feature richness, app availability, … I mean, the web widgets absolutely rule imo), after all, it’s UI is similar to Discord/Slack but it also feels somewhat different here and there. For the first 1-2 hours it can be a bit overwhelming for newbies. Cinny’s UI is much closer to Discord’s UI, and it seems fine for chatting as far as I have tried it.
the encryption broke first just for the desktop app, later also for web browser several times, people couldn’t see what I was writing to them, all while it worked in element. I was able to create nested rooms but nobody could see them for joining… the overall experience was painful and it probably cost me my one chance to convince people to get away from discord after their policy change to record audio from calls
Weird, when was that ? In onboarded 6 non-tech people recently on element and it went fine and easy.
Yes element works, I use it still. I had issues with cinny as a discord replacement. This was in the time from march-april.
Oh shoot nvm then. I only used it for like two weeks before I went back to Element because of it’s feature richness. And even during the time I used it I rarely chatted.
I’m going to take a rather controversial stance on this. I don’t see this as such a bad Thing
First of all, running a discord server, especially a large one is not easy and discord mods deserve to be paid for their time just as much as anyone else.
While I will say that I’m not a huge fan of discord’s new focus on massive servers, it’s clear that that’s what brings in the big dough for them.
If this helps discord keep the lights on, and keep small servers running that’s good for me as much as it is good for them.
Also, I’d much rather this than ads ngl
Oh God anything but ads
I never understood why everyone moved to discord. Regardless of this, it actually just sucks and is hard to use. Discord really gives me hope that the fediverse will succeed, just because the UI sucks so fucking much.
What did people use before discord?
For voice, TeamSpeak
For text chat, IRC
For forums, phpBB or any other forum software
Discord replacing the third is the saddest. It completely isn’t fit for purpose. Part of the reason you can’t find anything on Google now is that forums died, and Discord is unsearchable.
Discord just switches it’s business model yearly to clone the one thing it hasn’t killed yet. Started out to kill TS and IRC, then went on to kill the forum, then it tried to kill Steam/GOG but failed, now it’s trying to kill Patreon.
Discord is pretty great for video/voice chat - the things it tries to do outside of that can be frustrating.
It’s miles ahead of having to use Ventrillo, Teamspeak, Skype like we had to in the past.
I never used Discord but used google hangouts before switching to Telegram and Matrix (the former for family and the latter for everything else).
Also, weirdly, a lot of people seem to use Discord for things used to be (and I would say should) be on a forum (or community, magazine, etc.)
Trying to follow the thread of a discussion about some obscure point you’re interested in is much easier when it’s in a thread, instead of an undifferentiated chat log with a bunch of unrelated cross-talk.
I plan to check out matrix since the /r/firefox group has been chatting through that.
Does matrix have a voice/video functionality or is it strictly text chat?
Teamspeak, Skype. Funny enough up until redesigning a year to two years ago they advertised themselves as being the replacement to these.
Versus Slack, it was an easier sign-up process for ad hoc communities. You could just have people sign up instead of going through an approval process. (Slack’s approval process could be automated with third-party tools, but it was a hack. Slack was meant to be a specific group of known people.)
I always thought Slack was just for businesses
It’s definitely marketed that way, but I’m on a few Slacks that are just small, private groups. It’s private by default while Discord is public by default.
because skype was worse
Eh, it’s the only voip number provider I’ve found that will sell me a number despite not being a business buying 1000 numbers and that isn’t Google
Was it though?
I mean I guess? Aside from the calling it’s fine imo. UI was also easier for me to use
wasn’t the calling the main thing Skype was used for tho?
No. Messaging was just as popular if not more so back when Skype was at its peak.
Discord provides free hosting.
Everyone talking about alternatives like Revolt or Mumble does not realize how big of a deal that actually is.
Exactly, I can go to discord and create a new server with a few clicks. Even as a somewhat tech savvy person I am not that confident about setting up a server, securing it properly, making it scalable for large amount of users, handling data storage and backups and all that.
Those flashy animated reactions are just incredibly annoying. Wish I could disable them, but of course Discord would never allow you to turn off the monetization.
Oh god, here you go the next “enshitification” victim… Matrix isn’t really that good of a replacement, I wonder what we will end up with.
Sure are a lot of tech companies seemingly speedrunning their self-destruction right now. Is there something in the water in the SF?
On a more serious note, Discord has always been mediocre. Makes me sad that the third-party client(!), Ripcord, is more or less abandonware. Being able to monitor just the specific channels you’re interested in is infinitely better than being forced to use servers wholesale given it’s near impossible to keep an eye on one at a time beyond notifications – which are clumsy at best. But for how useful that is, not having access to things like spoiler tags, most voip (and all video related) stuff really limits its practical use.
Oh well.
Makes me sad that the third-party client(!), Ripcord, is more or less abandonware
If this were free software, someone would probably have already picked it up and continued development of it.
Higher interest rates have meant that investors now have better things to invest in. If you aren’t profitable now, you need to get profitable soon because VC money is going to get a lot harder to find.
You can select which channels you’re interested in in Discord now (though maybe it’s not enabled by default for all servers yet?). I want to be able to see all those channels in a single place instead of clicking between servers but 🤷
I want to be able to see all those channels in a single place instead of clicking between servers but 🤷
That’s precisely what Ripcord does so well! I can hardly fathom how decision-making works at Discord, given all the random bells and whistles they add, but not a core feature like this.
Usually I’d think this was just another case of developers not using their own product, but I mean … they hardly use slack, do they?
Since they introduced super reactions, which nobody needs, I’ve become a bit worried, because I live on discord.
I like Matrix, my friends and I had a lot of fun with Element. Didn’t stick because of course everyone else was still on Discord but Matrix works as well as… Well, Lemmy
Give Revolt a try if you want something that feels like Discord without all the bloat.
I misread this as “give Reddit a try” and thought you were insane.
Hmm. This makes too much sense to me for me to be mad. Discord can easily compete with patreon the way I see it. Obviously, they could fuck it up and ruin the whole platform but if their team has more than a few brain cells it should work out fine right?
vomits
Did that fucknugget ruining Twitter cause EVERYONE to have the same hair brained idea?
companies running unprofitable social media (read: not worth the 100s of millions of investor money for some fuckin basic chat or forums) figured out they cant ever become super profitable like theyd hoped and try to monetize to the max while they can
Kinda like how Apple often makes terrible decisions that everyone hates, and then every other company follows suit because it actually worked and it’s been normalized now. Musk made all sorts of garbage decisions and didn’t lose critical mass of users, so now every other social media company is gonna follow suit now that the terrible ideas have been “normalized” by one of them.
Terrible decisions? I would say they’re really conservative about it and it shows. It took them probably a decade to make an AR headset and it looks like it may succeed. They said nothing about AI lately, presumably because they’re waiting to see how it matures.
I actually discovered Matrix through the comments on here and am now using Element. I’m really glad about it. I knew there was something fishy with discord suddenly being so intrusive about their super long “birthday celebration” (with annoying unread notification needing me to click on their gift reveals ugh) and making activities free or whatever lol.
And it’s their 8th birthday. EIGHTH! WHY DO THEY CARE ABOUT THEIR EIGHTH?!
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The only x0th birthday I cared about was my 10th.
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So it’s just an expansion of what can be monetized within a server. I see nothing wrong with this. It even gives small indie devs like me a chance at a small revenue stream.
If you don’t like the things a specific server is doing, leave. It’s pretty simple.
I have no problem paying for a service or an app if it is good and fits my needs. It’s the microtrans and battle passes that people generally have issues with. Paying for every little thing like a meme.
You seem to be forgetting that it is the server owner who decides these things. If you’re on a server that is monetizing memes and you don’t like it, leave.
Monetizing memes was given as an example. A stupid example Yes but only an example.
I found the PC Gamer article a bit confusing so I read other articles and understood it better. I get it now. It’s not Discord setting these sub tiers etc. They are allowing more servers. Doesn’t sound so bad. I guess depending how much a person uses a server they are a member of, they can help support the server and receive premium benefits and Discord who gets a cut of the purchases. All optional. Not too bad as it is up to the individual servers.
Edit: this can be a good thing and help support discord financially. So far we are lucky discord has not sold to a tech corp or gone public.
It’s the beginning of the entire platform turning to shit. Because it’s never enough money. More ads, more tracking, more locked in features.
This is the cycle of monetization. It gives you a small revenue stream, but only until users get fed up and leave. Because it’s never enough money coming in. More more more.
