I don’t think people on this sub use it, but it’s great news for us. The worse it gets the likelier people move on.
Enshittyfication as normal
Discord has a monopoly on the organized group chat platform, there isn’t a competent competitor, or at least none I’m aware of
Matrix.org (Try Element)
Revolt.chat
I must say that Matrix is so competent that it can compete against whatsapp and Discord at the same time
I don’t know why so many people in the fediverse consider Element a competitor to Discord. I regularly use Element, but the non-text functionality just isn’t ready to point people at as an alternative. They will have a bad time and write off Element potentially forever if they are shown that app as an alternative right now.
Some examples of functionality that is important to discord but is not a good experience or is not ready in element yet: voice/video channels, screen sharing, custom emotes and reactions, channel organization and browsing (their latest attempt just doesn’t do it for me).
Additionally, there are times when encryption just has a hiccup still or someone sets it up wrong and things can be messy because of it.
I really like element and they’ve done a good job so far, but It’s just not ready for people to be pushed there from discord.
…Maybe I should try to make an account on one of those competitors… what’s it called? Revolt or something?
Yup, its not widely used mainly because of the chaotic development, lack of a devcent mobile client and an actual selling point since it is basically a 1:1 recreation of discord
I feel like I have like three decent mobile clients, including the default?
https://matrix.org/try-matrix/ With the Element client, it’s a pretty close experience to Slack/Discord.
Not at all unless they have introduced voice channels instead of the antique group calls
cinny.in is much closer to discord then element
revolt is great, but development is quite slow and its just copy of discord
A copy of discord without the fuckshit is all I want really.
I wouldn’t say it’s great for me, because I have to use it for some people who just refuse to use an open source alternative.
The people who refuse to use an open source alternative, I no longer speak with. I have made plenty of new friends on the open source alternatives that use the open source alternatives.
this is wild. people who use open source software are a small small minority, and its good to have a diverse group of friends, not a tiny insulated group of the internet. dropping a friend over their choice of messaging app is pathetic
Resisting? It was a clear strategy: use VC money to give away something for free then charge/monetize to give back those investors all the money, with interests
If you don’t use Discord for voice much, Matrix has a pretty solid bridges you can use.
Hosting your own Matrix server is suprisingly way easier than I though - got a VM on hertzner for like 5$ a month, and there is an Ansible script that takes care of the setup for you. It’s also one of those rare cases where someone made an Ansible script that actually works, instead of you getting stuck in dependency-hell (seriously, fuck npm. Not a single docker or ansible tool that has used it ever worked for me out of the box. Python can get simillarly annoying).
They have a pretty easy to follow guide, and the whole setup took me like 20 minutes. I only edited a few options in config.yml (mostly to add Messenger and Discord bridge), and ran the ansible, and it worked at first try.
So I could at least ditch both messenger and discord apps from my PC and phone, without having to convince anyone to quit their poison - with only issue being that you can’t use Discord voice. And that the messenger bridge is still unreliable sometimes, but those are still minor inconviniences in comparison to my deep-seated hate for Meta.
Of course - Meta still gets my chat data and content, same as Discord. But at least they don’t get anything else from my phone or PC.
Matrix bridges are nice until you realize that you have to be a mod in the server to add the bridge, you need to do it not only for every Discord server you want to use on matrix, but every channel as well. It’s a huge chore. And ofc it doesn’t work with Discord DMs.
Not blaming Matrix or the matrix bridge developers here because it’s not their fault. But let’s be honest: matrix bridges are a pain to set up for Discord and for a majority of people aren’t worth the hassle. Moving to Matrix would be the better choice if at all possible
you need to do it not only for every Discord server you want to use on matrix, but every channel as well. It’s a huge chore. And ofc it doesn’t work with Discord DMs.
This wasn’t my experience at all - all I had to do was message the Matrix bot with servers I want to join (I’m not a mod on any of them), and it bridged all channels in that server. Also, Discord DMs are working fine.
I’m using the mautrix bridge, which doesn’t use a bot or anything like that, but uses your Discord session instead.
People aren’t going to move on. Some of you really live in a bubble when it comes to this stuff. Users complained about ads on Facebook, reddit, Twitter, YouTube and everything else and no matter how many times you guys declare those services dead the reality is that they are still the default for most. Even in the unlikely scenario that a large amount of users do permanently leave, they won’t migrate to the privacy respecting service you want them to.
Welcome to lemmy
Joined 2 months ago
Some are and some aren’t. Like a lot of folks on here are here because reddit went to shit.
A minority are, yes. reddit is still massive and continuing to grow while Lemmy participation has fallen off noticeably and continues to decline.
while Lemmy participation has fallen off noticeably and continues to decline.
Fediverse Observer says otherwise: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
Active users have been steady since the Reddit migration, posts and comments per day each dipped but bounced back and currently growing.
I don’t think you’re reading those stats correctly. MAUs clearly peaked months agp and have begun to trend down as people, move back to reddit. Why? Because, just like will be the case for Discord, communities haven’t moved.
Stats aside, I can’t help but laugh anytime people suggest Lemmy is dying off or failing. Aussie.zone didn’t used to exist, and Lemmy.ml used to have like… one post a day? And it would be some tankie nonsense like “I’m a Russian living in Ukraine - Russia isn’t going to invade Ukraine, it’s all Western propaganda”
I’m quite obviously comparing it to the height of the reddit migration, since that is the topic of the thread. MAUs peaked months ago and are trending down now.
MAUs peaked months ago and are trending down now.
Completely false claim if you look at the source in my previous comment. And no, I’m not looking at it wrong. MAU have been going up every month this year.
If you disagree with my assessment, then actually explain how it’s wrong. Don’t just claim I’m wrong without elaborating.
Completely false claim if you look at the source in my previous comment.
No…?
Are you only looking at the last 6 months or something? Zoom out to take into account the entire migration from reddit (since that is the topic of this thread). The MAUs peaked last year and the overall trend since has been downward since. Whether they are slightly up over a few recent months is not actually relevant to anything I said, nor does it disprove the claiim that Lemmy is dying.
You ate trying to cherypick statistics here to push a narrative that anyone can clearly see is false if they just compare the height of Lemmy during the migration when it was the supposed “reddit killer” vs what it is today. It is objective fact that it has declined and your own data proves it. The overall trend is downward. You are essentially the equivalent of a climate change denier, pretending there is no temperature increase by zooming right in on the most recent data instead of looking at the bigger and more relevant picture.
Are you only looking at the last 6 months or something? Zoom out to take into account the entire migration from reddit (since that is the topic of this thread). The MAUs peaked last year and the overall trend since has been downward since.
Yes, I’m only looking at the last 6 months, because everyone already knew that the Reddit migration was a freak event. There was going to be a big influx of users followed by many of the new users leaving as things stabilize. Because of that, you have to filter out the Reddit migration and following 2-3 months to get a proper view on the trend of Lemmy’s userbase numbers. And from that data it’s slowly trending upwards, which is a good position to be in.
Whether they are slightly up over a few recent months is not actually relevant to anything I said, nor does it disprove the claiim that Lemmy is dying.
It is objective fact that it has declined and your own data proves it. The overall trend is downward.
By the logic you’re running off of, I can look at Lemmy’s entire history and conclude that it’s trending upwards because the MAU started out at 0 and it’s currently around 113k. You have to put an appropriate range on data or you end up with nonsense conclusions.
You ate trying to cherypick statistics here to push a narrative that anyone can clearly see is false if they just compare the height of Lemmy during the migration when it was the supposed “reddit killer” vs what it is today. It is objective fact that it has declined and your own data proves it. The overall trend is downward.
If you actually look at the numbers in my source, the peak MAU after the Reddit migration was 115k, while it’s grown back to 113k as of last month. That’s less than a 2% difference, with consistent growth over the past 6 months. Not only that, comments have gone up a lot in comparison to MAU, meaning that those users are also growing more active. These are the objectively factual statistics that you’re harping on about, and they point to Lemmy being a in good spot growth-wise.
You are essentially the equivalent of a climate change denier, pretending there is no temperature increase by zooming right in on the most recent data instead of looking at the bigger and more relevant picture.
And here is the unprovoked ad-hominem attack. Dude, you’re the one who tossed out a false claim with no data to back it up, and took it personally when someone asked you to back up your claims with a source and a decent argument.
But sonce you’ve already brought out the mud-slinging, I’ll bring my own: you’re behaving like the gamers that claim a single-player game is dead and therefore bad simply because the active playerbase has dropped after two months. Grow up.
Nothing ever changes and it is pointless to try- got it
Goddamn I wish it wasn’t so hard to convince friends that discord sucks. I’d rather just send SMS than use discord to communicate with my social circle.
SMS? You mean the paid, vendor lock-in, MITMable traffic? Possibly one of the only options that is actually worse than Discord
I don’t always force my friends to use Discord alternatives, but when I do I force them to use Signal.
Took fucking years but i dragged them to signal kicking and screaming, people are such little bitches
Revolt is also a great open source alternative that I tried and would recommend
I just installed it after I ran into it on some other Lemmy comment. I was hoping to replace discord with it.
- clicking on a voice room doesn’t actual join it. You still need to dial in
- I can’t see who is currently in/using the voice room.
- doesnt seem to remember me granting mic access
- doesn’t seem to support screen sharing
It just feels like it isn’t “there” just yet? Unless I’m missing something?
If I showed it to friends of mine today and they had my experience I’m sure they’d go back to discord.
Not hating on the devs though. The product itself seems to be coming along nicely.
Yes, it definitely has missing features in comparison to Discord but I think it has potential. It may be useful to submit requests on Github.
If it helps, I’m pretty sure the devs are in the process of rewriting the UI on a private repo. Idk if there’s any eta or progress chart
It is just as centralized and has a tendency to ban people for poor reasons
It’s way better than Matrix
I don’t think it’s good as Matrix in terms of privacy and security but I think it’s better as an alternative to Discord
No E2EE for DMs, groups, or notes.
That’s going to be the deal breaker for most.
Matrix is far too slow for what it’s intended to be. I’d certainly like to see E2EE come to Revolt.
Is there any alternative with screen share feature and music bots?
Gotta switch to revolt. My username: super_user_do#0384
I only use it to play games with 4 other people regularly and another 2-3 people sporadically. When it becomes a pain to use, well move on just like we did with AOL Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Team Speak, and however many others we’ve used in the past. Something else will come along. It works great for now, but we aren’t loyal to it. We’re loyal to playing online with each other. I would honestly pay $5 a month for a decent program, should no free one be available, but I’m already cutting out multiple streaming services, satellite radio, and all sorts of other shit because commercials are too annoying.
This is just Netflix all over again. If you don’t want to pay for Nitro, watch ads. If you don’t like ads, find the door. I don’t get why people normalize freeloading online services and get pissy when they have to pay for what they use. Servers cost money. Pitch in with ads, data, or a subscription.
Otherwise go do your open-source self hosted and P2P programs, they all have the same problem. Reliability.
I’ve already paid with my data.
Want me to pay for a service (something I’m happy to do)? No ads and no selling of my data.
What data? Who bought it? Do you have a single fact to back that up?
Discord can do shit like this because they know many won’t ever try to use an alternative. You need more than just “open source” “privacy” or “FOSS” to convince people.
Steam supports direct voice chat. My friends use it for gaming.
Also, teamspeak.
Steam doesn’t let me make my own survers with categorized groups and stuff
To be fair, there was a time before Discord. People once used MSN, Skype, Teamspeak, IRC, etc.
They shouldn’t get too comfortable with the idea that people won’t just up and leave.
There has to be something to leave for
Closest I know is Revolt.
Matrix
Discord has real advantages over many of those, and communities are slow to pick up and move. It’ll take either a verybafd decision from discord or a good competitor. I want that competitor to be Matrix, but it’s far from perfect.
I don’t think it will take just one of those, it will take both.
Well, adding ads could easily be that very bad decision, if anything can position itself as an attractive alternative fast enough
This. Open source apps are generally awful at presenting themselves to a broader audience.
Even for me, who’s technical enough, an app being FOSS is not enough to even bother checking out. Yes, I’ve said it. Sorry, tinfoils, but I do put features above else. And, want it or not, general public does the same: if the featureset is not clear enough at first glance, and an app doesn’t explicitly provide clarity on what it does and how it is better than competition, most people aren’t even checking it out.
It’s an unpopular opinion but I completely agree. I’ve tried Matrix, not only could I not get more than 2% of my community to try it, but it’s horribly unintuitive and limited for server owners. Shut it down after a few months.
I have a rocket chat server going now, some similar issues, but at least it has more control than Matrix. Still only a fraction of my Discord and Telegram user base has joined, but it’s similar enough that people are at least willing to try.
FOSS alone is not enough, the wider public doesn’t care, they just want something easy and convenient.
Curious, what didn’t you like about Matrix specifically? I’m in the process of evaluating it for my friends. With the Element client, so far it seems pretty dang similar? Space = server, room = channel, there are also access controls. Seems like there’s voice and video chats too.
Speed was a big thing. Switching channels could take a few seconds to over a minute to load, on good hardware.
The biggest issue, and a huge glaring oversight imo, is that users can create their own channels, encrypt them, and instance owners have no way to know what goes on in there. Some of the channel names alone were enough to make your skin crawl.
Oh, and you want to ban somebody? Cool, just ban them individually from every channel, because there is no global instance-wide ban. Moderation is horrendous.
That sounds laughable. Gross. No thanks.
did you host your own matrix homeserver or use matrix.org? that can change how fast it feels massively and yeah built in moderation tools are pretty much nonexistant https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/Draupnir is the only moderation bot that you can run to ban users from all rooms at once if they break your rules and lets you subscribe to banlists so if a user spams in other rooms that have write access and gets added they’ll be banned from your rooms as well
We need to fix people. This proprietary shit is dystopian.
Make the apps pretty, sure, but long term; fix people.
if the featureset is not clear enough at first glance
My experience as someone who has barely dabbled in Matrix, tried comparing clients, and knows a lot of people who stick to Discord: a lot of Discord users heavily use custom emotes, voice chat, and screen sharing. It’s not even easy to figure out which Matrix clients support each of those features without installing everything and trying it out. There’s a clients comparison on matrix.org that mentions Voip but not stickers or video.
For stickers alone:
- Element is widely considered the go-to Matrix client but uses a strange integration system for predefined sticker packs instead of the MSC2545 stickers that more closely resemble what users coming from Discord would want.
- Cinny seems to have the best support for stickers/emotes but its site doesn’t mention them at all. It supports uploading and managing sticker packs at either a channel or user level, provides a nice picker UI to send any picture from those packs as either a large “sticker” or a small inline “emoji”, and allows using them for reactions.
- FluffyChat mentions stickers on its site and has the second best sticker support, with all of those except reactions and a graphical sticker picker for inline emoji (need to type them as shortcode).
- SchildiChat, Nheko, and NeoChat have some sort of limited support for custom stickers/emoji. NeoChat is the only one of those that advertises stickers on its main site. Nheko mentions them in a GitHub readme.
Being able to freely use custom emotes without paying for a Discord Nitro subscription nor server boosts would be a great selling point but it’s not something most users would be able to figure out before signing up. The limited client support isn’t great; e.g. Fluffy is the only Android client that supports sending custom stickers but some people may dislike the chat bubbles style UI.
More, you need to convince the that this shit being inevitable is why you need FOSS.
Ads are not enough reason to stop using it for the majority. You need to offer more than just ad-free. You need to offer the same or better adoption, features, and overall user experience. Discord has these all nailed.
Discord has literally like one feature matrix doesn’t; stickers. And it kinda has those. Stop talking shit and try it out with some friends. This is so much more important than just chat, and the hour is getting late as fuck.
The big thing is the network effect. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
I’m not leaving my communities for yet another app. When they migrate I will too.
Dude. You can install multiple apps on your phone. I’m pretty sure.
Good. Maybe people will finally move on to something else.
