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?
How about Guilded?
IRC: it’s open source, it’s free, its retro
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.
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.
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,
You could self host revolt.
SimpleX or Signal. Not sure if they work on desktop though.
Signal should still have a desktop app, I believe
If only it synced messages with the mobile app properly
I use it on mobile and desktop regularly without sync issues. Has it always had that problem for you? I generally always get messages at the exact same time without fail.
I don’t have it on desktop anymore, but if I install it now, the desktop app won’t have any conversations that I have on my phone. I use a Matrix bridge instead that doesn’t forget messages.
Correct, it will only have all future messages. Nothing historic. But it should sync literally everything going forward.
Well, I don’t like this. The idea of sacrificing messaging history in favour of illusory security gains doesn’t sit well with me. Same goes for Signal backups.
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.
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
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.
Is Telegram available?
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.
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.
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 app. 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 manageable 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 think that’s most of the alternatives. Revolt is the best of the bunch, if you ask me.
One more is https://tryquiet.org/ but it’s SUPER basic at this time…
waits for matrix fanboys to still chime in
Matrix is the only discord clone I know about. Does it have massive problems?
Yes. Without a question of a doubt.
Eh, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There is a lot of room for improvement, but it works pretty well today, especially if your rooms are relatively small (e.g. a few dozen people) and you don’t use an overcrowded instance (e.g. not the main Matrix.org one).
If you can host your own, you can adjust the resources so it works well for you. If you can’t, just avoid the main instance.
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.
My client shouldn’t be bugged when I enter a room with a long history, right? Right?
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.)
Tbf, they actually are. Element X and the sliding sync are ready I think. If the server and client both use it, I think you can use it today. Or maybe the whole matrix 2.0 where that’s all integrated isn’t pushed into main/master yet. Im any case, I read it was ready maybe a few weeks ago.
Element X is still missing a lot of features, “ready” is an exaggeration I feel
No Spaces support in particular is a dealbreaker for me
Ahh, good point. I have only been “testing” matrix for a year and haven’t enabled sliding sync so haven’t bothered using element x yet.
Well then theyre right- one day it might get done. 😄
I’ve found that Conduit handles it a lot better than Synapse does.
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