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 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: 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Public companies have to account for the shareholdres’ expectation of, well, making money (and more money, and more money, and growing the numbers as much as possible). Shareholders have some degree influence on how the company works, depending on how many shares they own, e.g. they can vote for the CEO. This usually leads to the company to introducing more aggressive ways of making money off the users/customers, enshittification, etc., as it has to satisfy the shareholders and not so much the original customers.
Any good options recommended for self-hosting something similarly functional that doesn’t take too much effort to get up, audit, maintain? Discovery isn’t really important for me, so federated isn’t really necessary, but a cool extra. I’d love to host something or contribute to hosting for my gaming groups, my class or multiple classes at my school, or otherwise. Voice, chat, screen share, camera, would all be great if possible, but range of options would be good. I’m still using Mumble for gaming…
Haven’t tinkered much with Matrix nor do I know much about Revolt, but I’m curious before I look into it deeper if anyone in the community has experience hosting any communication platforms for small, invitational groups.
Nothing comes close to the feature set offered by Discord, Matrix’ bad priorities unfortunately made sure of this. There currently is a project to fix their shit even if it means to break some bad decisions, Tuwunel, however it’s neither ready nor is it clear where it will end up. The previous project it forked, Conduwuit, got bullied into giving up.
You’ll probably be best off with a classic 2-way approach for now. Stick with Mumble for Voice and get something nice for Chat and Organizing like Mattermost or Revolt (or even IRC if you’re a purist). With some luck Discord’s strong enshittification will give projects like Tuwunel the necessary push it needs to force Matrix to finally care for more than just the needs of governments and their perfectionism that gets them nowhere for years now. That or we’ll see some kind of soft-fork with even more bad blood.
Matrix is probably be the best bet atm, although I’m hoping for Spacebar to get more mature as they are aiming for feature parity and compatibility with discord. This way you can host your server with Spacebar, use their client and still be friends with discord users/be in discord servers that haven’t switched yet. Only thing impossible with Spacebar is discord users joining your self hosted server, but once they reach feature maturity (esp in regards to voicechat and videochat) it’ll make switching super seamless.
[sarcasm] Who could have ever seen it coming? [/sarcasm]
Honestly, the writing was on the wall for a long time, it had no clear business model and was a mess. It was always going to go this way and I tried pointing out that it was a bad platform but nobody either cared or believed me. Whelp, looks like I was a Cassandra yet again.
Hope Open Source people can make something to fill the gap, there really is nothing else (yet). Matrix really doesn’t have the features and that which it does have is often bad UX and doesn’t work everywhere. Not seen anything else which will fill the gap and I’ve been looking but I guess nobody thought discord would go down, go this way, or just don’t really know how to make something that would fill the gap, or didn’t want to.
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.
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”.
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