this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Discord was already succumbing to enshitification. Now with their intention to be owned by Wall Street, that trajectory will certainly accelerate at warp speed once the change of hands happens.

Anyone already get ahead of this and find a solid alternative?

Right now I'm on the fence between Element for Matrix, and Revolt. Both seem to have their pros and cons and I can't find a clear "winner".

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[–] crmsnbleyd@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Matrix is nice, and you can have jitsi for calls integrated. It seems to be pretty popular; Lemmy has a field for matrix @ in user profiles. Never heard of revolt before.

[–] ErrorCode@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

I use Jitsi for a non-profit, and I like the mute someone else function, but oh wow the noise cancellation needs improvement. So many voice comm apps have disappeared (there used to be one our group used all the time, then the devs dropped it (the client app) and just became on API or something).

[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Time to dust off my old Mumble server!

[–] ErrorCode@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I was reading this thread and started looking for that app again.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

I've also been comparing Element and Revolt. Both seem really solid, both are open source and both are self-hostable. Hard to find any downsides there.

There's a discord server that me and a bunch of friends use as our main hangout. They've raised the prospect of bailing before things enshittify, and of course I've been tasked with pitching a replacement. For my money, Revolt is the way I'm going to go, specifically because it's basically a one for one clone of Discord. The people I'm pitching this to are a mix of technical and non-technical, so I think something that looks and feels like what they're used to will be the easiest transition.

It also feels like Element is geared pretty heavily towards being a replacement for Slack / Teams rather than a replacement for Discord. Their pitch seems a lot more focused on the enterprise market. Revolt seems more focused on gaming, casual hangout, that sort of thing.

I like Element a lot, but for me it doesn't feel like the right solution to this specific problem. But if I was pitching something to my work as a Teams replacement, Element is definitely the way I'd go.

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 6 points 38 minutes ago

Man I wish my online friends were that easy to switch.

As soon as I mention Lemmy "what's wrong with reddit". As soon as I mention element "but everyone uses whatsapp/discord".

It suck that 90% of the people are stuck in their old ways and refuse to try anything new.

Hell I almost got banned for even mentioning lemmy once.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Silly question perhaps, but I haven't tripped across it on the site for Revolt -- is there a relatively straight forward server version for self-hosting, or is it just that the source is on github and you can compile it in theory if you feel like goin through that process... ?

[–] BendingHawk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

The most straight forward I see appears to be Docker hosting

https://github.com/revoltchat/self-hosted

https://developers.revolt.chat/faq.html#admonition-what-can-i-do-with-revolt-and-how-do-i-self-host

If you're looking to self host but are uncomfortable with Docker I recommend checking out YunoHost as an option for something a bit simpler, they also support Revolt

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 minutes ago

Thanks, appreciated.

[–] shym3q@programming.dev 8 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I've started my self-hosting journey having Matrix in mind - especially the Matrix bridges to cut off the need to use social media clients like Discord.

Today, I'm slowly convicting my friends to join my instance. So far, that's just one of the closest ones (still win for me).

I hope one day decentralization in social media would take off!

[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 2 points 3 hours ago

Just remember your friend, https://discorch.org/

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

if discord is going public they don't need my turbo sub anymore

[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

Cancelled mine when they redesigned the mobile app anyway. I don't want a different interface on mobile vs desktop. I want a unified experience, which was their original purpose.

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 16 points 7 hours ago

Matrix is the way. It's federated and you can have your own server.

[–] Wolfizen@pawb.social 21 points 11 hours ago
[–] xelar@lemmy.ml 18 points 11 hours ago
[–] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 7 points 10 hours ago (2 children)
[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

That's a throwback. Let's take it one step further and just get back on Ventrilo and play some DOTA. (For the younger folks who don't get the reference: https://youtu.be/aTJncWndUB8 )

[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I still have my copy. I cannot believe that song is like, 18 years old now. It was such a staple of my college experience.

[–] EchoCranium@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 hours ago

Used to use Vent playing Eve Online 19 years ago. Worked great back then. Apparently it's still around, but still no Linux support after all these years.

[–] waz@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I am certainly not one of the younger folks and had never seen that before. That is awesome, thank you for sharing.

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 hours ago

Oh man, Basshunter was huge in the chronically-online gamer space in the 2000s. His other songs are pretty good too.

To put it in perspective, the fact that they're gaming on laptops and LCD monitors was an enviable flex when his songs released.

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago

Tmspk egssts tuh

[–] Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 8 points 11 hours ago

Me and my brother are using teamspeak to this day.

[–] Turnbomb@lemmy.ml 15 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Is there any option to stay on discord but better? Like vencord or something similar through Linux? I cannot imagine being able to get my friends off of discord ever.

[–] RichardDegenne@lemm.ee 18 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I guess that's the biggest hurdle, especially when it comes to social apps. One tech-savvy person wanting to migrate is usually not enough to start moving a community, even as a small as a group of friends.

[–] ricdeh@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago

Had to experience that first hand. I tried to get my best friends to register on my Matrix server last September and join a room for our group, and they did, but I rarely see any of them online and I only get responses days later, if at all. One even stopped using it entirely, lol. Ah well, but at least I got a Matrix server out of that that I can use to federate with other like-minded people.

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