3mo ago

Discord alternatives?

Discord is banned in Turkiye. The reason is some data theft, blackmail, AI montage photos, etc. As usual, our government made the easiest and most illogical move :)

I am looking for an alternative platform to talk and chat with my friends. Which platforms do you recommend?

The ones I tried:

Revolt: Voice chat is not stable. They do not accept new registrations.
Matrix: Unstable overall.
TeamSpeak: ancient interface. We can still try it.
XMPP: It has an old interface like TS. Not sure if it has voice channels.
Your recommendations?

108 comments

waits for matrix fanboys to still chime in
- My client shouldn't be bugged when I enter a room with a long history, right? Right?
  
  Couldn't decrypt message
  
  Hey, they're fixing that. Soon. Really. Any day now. For reals!
  (That's the #1 thing that makes Matrix utterly unusable for me: if there's more than like, 10 messages, it's a game of is-it-broken-or-is-it-just-crap.)
- The lack of interest in it even amongst tech communities and bridges (they can link Matrix servers and Discord servers) constantly being down has kept me from giving Matrix a second chance.
  I think it was a Linux gaming community last time that got flooded with hate content after the bridge went down and the Matrix side was left to itself.
- Matrix is the only discord clone I know about. Does it have massive problems?
  
  Yes. Without a question of a doubt.

Matrix is probably the closest to Discord overall. If Element is bugging out on you, it might be worth trying other clients. Nheko worked well when I tried it, for example. Do note that the matrixorg homeserver is sometimes overloaded, so if you're having responsiveness issues, choosing or running a different homeserver will probably clear them right up.
Mumble.info is great for voice. If your text chat needs are pretty basic, it might be a good fit. I don't think it saves message history.
XMPP is a protocol, not an app. If you you saw an interface you didn't like, you could always just use a different client. I don't usually recommend it, since setting it up with all the features people usually expect is a bit complicated and error-prone, but it would probably be fine among a small group of friends if one of them has tech skills. I don't think it offers voice, at least not in any widely-supported way.
- Our group uses mumble for voice and discord for text and backup voice or external voice. The voice quality is better, free, faster on mumble. Extremely low server requirements. It technically saves chat history but as server logs, not for the client.
  
  What do you do when you want to share your screen?

I use Steam Chat for playing games with family and friends. It has better audio quality than discord in my opinion, and you can make groups (something like Discord servers) too. It doesn't have all the functionality of servers, but the basic idea is there.
I am actually surprised nobody mentioned it yet Why use some third party application, when you can use the Steam's one.
It's not like the OP is concerned about privacy. They were using discord. They didn't say it has to be open source.
For talking outside of gaming or away from PC, I use signal.

IRC.
- irssi for cli, hexchat for gui

I setup a Mattermost server for me and the boys. It’s more slack than discord. But chat, rooms and voice all worked. Push notifications worked on android and Apple. But, I had to admit defeat. No one wants to leave discord because they all have at least 1 friend who won’t leave it.
I tried to self hosted matrix, but it suffered the same feigned interest.
- We need client compatibility with discord
  
  Discord is a closed source system. Matrix with a discord bridge would work. You just use your matrix server and a bot to send and receive on your behalf. There is functionality between but technically the two systems are independent. I also see issues with it not being 100% all the time. Typical of something bridging to a closed system.
  What compatibility are you looking for? A non discord application connected directly to a discord server and can send text, audio and visual via discord infrastructure? Nah, probably won’t happen. Bridging is the closest right now.

Discord is banned in Turkiye.
Considering the nature of these programs, I think the most important thing to hone in on is: what's popular in Turkiye? Features and functionality don't mean squat if no one's around to enjoy them.
...tad off topic, but this thread is making me miss xFire. That shit was better 10 years ago (maybe more like 15? idk, I'm old) than Discord was at its peak. ...litigated out of existence by Yahoo's frivolous weaponization of our legal system. This is why we can't have nice things.
 
Edit - Fuck you, Yahoo.
- Ohhh, xFire, that takes me back. To a time of dedicated servers and not that bullshit service game fuckery.
- xFire was great, didn't know the whole yahoo thing
  Kinda liked the separate applications for voice and chat, we used ventrilo over teamspeak for reasons I don't recall but all of that is just ancient history at this point (was using that like literally 20 years ago)
- Eh, I'm honestly trying to give Yahoo another shake now that Google is so terrible. That said, Yahoo still sucks to use, and it lost most of the charm that it had in the 90s. And BTW, the xFire suit was around 20 years ago, so you may be older than you want to admit.
  
  the xFire suit was around 20 years ago, so you may be older than you want to admit.
  There comes a point where it kinda just blurs together. I'm old enough that when people ask how old I am, I have to stop and think what year it is, and do some quick head math to figure out the answer.

Jitsi meet is what I use for calls with my friends. You can continue using revolt or matrix or something for the text channels.
https://meet.calyx.net/
- Calyx Jitsi instance has been down for months though. 🤔
  
  Ah ok. I didn't check but that's the one I've used in the past. meet.jit.si I believe still works but you might need to make an account.

You could self host revolt.

Teamspeak 3 is ancient, but works.
However there is a new version of Teamspeak (TS5) which is much closer to Discord and looks much nicer. You could give that a try
- There was a TS4?
  There's guilded, have an old guild leader in tech that always tries to get us to be guinea pigs for different voips, and that one isn't terrible if discord isn't available.
  Ventrilo, is that even around anymore?
  Mumble wasn't too bad,
- Alternatively mumble and murmur, but the setup is more elaborate.

There isn't a full replacement for Discord out there, it'll have to be old school with multiple things together.
Teamspeak is great for voice comms (or Mumble). And you could use Matrix or XMPP for text chat. Matrix should be a lot better if you either self-host or join a smaller server that isn't so overloaded all the time.
For game streaming Broadcast Box paired with OBS Studio seems like a good option for low latency streaming.

matrix: unstable overall
"Unstable" is an understatement, and this comes from a girl who uses it all day every day.
- Isn't it generally better if you use a smaller instance/host your own? Most of the complaints I've heard have been on the busier instances.
  That said, I only use it occasionally to catch up on dev updates.
  
  My current instance has ~160 users, and it's okay. I once used a friend's instance, where I was the 2nd user. It was very bad. That might in part be the fact that it was running Conduwuit though.

XMPP/Jabber has whatever interface you choose (determined by the client you use), and does voice pretty darn well.
I'm currently using Jmp.chat as a SIM/data provider, and they provide an XMPP account via Snikket. I can connect to that account with pretty much any XMPP/Jabber client.
To me, XMPP/Jabber is the most flexible, because it's a protocol, and you choose which parts you want. And you can choose which clients you use. I have 2 clients on my phone and one on my laptop. They all work fine with the same account, with messages showing up at all simultaneously. One client (Snikket) has multiple accounts in it. The thing is XMPP/Jabber as a protocol is like SMTP - it's a standard, so all clients can communicate with each other, if they support the same features (eg OMEMO encryption, which is popular now).
Alternatively check out:
Teleguard, it's from the folks at SwissCows. They claim E2E, and from the way you connect devices, and that you can't recover an account from them, I tend to believe it. Though I haven't seen a third party evaluation (I belive they're closed source, unfortunately). So do with that what you will.
Simplex Chat, self hostable, they claim it's very secure. I've used it some, the phone app is a bit heavy on ram use.
There are numerous others out there.
- xmpp is a protocol, it doesn't have interface. you may be thinking about some specific software using xmpp, in that case you have to say what software you are talking about.
  
  Which is exactly what I said. You get the interface you choose.

When it got banned? My Friend is from Turkiye. He still used it.
- Todays news
  https://www.turkiyetoday.com/turkiye/turkiye-bans-discord-amid-concerns-over-platform-safety-62896/
  For now, Discord users in Türkiye face limited access to the platform, though it remains unclear whether a full ban will be implemented in the coming days.
  Still working for me on hotel wifi.
  Edit: it won’t launch on my laptop now. Stuck trying to update. Still works on my phone.
  
  Some groups have allegedly used the “901” tag in their usernames to identify themselves, raising alarms among officials and parents alike
  What does this mean? I can't seem to find info on what a 901 tag even is.
  
  Oh Thanks for info
- I would not be surprised if a large chunk of population can evade bans, so no surprise.

If you or one of your friends can self-host, my group used mumble before discord. I still don't really know why we switched.

In fact matrix is great
- How? A few weeks back I had to deal with getting spammed with invites to CSAM rooms. I've also been harassed many times on it. And not to mention lack of moderation tools and state issues.
  
  Do not have really the problems you mentioned,but sadly it's more a problem of community than service ...

To those suggesting mumble, are there any good guides out there? The website is shockingly bad for introductory information.
- https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble-docker
  myself, I run a docker container of mumble in casaOS
- its very easy to install via docker as mentioned above. Mumble is very lightweight. You could run the server on your desktop in the background easily or even on your router, there is a package for openwrt. The sound quality is awesome, voice is e2e encrypted and bandwidth should not be a problem either for a couple of people in the chat while you are playing.

Revolt: Voice chat is not stable. They do not accept new registrations.
That's news to me. Where do they not allow new accounts signing up????
- Since Discord was blocked in Russia today, everyone went to revolt, which cannot deal with so many registrations for now
  
  Ah okay, yeah they probably don't have the backend servers for it as it has grown slowly if at all over the past year. Revolt is meant to be run on independent self hosted backends similar to Lemmy (only without federation) but humans are going to be humans, and simply pile into the one largest, most common Revolt instance and cause huge traffic problems.
  
  So you're saying revolt is about to have a shitton of russian users, which means it's about to become a pro-russian war hub. You know what they say about nazis. Allow one nazi into your bar, and he'll invite his friends. Soon enough, your bar isn't a bar with a few nazis in it. It's become a nazi bar.
  Same concept, different facists.

On one hand, it's cool that you have an excuse to ditch Discord. The platform sucks in several different ways and the more people leave it, the better off the world is.
But on the other - you seem to be aiming for the wrong goal. I know what it's like to have one thing blocked after the other, so I know for sure that migrating every time something gets blocked is just not a sustainable long-term strategy. You might replace Discord for unrelated reasons... But I strongly advise you to look into censorship circumvention methods. Especially stealthy ones, like they use in China. Set it up for your family and friends (maybe distributing the server costs between them). You will need it.

IRC: it’s open source, it’s free, its retro

https://www.mumble.info

Theres also zulip, but I havent tried it yet, but its supposedly open source discord, but you have to host the server yourself I think.
- I don't recommend Zulip as Discord alternative. It's interesting take on slack-ish type of messenger, but not really "polished" experience for now.

There's not a great 1:1 replacement. I'd suggest some sort of hybrid approach. Personally, I use mumble for voip and matrix for text. I haven't experienced any significant stability issues with matrix, but self-hosting probably plays in my favor there.

KiwiIRC is a web based IRC client. Does not have voice chat afaik, but since it's IRC it's very lightweight and had a low entry barrier.

Your experience with XMPP will vary depending on the client you use. It's not a 1 to 1 replacement for discord, and I'm not sure if there's a client that can do group calls, but It can do 1 on 1 calls and group text chats. I'd recommend Cheogram for mobile, and possibly movim for desktop.
For group audio calls, if you found matrix unstable, then Mumble is likely your best bet, or perhaps Signal, if that's not banned as well.

I'm in the same boat and also looking for a privacy-respecting platform for communicating with family and friends. So I'd also like to add items that are not yet mentioned to the list of suggestions:
Jami
Peer Calls - can be selfhosted; you can try it out straight away using their flagship instance located here.

self-hosting matrix is possible, and after I got it set up, it works fine. That said, push notifications were acting up a lot at first (might have been fixed by an update since that hasn't been an issue in a while), and it is rather annoying to get your desktop and mobile clients set up to not be annoying about not being verified (iOS apps seem more fiddly with verifying than Android apps in my experience)
Despite my annoyances at first, the Element client really is the best and most mature one out there, and I do recommend it. Don't bother with any of the other ones; despite what the fluffychat settings want you to think, Element is the only client that can do any kind of audio/video calling, and most of the other clients only have web apps, so there's no hope for getting push notifications on mobile.
Ultimately it has worked for me, but my demands are three humans in a voice call once a week, no screenshare (use Parsec for that), and occasional text messages.
- The Element X is supposed to be the best client, but I can’t find a way to join rooms within a chat. So for now I use Fluffy to join rooms, then back to Element X for actual usage. Kind of bothersome but I’m sure they’ll figure it out since the original Element app has the ability to join rooms.
  
  It surely ain't very obvious but if anyone else ran this design quirk, you've search rooms by starting a new chat

Revolt seems to be the best for now. Today they got a lot of money and I hope, they'll make their best to make it a reasonable discord alternative

How about Guilded?

Discord was based off of Slack and Microsoft Teams is a trash knockoff. All depends what you intend to use it for.

https://spacebar.chat/

Guilded is really similar to Discord, but Roblox bought them so you need a Roblox account to use it. It's great for voice chat.
- I don't think it's great to change one walled garden for another. If you are willing to change, better switch to a protocol instead. Even if there's something wrong with the server, witching between different instances is much easier than between entirely different products.
  
  I agree, but after I tried three FOSS ones that were hard to set up and had very bad voice quality I gave up and tried Guilded which is working great. The most important feature I need is ability to locally mute people which not many apps have for some reason. What would you recommend I use?

I found this awesome Article Posted on Odysee which I will suggest you all read it, It's full of mostly OpenSource Alternatives too long to list here & plus it helps out the guy in metrics
Well I would add SimpleX-Chat as well as CWTCH since they use TOR

Is Telegram available?

108 comments