So seriously, what’s going to replace Discord? Everyone wants to leave, but to where?
And no, Matrix is not and will never be a viable alternative
Slack seems cool to me and my friends, is it not cool to other people?
IRC never left.
My group left about 5 years ago (give or take a couple) when there was a hostile takeover of freenode. I haven’t really looked into it at all since then, is freenode back or where did everyone move to?
Matrix is not
With LiveKit for calls / screen share, it is for my group. Though I’m not saying it doesn’t have issues.
will never be
Community-developed homeservers like continuwuity have gotten a lot of new support on the last few weeks. Clients like cinny are getting pretty close to a replacement ux wise (if you look at PR2599 on Cinny’s GitHub, they are working on and will soon merge support for LiveKit in a way that is very close to voice channels).
I also generally think that the only way to replace Discord as an ecosystem where you talk to many people from different communities is a federated protocol, not a bunch of new silos, one for each community.
I’ve seen mentioned these:
- Stoat - pretty much same UI, based in UK, not sure where they get $$
- Fluxer - looks virtually like 1:1 Discord clone, based in Sweden, has paid tier pretty much like Nitro on Discord on official server
- Nerimity - a little different UI, but still very Discord-y, based in UK, sourced from donations
- Movim - this one is interesting, but it’s not really Discord style app; it looks more like cross breed between IM and social network (FB/X), origin in France
- Strafe - looks like Discord, supposedly have e2ee
- Spacebar - reverse engineered Discord, IDK about maturity of this one
- Adapt - another wanna be
Why is “one-to-one clone of Discord” the goal for everyone? Why not set your sights on a making a good UX instead?
I don’t think it’s necessarily the goal — Discord is just a helpful yardstick to compare things to as a baseline (and some people are looking for something that replaces Discord as closely as possible). Having to switch services is a pain, and whilst it’s not optimal in the long term to just try to replace a thing with a clone, I can see why people don’t have the executive function energy to think too hard about this.
ngl, discord kinda had the best UX before the enshittification began
So you’re saying there are options.
Doesn’t Stoat charge far out the ass?
TeamSpeak had their chance, but they decided to be complacent after getting popular. Now they are playing catchup and very slowly. Discord has given them multiple chances now to take back market share, but TeamSpeak was never ready. This time some other project will take over instead.
Its also closed source as i recently learned…
How did that go unnoticed? I always remember them requiring a license in order to have more than a small handful of people connected to the server you are running locally on your own computer.
The last time i used teamspeak i was like 15 i think. So i just forgor i guess.
I still prefer to open my window and just scream for the person I’m trying to reach. Fuhgedaboutet
I use two tin cans and some string.
They got trounced by Ventrilo, which had the saddest looking UI I’ve ever seen on a commercial product.
There was something kind of special about how simple Vent was. It didn’t need a bunch of bells and whistles, it did one thing and it was relatively easy for people to use. Discord feels so cluttered and it’s full of shit I don’t want.
I liked it, it reminded me of AIM
Bring back Mumble!
I self host a mumble for my people I games with, works great
Mobile app is dogshit but the Teamspeak 6 desktop client is decent.
Ultimately my group is using Steam for now and checking out Fluxer self-hosting once the refactor gets done.
I hadn’t heard of Fluxer before this post, but after looking it looks like it’s basically everything I’ve been looking for. Hopefully that refactor gets sorted relatively soon.
There’s also https://movim.eu/ which might suit your needs
TeamsPiqued more like it… in the 2010s even.
You’ve peaked my interest
Don’t mind me, I’m just sneaking a peak into your chatter
So close











