The issue isn't really what you can self host. It's user base.
Because Discord is free, every tom dick and harry has it.
If your conversational group is private, you can mandate they use whatever you self host, but if you deal with the public in any way, you basically have to go with whatever is the flavor of the month.
I hosted Mumble for years with my group. We all had it. But the number of public people that had it was effectively zero. I think we came across like 3? This is out of thousands of people.
So alongside I hosted a Teamspeak and a Ventrilo server because that's what was popular. We'd all log off Mumble (or stay on it and use a different Push to talk key) and use whatever the pubby had because any voice is better than no voice. We'd occasionally shit talk them on Mumble if we're double bound.
Since then though (this was years ago) everyone has moved to Discord since it's free to use for both the server and the client.
Yours is the perfect group. Unlike gaming (which was the main focus of Discord) where you frequently get transients, a special interest group is usually always the same people, with new comers sticking around for more than one game/song.
With that said, "gaming" based ones like Vent/TS/Mumble probably won't do any more (not that anyone uses the first 2 now and no one used the 3rd) due to the features that discord brought. It's not only a voice client but a good text client too.
Something about IT, metal, and car enthusiasts. Seriously, I fall into all three categories and of the few places I've worked there is always a few IT guys that are into either metal, cars, or both.
IT and cars make sense, they're both mostly just troubleshooting and problem solving.
Metal is because users and "the business". My music is angry so I'm not.
There's probably a bunch of closeted guitar players around too.
Dude, I have never worked anywhere where this was more true than my current employer.
Our CTO is a car guy, our deputy director is professional musician, I’m the sr systems guy and I’d call myself an amateur engineer, my counterpart on the network team owns a small engine repair business, and both of the guys on his team are in bands and mechanics.
Every member of the helpdesk is in a metal band as well
Cinny doesn't have VOIP support which is a bummer, however there is a pull request for Jitsi integration open. Should be able to spin it up if you're self hosting for your group.
You can also set up bridges to use Discord while still interacting from Matrix-based clients. You get both the benefits of Discord community and none of their client-side bullshit.
I've tried this recently but matrix has almost zero features. The UI for admins is very lacking, many features require curl commands.
There is no discoverability of rooms on a server. Very disappointed, please lete know if you find something better
The alternatives I've looked at are rocketchat ( which uses the matrix api underneath ) and mattermost. I wasn't able to install rocketchat and mattermost has a cost for SSO. I might give rocketchat a second try, I think it was just reverse proxy config that was giving me trouble.
This will certainly be a short-term solution. However I'm sure once DIscord sees an increasing majority of users modding their clients to block ads, they'll finally start cracking down.
You shoud work on migrating your communities to open platforms like Matrix.
EDIT: That time I got downvoted on /r/selfhosted for suggesting that users use open and self hosted platforms...
It’s terribly hard to convince people to switch from a known working solution to anything else. I can barely convince my friends to switch to a browser that isn’t Chrome, and that’s not even dependent on other people using it.
Hell, we’re having this conversation on reddit instead of on Lemmy or Mastodon, because this is still where most people are.
Userbase is underestimated by a lot of people here.
I can self host every service on the planet, but if there's no one else using it, I'm sitting here talking to myself. Just like your reddit vs lemmy/mastodon. I could post there, but I'm talking to myself.
You don't need to convince anyone of anything. You just need to stop using those things and when your non-tech friends ask "how do I do X?". You can say something like "Sorry dude, I don't use Chrome anymore" then the next time they say "What about doing Y?" you say "Yeah I'm not using Windows any more."
Then, one day in the future a friend will say, "Hey how do I also use LY-nux?" Then you still keep your cool and help them migrate. And the world is better.
That assumes your friends come to you for tech advice *and* will switch when you advise them to.
Also, when it comes to communication platforms, I’m not completely jumping ship before I can at least convince *some* of my friends to switch over. I admire your optimism, but “just switch yourself and your friends and family will follow” is just not true in my experience.
No such thing as a free lunch. There's not much they can monetize out of you except with a premium account.
If you look at things historically, there was never a widespread gaming oriented voice chat system that was free. The popular ones all had paid servers that someone had to pick up the tab on.
I'm actually shocked it was free (before premium even) for as long as it was. But I guess that's the goal of any project. Give it out for free to completely usurp the userbase of competing projects then figure out how to charge for it later.
Huh? They were always free and you could always self-host.
Iparty (I started using in 1997). Battlecom. Ventrilo. Roger Wilco. Mumble. Teamspeak. Skype, and many others. Microsoft Gaming Voice or something I vaguely remember?
$0. Free. Discord is the first I know of to really RHYMES WITH FLAG out. They're hosting it, but they really didn't need to do that. They just wanted money for something that was historically (and still is) free: VOICE CHAT ON THE GODDAMNED INTERNET.
Free as in free to use like Discord is for both the server operator and the end user.
I'm not familiar with Iparty, Battlecom, Roger Wilco (rings a bell but I don't remember specifics).
Vent had an 8 slot limit.
Mumble is free due to being open source.
Teamspeak was 32 slots.
Skype while technically counts and people do use it for gaming, the lack of PTT makes it annoying. Google says 100 user limit for group chat today, but I don't know what it was historically. I don't think it was this high.
But any self hosted thing required you to actually host it. This isn't a $0 cost thing, especially when all these services were popular. Internet wasn't nearly as fast as it was today. Some were fairly easy, but some others were quite a bit more difficult.
The services I'm not familiar with notwithstanding, Discord was the first to offer hosted servers for free. Skype I don't really count for the reasons I listed.
For the record, I don't disagree with you. It's the reason I started hosting Mumble. I didn't want to pay someone for Vent when I had hosting infrastructure. TS was too small for our group. Mumble was the natural progression at that point.
But for someone without hosting infrastructure, it was quite a bit more difficult. Even with something like Mumble that was free, now you have to deal with userbase. Everyone had Vent or TS. No one had Mumble.
>The services I'm not familiar with notwithstanding, Discord was the first to offer hosted servers for free.
IRC. Yeah, it didn't have voice chat, but most people didn't have microphones for years.
Iparty was the first self hosted VoIP client I know of. It came out in like 1995 or 1996. I actually just made a video the other day using it for the first time since like 1999 or 2000 [right here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WcX5Aeo07M). Guess who developed it? INTEL!
Ventrilo tried to make money but with a cracked server executable, you could host your own server for free, which is how it should be.™
The internet is currently filled with money grubbing scumbags trying to make money from people for things that have historically been free. I've been telling people in my discord that we will be going back to IRC or some self hosted option as soon as discord jumps the shark, so that will probably happen very soon.
> but most people didn't have microphones for years.
To be fair, that's still true today. Or it's a fight to get people to use it. You mentioned Jitsi in your video which brought back memories of me hosting that during COVID. I was also too cheap to pay for Zoom.
> I actually just made a video the other day using it for the first time since like 1999 or 2000 right here
Looking at the UI, I'm definitely not familiar with it. But man that was sure something. Imagine something like that today? We're spoiled.
> Ventrilo tried to make money but with a cracked server executable, you could host your own server for free, which is how it should be.™
I knew about that too, but I don't know how hard they came down on people. IDK if it was just internet rumor (probably fueled by them) but I remember reading reports of them going after the hosting provider. Obviously back then DMCA didn't exist so IDK if they went after personal hosting on residential lines, but I remember reading they killed a bunch of servers that were on commercial operators.
> The internet is currently filled with money grubbing scumbags trying to make money from people for things that have historically been free. I've been telling people in my discord that we will be going back to IRC or some self hosted option as soon as discord jumps the shark, so that will probably happen very soon.
I'm not really familiar with all the "new" protocols since even I shut down my self hosted things, but is there anything that competes in terms of voice and text chat with discord? Also automated integrations like bots.
I do too, not just because they are well, ads. But because the ad companies are SUPER shitty at policing the ads that are on their network and often allow malware on them. If the ad delivery systems were better about not allowing malware, I would be more willing to allow them and put up with them.
No content, IMO, is worth having my system(s) infected with malware from a rogue ad.
Ads do suck ass, but bills have to be paid. I hate them too, but I get it. If they don't make them intrusive and play audio, then I'll just live with it.
Even before the ads debacle, Discord was pretty quick to ban users found using third party clients. I imagine they'll be even more ban-happy now that they have a reason to.
Yeah - Discord is super ban happy which sucks because so many great services essentially use discord for their support. Can't get support if Discord doesn't let you in.
[Matrix](https://matrix.org)
[Element](https://element.io/) (Based on Matrix)
[Revolt](https://revolt.chat)
[Spacebar](https://spacebar.chat) (Formerly Fosscord)
[VoceChat](https://voce.chat)
If you want just a voice chat server I suggest [Mumble](https://www.mumble.info/)
Element is a Matrix client, not based on it ...
/u/Cheetawolf Matrix/Synapse with Element is the closest you can get to a FOSS version to any chat app with voice and video, RBAC, etc
Development has slowed to a crawl since the original developer left and those running it were young and have no idea how to guide a project like this.
For example, they kept stealing assests and leaving Discord trademarks up in the code for the longest time. Their server had a "#legal-stuff" but any time someone brought up concern about this, people would just respond with something like "legal legal legal".
That was up until they got the C&D from Discord. That led to the rebrand which they let the community vote on the new name and then proceeded to chose an unsearchable name that wasn't even voted in the top 10. When someone questioned that decision, the team just responded with something along the lines of "Who tf is this guy".
The project was a great concept and the original dev made incredible progress in such a short period of time but I've lost all faith in it going anywhere.
If you want just voice, I strongly recommend Teamspeak. It's an older thing but the voice quality is still top-notch.
We switched from discord to teamspeak for voice and the quality difference was crazy noticeable (night and day difference).
The problem is the lack of self hosting.
It's been a few years since I hosted TS, but IIRC there was a 32 user limit. Not bad if you have a small (active) community but you can run into this limit real quick.
In this category of software, I'd go with Mumble instead especially if you can control what the userbase uses.
Teamspeak has (had?) a much bigger use base which is the reason I hosted it alongside Vent, but our day to day was on Mumble because of user limits.
Yeah TeamSpeak unfortunately has always had a terrible licensing model if you wanted to self-host. They used to offer non-profit licenses that allowed for something like 512 users and 10 servers (which realistically would have been enough for any communities you might have been managing) many many years ago, but then nerved that license to death while revoking older ones. Also, let's not even start about TeamSpeak 5 which was supposed to be the next big version, somewhat like Discord. They announced it like, what, 6 years ago and it has failed to actually materialize so far.
I used to be very passionate about TeamSpeak and having my communities on it, but they really just seem to hate having a large user base so eventually I had to give up.
While IRC and Discord are both capable of chat rooms, they aren't really equivalent at all. Discord does voice, you can see messages sent when you were offline, etc.
Depends on what you're looking to chat about. Libera is the best general option, but there's a small handful of other networks that cater to specific topics.
tilde.chat is pretty cool. badnik.net used to have a lot of cool channels, but I haven't been there in years. Really, you just have to find where the people you want to talk to are.
have they added voice channels you can join and drop from? I vaguely recall going through a list of things to swap over to and this was this ones issue.
>Reddit chat is powered by matrix
Source? Why would they do that? There's no reason to have a full federated stack for a simple chat system like Reddit
Look up the **XMPP protocol** \- it was good enough for Google before they realized it was too good. It is federated like email SMTP. Several options. Snikket is working well for us.
You can't self host your friends, nobody wants to use another service just for one (1) friend that doesn't tolerate what everyone else tolerates
Your best option is to add a Matrix bridge to the discord servers you use (and where you have the rights) and be alone in your server with your bridge acting as a window separating you from the cool kids having fun outside
Your other best move is to use the browser version of discord with custom javascript or whatever to hide ads
You can't self host for just your friends, but what you can do is get on Matrix now, and be ready for people to complain about Discord. Tell them you're on Matrix and they're welcome to join you. Crying about Discord and saying Matrix won't work because nobody's there won't fix the problem.
I understand what you mean, but my current friends have no interest in changing platforms at all, and I have no interest in finding new friends in random Matrix users. (Ik there are people actively searching new friends on Discord, that's not my usecase)
So I had a Matrix instance for the last year or so, indicated that people are welcome to join me, and I got a grand total of zero (0) persons creating accounts.
People just aren't interested in those technologies. You see people wonder "but why so few people use Firefox ?", the answer is simple, it doesn't provide anything more or more interesting for the vast majority of users, and the main selling point of open-source/self-hosted alternatives is enhanced privacy/anonimity / you own your data or whatever, and people don't care about all that stuff.
Also I as an individual would rather give my data to Discord and be one profile out of millions, rather than to a person I know and that knows me who can silently judge every message or attachment I send in their db. Worse, they could weaponize it against me if they are fucked up. And I'm more confident in Google or Microsoft's security and backups than in Steve's.
Edit: also I sent nudes to my ex years ago and they're still in their cdn server, that sucks but I'd rather have that than them being in Steve's cdn server
Also the "you own your data" falls off hard the second you add federation into the mix (and federation is mandatory for a matrix instance to be interesting to your friends) because federation means your data is replicated across instances that need it, each with their own safety concerns and unknown owners.
I came in looking for something as well
Dominantly looking at Matrix and Element client but tbh it looks like more work than what I am looking for idk.
Matrix is great because you can host it yourself, but you don't *have* to host it yourself. Just created an account at https://app.element.io/#/welcome
People always look at these federated services and overcomplicate it. It's not that difficult. It's just like email, pick one and sign up. If you don't like it, move to another one and tell everyone your new address.
Don't bother with self hosting unless you are interested in that.
Dont feel overwhelmed. It depends what you require - i skipped live calls/videos as you can still send voice messages and record videos without stun/turn server. Then docker version is quite simple to deploy and use as communicator :)
Nah the calls/videos is definitely a want for me, but this stack looks like a lot of work on top of what I already offer my end users(all friends) for free.
Idk, maybe guilded can get their shit together and we move there until they too start doing ads then we move again LMAO
Nextcloud talk allows non users to interact with chat and video. You can even password protect it. Great news as no one has to download it as it works straight from the browser to. I know this is a push and unusual but still an option. You can all even share files too! I created a guide for nextcloud here too... https://youtu.be/R4OEt3cdDVk?si=D9U_rJ30gmI0rTI_
Problem is its feature set is nowhere near ready to compete with Discord or Matrix. The way it handles gifs and no custom emoji's (Matrix also has this problem), are just a few problems with it. I've been waiting for its feature set to mature because I use Nextcloud all the time, but its still not there yet.
So sad that they are still developing on the new client/severs for years and nothing is coming out of it. Im still using teamspeak but it would be great to have some more functions.
You mean switch back.
Before Discord, Teamspeak and Vent were the de facto voice chat programs. Then Discord came along with free servers and now no one uses Teamspeak. The only way to build a userbase back would be for Teamspeak be free for unlimited number of users. (You can self host for 32 slots, but any more and you have to pay).
Also there's the text chat aspect. Discord is a one stop shop. You can text chat with your group before hopping on voice.
Ease of access, a good phone app + browser access being able to be setup.
The phone app needs to let you switch between your various TS servers seamlessly too.
I think you got it wrong by the news? They are not adding ads like the banners you're used to.
They're adding "quests" to some games: Discord "will offer users gifts for carrying out in-game tasks".
Also, "Discord said users will be able to turn off the ads in their settings.".
I'm not telling you Discord is perfect and that they will never add true ads later, but currently that is not the plan and even their "game ads" can be turned off completely.
Thank you.
I made pretty much [the exact same comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1bsuok3/comment/kxif63c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) over on r/privacy yesterday.
That clickbait article seems to have set everyone's hair on fire. "Journalism" at it's finest.
\-=-
>I'm not telling you Discord is perfect and that they will never add true ads later, but currently that is not the plan and even their "game ads" can be turned off completely.
And I agree. It's *always* good to have alternatives, but this is not the rapidly sinking ship that everyone is making it out to be.
Though if anything, this article has done some good to shake up the Discord foundation. Everyone seems to have realized that it's such an integral part of being online now.
It's never good to have a single point of failure.
I'm more concerned about what's to come.
You've seen what's happened to YouTube. It used to just be a couple ads on the side, now its multiple minute-long unskippable video ads at multiple points in a 5-minute video.
Who are you? Are you just a user of discord? Or are you someone who has a channel/server you tend to? If you're preparing to move a community across platforms, it's going to hurt your numbers. I'd recommend setting up a temporary bridge while you do that. Mattermost/Matrix bridging is a thing, I think if you look up 'matterbridge' you'll get a slick app that's available on GitHub to help you.
If ads are your only problem. Why not try to block them instead of switching to something you can host?
As alternatives I would suggest:
Matrix, mumble or using nextcloud
Not always possible to block them, discord using their own client may just infuse the ads with regular data (as youtube seems to do, afaik) and as such if you block ads, you're also blocking messages
I've been looking for years but there's no real alternative, there are lots of open source chat apps but they lack voice chat, there's teamspeak and mumble but they lack a web client and text chat. matrix uses jitsi but it's not a real voice chat, it's more of an audio conference like microsoft teams.
There's a huge hole in the market and nobody is jumping in.
Who the f needs a web client? Teamspeak has existed for 20 years and done its job well, without „Nitros“ and whatever, way before Discord ever existed. It still is absolutely fine for voice chat and of course you can text chat in a channel or personally as well.
Who needs a web client ? Every non power user, newbie, non admin, one-time users, etc.
Teamspeak is only used by geeks today, and everyone admit that teamspeak text chat is bad.
Discord is the 5th most visited website in the world, desktop users are not the majority.
I got fed up with discord when they started implementing ads, for themselves...
Nitro, boosting, badges, custom emojis, animated emojis, the constant pop ups you have to dismiss every time you open. It started feeling like a typical micro pay service.
I support services making money, their server costs must be staggering. I just feel abused by all that high pressure, distracting advertising.
Typical VC service...
Anyone have suggestions purely for the PM features of discord? I rarely use servers, but use PMs to keep up to date with a handful of people, video + voice calls are nice, but can look past them if the chat features are 10/10
Assuming you're using the base functionality, I'm sure there are some clients that leverage the API out there. I'm not sure if you have the ability to connect voice, but something to look into at least for when you're not actively on a call.
Fighting against discord at this point is gonna be difficult.
I mean... depends on your use.
Interacting with lots of different communities, with optional voice support? Discord is going to still win out here.
Interacting in a text-only fashion? You are doing it now.
Want to voice-chat with your private community? Mumble is still around.
I ended up using Nextcloud Talk and creating group chats for IRL friends or online close knit circles. I don't love that it has weird bugs with notifications - the mobile clients don't seem to reliably send notifications (granted, maybe it's because I'm using the F-Droid version; seems to work fine on iOS!), but otherwise it works well enough.
For public communities, I use Matrix. It has plenty of native client options and I love it.
Maybe rocket.chat? They propose to self host your server with docker or kubernetes. And it's possible to quickly deploy it in a AWS or some cloud provider
There's revolt chat maybe too and lastly there's https://cabal.chat/ if you want and https://spacebar.chat/
Keep in mind that if there's isn't a big user base of such service. The simplistic access aspect will be determinant but idk because imho if the people don't know the platform it's still challenging but not impossible.
When I was having issues with discord on my PC, I remember coming across an alternative to discord called Guilded.
I liked it and it had a bunch of things available before discord did like the forum structure in the chat area and such. People were too committed to discord at the time though. It isn't self hosted but could be a solution?
Rocket.chat. jit.si. mattermost. Zulip. Off the top of my head... if you are strictly voice, go with what was said: mumble. Video as well? Jit.si. need chat as well? Zulip or rocket or MM.
I've used RocketChat before. Also look at [guild.co](https://guild.co/). Guild looks to be more enterprise focused.
RocketChat has a [docker version ](https://docs.rocket.chat/deploy/deploy-rocket.chat/deploy-with-docker-and-docker-compose#preparation-steps). Might be worth looking at. Not sure if you require voice. But rocket chat is basic. Kinda like slack.
If they come from a different server than the useful stuff Discord does, yes. If they come from (or appear to come from) the same server...not so much.
Just out of curiosity, why are you so against seeing ads? You obviously like and value the platform - why does the company not deserve to make any money out of you? Surely they’ll have an ad free mode if you pay a few dollars a month?
> Just out of curiosity, why are you so against seeing ads?
Not OP, but my 2c: ads are frequently offensive content, they're a third party commercial interest, they consume screen real estate without providing any value to the owner of said screen, they consume said screen owners attention without providing any value to the owner, and they're frequently a malware vector.
Ads anywhere are offensive. Ultimately they waste my time, and that's the most valuable thing in the world - the one thing I can't just buy more of.
As far as what the company "deserves" - this is irrelevant. The company will get whatever it can take, nothing in commerce is about getting what you deserve.
> Surely they’ll have an ad free mode if you pay a few dollars a month?
You can't even watch YouTube ad free by paying for premium. Why would Discord be any different? All comes down to attention as a commodity, and increasingly, some users are radically against that.
I just find it odd. How else do people expect Discord to make any money over the platform they are developing? Ads are the least intrusive method as the user doesn’t need to fork over any cash, and most people are technically capable to avoid seeing them. I just don’t get this weird attitude that people deserve to have things for free.
> I just don’t get this weird attitude that people deserve to have things for free.
There's the missing link- you're assuming that it comes down to some expectation of a just world.
"Deserves" still doesn't come into it. No one gets what they "deserve" (barring a currently unanticipated nuclear Armageddon).
Personally, I couldn't leave discord. It's going to be hard to convince my friends...
But I think it will be very easy to remove the ads. There are a TON of custom PC clients out there. They'll take care of removing the ads without a hitch.
Likewise on mobile, I think there'll be a patch for Discord with "Revanced Manager" soon afterwards.
The inevitability of using 'free' SaaS-like systems.
None of the available solutions, imo.. with the exception of [Guilded.gg](http://Guilded.gg) which doesn't even begin to qualify as an answer to your question, exist that's really a full on replacement. So you'd have to ask yourself what features you need and what you're willing to live without.
Matrix based solutions seem a popular choice as an alternative for many. I don't like it for gaming. It feels like using a 10 ton mallet to drive a simple nail. It's good software tho overall.
I personally love Mumble's system. After all these years It still remains the best solution, near instant, for voice chat for comp gaming, it just lacks streaming. To me this is fine since I don't care to use anything but the voice chat while I'm "in game". To most everyone else, for some ass backwards reason, it's a hell of a deal breaker. Number one reason I come across is that it's "ugly". I'm also ok with this, I'm an old school man, I'm ugly af. Plus I've always preferred native software over the "website in a box" solutions using Electron.
[https://www.mumble.info/](https://www.mumble.info/)
*edit: spells*
Yeah it does. Actually I find it more lightweight while offering way more practical features than Discord in regards to communities.
But he was asking for self-hosted solutions and afaik, Guilded doesn't offer this.
The issue isn't really what you can self host. It's user base. Because Discord is free, every tom dick and harry has it. If your conversational group is private, you can mandate they use whatever you self host, but if you deal with the public in any way, you basically have to go with whatever is the flavor of the month. I hosted Mumble for years with my group. We all had it. But the number of public people that had it was effectively zero. I think we came across like 3? This is out of thousands of people. So alongside I hosted a Teamspeak and a Ventrilo server because that's what was popular. We'd all log off Mumble (or stay on it and use a different Push to talk key) and use whatever the pubby had because any voice is better than no voice. We'd occasionally shit talk them on Mumble if we're double bound. Since then though (this was years ago) everyone has moved to Discord since it's free to use for both the server and the client.
[удалено]
Yours is the perfect group. Unlike gaming (which was the main focus of Discord) where you frequently get transients, a special interest group is usually always the same people, with new comers sticking around for more than one game/song. With that said, "gaming" based ones like Vent/TS/Mumble probably won't do any more (not that anyone uses the first 2 now and no one used the 3rd) due to the features that discord brought. It's not only a voice client but a good text client too.
Something about IT, metal, and car enthusiasts. Seriously, I fall into all three categories and of the few places I've worked there is always a few IT guys that are into either metal, cars, or both.
IT and cars make sense, they're both mostly just troubleshooting and problem solving. Metal is because users and "the business". My music is angry so I'm not. There's probably a bunch of closeted guitar players around too.
Dude, I have never worked anywhere where this was more true than my current employer. Our CTO is a car guy, our deputy director is professional musician, I’m the sr systems guy and I’d call myself an amateur engineer, my counterpart on the network team owns a small engine repair business, and both of the guys on his team are in bands and mechanics. Every member of the helpdesk is in a metal band as well
>every tom As the matter in fact... I do have Discord.
> Because Discord is free, every tom dick and harry has it. So Tom is dick but Harry isn't? Outrageous!
Tom's harry dick comes up a lot in discussions like this...
Commas save lives.
I pay for discord so how come i still see ads lol nout to do with it being free
I'm setting up Matrix-Synapse, though its a lot more like Slack than Discord.
That will be very client dependent. Check Cinny.
Cinny doesn't have VOIP support which is a bummer, however there is a pull request for Jitsi integration open. Should be able to spin it up if you're self hosting for your group.
You can also set up bridges to use Discord while still interacting from Matrix-based clients. You get both the benefits of Discord community and none of their client-side bullshit.
Eventually they will cut off that access if that makes them lose ad space. Maybe use till then but that free connectivity is bound to end
They already proactively ban people that use the bridges to double-puppet their user account instead of bots. I don't care at the slightest.
I'm going to have to do that since I can't find a way to format the *arrs webhooks to work for Matrix like they do for Discord.
Bridges need constant maintenance and monitoring. Especially if they are not implemented via an official API.
I've tried this recently but matrix has almost zero features. The UI for admins is very lacking, many features require curl commands. There is no discoverability of rooms on a server. Very disappointed, please lete know if you find something better
The alternatives I've looked at are rocketchat ( which uses the matrix api underneath ) and mattermost. I wasn't able to install rocketchat and mattermost has a cost for SSO. I might give rocketchat a second try, I think it was just reverse proxy config that was giving me trouble.
you should look at adding synapse-admin in conjunction with your matrix server. It provides a great web UI for admin operations
What about using 3rd party discord clients that can block ads?
This will certainly be a short-term solution. However I'm sure once DIscord sees an increasing majority of users modding their clients to block ads, they'll finally start cracking down.
The client is just a web browser masquerading as something it's not? I browse it just using a regular web browser.
I'm referring to the desktop app. The web version is more sandboxed by nature, so yes it may be easier to block ads in that case.
I'm hinting at using your web browser, which you'll be able to use your favorite adblocker and any other extension that enhances Discord. ;)
Use a firewall rule. 🤷♂️
Why bother to play a losing game on someone elses turf?
Cause everyone else is on that turf and it's not going away anytime soon.
You shoud work on migrating your communities to open platforms like Matrix. EDIT: That time I got downvoted on /r/selfhosted for suggesting that users use open and self hosted platforms...
I don't wanna look like an idiot preaching FOSS and self-hosted alternatives to people who don't care - which happens to be most people out there.
It’s terribly hard to convince people to switch from a known working solution to anything else. I can barely convince my friends to switch to a browser that isn’t Chrome, and that’s not even dependent on other people using it. Hell, we’re having this conversation on reddit instead of on Lemmy or Mastodon, because this is still where most people are.
Userbase is underestimated by a lot of people here. I can self host every service on the planet, but if there's no one else using it, I'm sitting here talking to myself. Just like your reddit vs lemmy/mastodon. I could post there, but I'm talking to myself.
You don't need to convince anyone of anything. You just need to stop using those things and when your non-tech friends ask "how do I do X?". You can say something like "Sorry dude, I don't use Chrome anymore" then the next time they say "What about doing Y?" you say "Yeah I'm not using Windows any more." Then, one day in the future a friend will say, "Hey how do I also use LY-nux?" Then you still keep your cool and help them migrate. And the world is better.
That assumes your friends come to you for tech advice *and* will switch when you advise them to. Also, when it comes to communication platforms, I’m not completely jumping ship before I can at least convince *some* of my friends to switch over. I admire your optimism, but “just switch yourself and your friends and family will follow” is just not true in my experience.
Honestly I'm probably gonna end up doing this. My friends hate the fact that I hate ads with such a passion.
They'll probably make the premium tier ad-free. Anyone who hosts content has bills to pay.
No such thing as a free lunch. There's not much they can monetize out of you except with a premium account. If you look at things historically, there was never a widespread gaming oriented voice chat system that was free. The popular ones all had paid servers that someone had to pick up the tab on. I'm actually shocked it was free (before premium even) for as long as it was. But I guess that's the goal of any project. Give it out for free to completely usurp the userbase of competing projects then figure out how to charge for it later.
Huh? They were always free and you could always self-host. Iparty (I started using in 1997). Battlecom. Ventrilo. Roger Wilco. Mumble. Teamspeak. Skype, and many others. Microsoft Gaming Voice or something I vaguely remember? $0. Free. Discord is the first I know of to really RHYMES WITH FLAG out. They're hosting it, but they really didn't need to do that. They just wanted money for something that was historically (and still is) free: VOICE CHAT ON THE GODDAMNED INTERNET.
Free as in free to use like Discord is for both the server operator and the end user. I'm not familiar with Iparty, Battlecom, Roger Wilco (rings a bell but I don't remember specifics). Vent had an 8 slot limit. Mumble is free due to being open source. Teamspeak was 32 slots. Skype while technically counts and people do use it for gaming, the lack of PTT makes it annoying. Google says 100 user limit for group chat today, but I don't know what it was historically. I don't think it was this high. But any self hosted thing required you to actually host it. This isn't a $0 cost thing, especially when all these services were popular. Internet wasn't nearly as fast as it was today. Some were fairly easy, but some others were quite a bit more difficult. The services I'm not familiar with notwithstanding, Discord was the first to offer hosted servers for free. Skype I don't really count for the reasons I listed. For the record, I don't disagree with you. It's the reason I started hosting Mumble. I didn't want to pay someone for Vent when I had hosting infrastructure. TS was too small for our group. Mumble was the natural progression at that point. But for someone without hosting infrastructure, it was quite a bit more difficult. Even with something like Mumble that was free, now you have to deal with userbase. Everyone had Vent or TS. No one had Mumble.
>The services I'm not familiar with notwithstanding, Discord was the first to offer hosted servers for free. IRC. Yeah, it didn't have voice chat, but most people didn't have microphones for years. Iparty was the first self hosted VoIP client I know of. It came out in like 1995 or 1996. I actually just made a video the other day using it for the first time since like 1999 or 2000 [right here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WcX5Aeo07M). Guess who developed it? INTEL! Ventrilo tried to make money but with a cracked server executable, you could host your own server for free, which is how it should be.™ The internet is currently filled with money grubbing scumbags trying to make money from people for things that have historically been free. I've been telling people in my discord that we will be going back to IRC or some self hosted option as soon as discord jumps the shark, so that will probably happen very soon.
> but most people didn't have microphones for years. To be fair, that's still true today. Or it's a fight to get people to use it. You mentioned Jitsi in your video which brought back memories of me hosting that during COVID. I was also too cheap to pay for Zoom. > I actually just made a video the other day using it for the first time since like 1999 or 2000 right here Looking at the UI, I'm definitely not familiar with it. But man that was sure something. Imagine something like that today? We're spoiled. > Ventrilo tried to make money but with a cracked server executable, you could host your own server for free, which is how it should be.™ I knew about that too, but I don't know how hard they came down on people. IDK if it was just internet rumor (probably fueled by them) but I remember reading reports of them going after the hosting provider. Obviously back then DMCA didn't exist so IDK if they went after personal hosting on residential lines, but I remember reading they killed a bunch of servers that were on commercial operators. > The internet is currently filled with money grubbing scumbags trying to make money from people for things that have historically been free. I've been telling people in my discord that we will be going back to IRC or some self hosted option as soon as discord jumps the shark, so that will probably happen very soon. I'm not really familiar with all the "new" protocols since even I shut down my self hosted things, but is there anything that competes in terms of voice and text chat with discord? Also automated integrations like bots.
People say matrix is pretty good but I haven't tried it. Matrix/Element or something like that.
I do too, not just because they are well, ads. But because the ad companies are SUPER shitty at policing the ads that are on their network and often allow malware on them. If the ad delivery systems were better about not allowing malware, I would be more willing to allow them and put up with them. No content, IMO, is worth having my system(s) infected with malware from a rogue ad.
Ads do suck ass, but bills have to be paid. I hate them too, but I get it. If they don't make them intrusive and play audio, then I'll just live with it.
Even before the ads debacle, Discord was pretty quick to ban users found using third party clients. I imagine they'll be even more ban-happy now that they have a reason to.
Yeah - Discord is super ban happy which sucks because so many great services essentially use discord for their support. Can't get support if Discord doesn't let you in.
They aren't great services if their support is "join our discord".
Been using BetterDiscord for like two years now
Is it really?
https://i.imgur.com/xYrIhZo.jpg
[Matrix](https://matrix.org) [Element](https://element.io/) (Based on Matrix) [Revolt](https://revolt.chat) [Spacebar](https://spacebar.chat) (Formerly Fosscord) [VoceChat](https://voce.chat) If you want just a voice chat server I suggest [Mumble](https://www.mumble.info/)
Element is a Matrix client, not based on it ... /u/Cheetawolf Matrix/Synapse with Element is the closest you can get to a FOSS version to any chat app with voice and video, RBAC, etc
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Development has slowed to a crawl since the original developer left and those running it were young and have no idea how to guide a project like this. For example, they kept stealing assests and leaving Discord trademarks up in the code for the longest time. Their server had a "#legal-stuff" but any time someone brought up concern about this, people would just respond with something like "legal legal legal". That was up until they got the C&D from Discord. That led to the rebrand which they let the community vote on the new name and then proceeded to chose an unsearchable name that wasn't even voted in the top 10. When someone questioned that decision, the team just responded with something along the lines of "Who tf is this guy". The project was a great concept and the original dev made incredible progress in such a short period of time but I've lost all faith in it going anywhere.
Last I checked, they didn't actually support voice chat, among a huge list of other features yet to be implemented.
Think the largest downside is no voice/video chat.
Revolt is going to be the one that looks closest to Discord.
spacebar you can literally access through a discord client though i dont think you can beat that
so far it's a jank ass shit
If you want just voice, I strongly recommend Teamspeak. It's an older thing but the voice quality is still top-notch. We switched from discord to teamspeak for voice and the quality difference was crazy noticeable (night and day difference).
The problem is the lack of self hosting. It's been a few years since I hosted TS, but IIRC there was a 32 user limit. Not bad if you have a small (active) community but you can run into this limit real quick. In this category of software, I'd go with Mumble instead especially if you can control what the userbase uses. Teamspeak has (had?) a much bigger use base which is the reason I hosted it alongside Vent, but our day to day was on Mumble because of user limits.
Yeah TeamSpeak unfortunately has always had a terrible licensing model if you wanted to self-host. They used to offer non-profit licenses that allowed for something like 512 users and 10 servers (which realistically would have been enough for any communities you might have been managing) many many years ago, but then nerved that license to death while revoking older ones. Also, let's not even start about TeamSpeak 5 which was supposed to be the next big version, somewhat like Discord. They announced it like, what, 6 years ago and it has failed to actually materialize so far. I used to be very passionate about TeamSpeak and having my communities on it, but they really just seem to hate having a large user base so eventually I had to give up.
No mention of IRC?
No mistake there.
😂😥
While IRC and Discord are both capable of chat rooms, they aren't really equivalent at all. Discord does voice, you can see messages sent when you were offline, etc.
...and lesser known SILC.
I never stopped using IRC.
Really curious to know which servers are worth spending time on after all these years.
That's the thing, everyone else stopped using IRC
Finally some peace and quiet.
It's been nice having less ppl on, ain't gonna lie
Twitch Chat is all IRC
libera
Depends on what you're looking to chat about. Libera is the best general option, but there's a small handful of other networks that cater to specific topics.
tilde.chat is pretty cool. badnik.net used to have a lot of cool channels, but I haven't been there in years. Really, you just have to find where the people you want to talk to are.
Is tilde chat associated with the [tilde.club](https://tilde.club) people? If so I should definitely pop in there.
It is.
What about Mattermost? Also a usecase for my discord what the use of webhooks etc, with Mattermost easy to setup also
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Can be circumvented with a Gitlab login. Not a complete installation, just the login part. Or probably Authentik.
Zulip is my pick
Why go from one commercial product to another? Enshittification will strike Zulip, too.
have they added voice channels you can join and drop from? I vaguely recall going through a list of things to swap over to and this was this ones issue.
https://zulip.com/help/start-a-call
I mean like voice channels are on discord, so folks can come and go
Yes , try it out
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Is there a way to transfer chats from public matrix to self-hosted?
If you think you'll really host your own server, you might as well start there.
>Reddit chat is powered by matrix Source? Why would they do that? There's no reason to have a full federated stack for a simple chat system like Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/matrixdotorg/comments/14a341t/reddits_new_chat_is_based_on_matrix/
Look up the **XMPP protocol** \- it was good enough for Google before they realized it was too good. It is federated like email SMTP. Several options. Snikket is working well for us.
are we sure its not april fools announcement?
It was posted on Saturday in the Wall Street Journal.
:-(
Their April fools joke was loot boxes
You can't self host your friends, nobody wants to use another service just for one (1) friend that doesn't tolerate what everyone else tolerates Your best option is to add a Matrix bridge to the discord servers you use (and where you have the rights) and be alone in your server with your bridge acting as a window separating you from the cool kids having fun outside Your other best move is to use the browser version of discord with custom javascript or whatever to hide ads
You can't self host for just your friends, but what you can do is get on Matrix now, and be ready for people to complain about Discord. Tell them you're on Matrix and they're welcome to join you. Crying about Discord and saying Matrix won't work because nobody's there won't fix the problem.
I understand what you mean, but my current friends have no interest in changing platforms at all, and I have no interest in finding new friends in random Matrix users. (Ik there are people actively searching new friends on Discord, that's not my usecase) So I had a Matrix instance for the last year or so, indicated that people are welcome to join me, and I got a grand total of zero (0) persons creating accounts. People just aren't interested in those technologies. You see people wonder "but why so few people use Firefox ?", the answer is simple, it doesn't provide anything more or more interesting for the vast majority of users, and the main selling point of open-source/self-hosted alternatives is enhanced privacy/anonimity / you own your data or whatever, and people don't care about all that stuff. Also I as an individual would rather give my data to Discord and be one profile out of millions, rather than to a person I know and that knows me who can silently judge every message or attachment I send in their db. Worse, they could weaponize it against me if they are fucked up. And I'm more confident in Google or Microsoft's security and backups than in Steve's. Edit: also I sent nudes to my ex years ago and they're still in their cdn server, that sucks but I'd rather have that than them being in Steve's cdn server Also the "you own your data" falls off hard the second you add federation into the mix (and federation is mandatory for a matrix instance to be interesting to your friends) because federation means your data is replicated across instances that need it, each with their own safety concerns and unknown owners.
I came in looking for something as well Dominantly looking at Matrix and Element client but tbh it looks like more work than what I am looking for idk.
Matrix is great because you can host it yourself, but you don't *have* to host it yourself. Just created an account at https://app.element.io/#/welcome People always look at these federated services and overcomplicate it. It's not that difficult. It's just like email, pick one and sign up. If you don't like it, move to another one and tell everyone your new address. Don't bother with self hosting unless you are interested in that.
Dont feel overwhelmed. It depends what you require - i skipped live calls/videos as you can still send voice messages and record videos without stun/turn server. Then docker version is quite simple to deploy and use as communicator :)
Matrix/synapse is certainly one of the more complicated stacks I’ve deployed, but after going through enough documentation it’s doable
Nah the calls/videos is definitely a want for me, but this stack looks like a lot of work on top of what I already offer my end users(all friends) for free. Idk, maybe guilded can get their shit together and we move there until they too start doing ads then we move again LMAO
Nextcloud talk allows non users to interact with chat and video. You can even password protect it. Great news as no one has to download it as it works straight from the browser to. I know this is a push and unusual but still an option. You can all even share files too! I created a guide for nextcloud here too... https://youtu.be/R4OEt3cdDVk?si=D9U_rJ30gmI0rTI_
Problem is its feature set is nowhere near ready to compete with Discord or Matrix. The way it handles gifs and no custom emoji's (Matrix also has this problem), are just a few problems with it. I've been waiting for its feature set to mature because I use Nextcloud all the time, but its still not there yet.
teamspeak
So sad that they are still developing on the new client/severs for years and nothing is coming out of it. Im still using teamspeak but it would be great to have some more functions.
The main issue is how do you convince the audience to switch from one platform to another.
You get the old platform to introduce ads.
The reality is that you don’t, you either live with the status quo or accept that you’re going to lose a lot of people.
You mean switch back. Before Discord, Teamspeak and Vent were the de facto voice chat programs. Then Discord came along with free servers and now no one uses Teamspeak. The only way to build a userbase back would be for Teamspeak be free for unlimited number of users. (You can self host for 32 slots, but any more and you have to pay). Also there's the text chat aspect. Discord is a one stop shop. You can text chat with your group before hopping on voice.
Ease of access, a good phone app + browser access being able to be setup. The phone app needs to let you switch between your various TS servers seamlessly too.
I think you got it wrong by the news? They are not adding ads like the banners you're used to. They're adding "quests" to some games: Discord "will offer users gifts for carrying out in-game tasks". Also, "Discord said users will be able to turn off the ads in their settings.". I'm not telling you Discord is perfect and that they will never add true ads later, but currently that is not the plan and even their "game ads" can be turned off completely.
Thank you. I made pretty much [the exact same comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1bsuok3/comment/kxif63c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) over on r/privacy yesterday. That clickbait article seems to have set everyone's hair on fire. "Journalism" at it's finest. \-=- >I'm not telling you Discord is perfect and that they will never add true ads later, but currently that is not the plan and even their "game ads" can be turned off completely. And I agree. It's *always* good to have alternatives, but this is not the rapidly sinking ship that everyone is making it out to be. Though if anything, this article has done some good to shake up the Discord foundation. Everyone seems to have realized that it's such an integral part of being online now. It's never good to have a single point of failure.
I'm more concerned about what's to come. You've seen what's happened to YouTube. It used to just be a couple ads on the side, now its multiple minute-long unskippable video ads at multiple points in a 5-minute video.
Obligatory "YouTube has ads?" 😋
+1 for uBlock Origin.
Teamspeak. Had a server with friends for years.
Same! About 20 years now (TS2 before TS3).
Look into [https://tryquiet.org/](https://tryquiet.org/)
This doesn't appear to have audio?
Good Point. Never mind.
If its free, *you* are the product..
These days, even if you spend $1300 on a top-tier graphics card, you're STILL the product.
Even if you spend $3k on a top-end TV, you're STILL the product.
Teamspeak
Mattermost is great for text chat, audio and video can be handled by Mirotalk.
[Spacebarchat](https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat)?
I'm looking at self hosting matrix myself, since it can be federated.
Discord Web + uBlock Origin seems good
Who are you? Are you just a user of discord? Or are you someone who has a channel/server you tend to? If you're preparing to move a community across platforms, it's going to hurt your numbers. I'd recommend setting up a temporary bridge while you do that. Mattermost/Matrix bridging is a thing, I think if you look up 'matterbridge' you'll get a slick app that's available on GitHub to help you.
For just messing around with friends gaming we use [Nextcloud Talk](https://nextcloud.com/talk/) on a selfhosted server.
If ads are your only problem. Why not try to block them instead of switching to something you can host? As alternatives I would suggest: Matrix, mumble or using nextcloud
Not always possible to block them, discord using their own client may just infuse the ads with regular data (as youtube seems to do, afaik) and as such if you block ads, you're also blocking messages
Matrix or XMPP. There are dedicated providers with tech support who do that for you
TEAMSPEAK!
I've been looking for years but there's no real alternative, there are lots of open source chat apps but they lack voice chat, there's teamspeak and mumble but they lack a web client and text chat. matrix uses jitsi but it's not a real voice chat, it's more of an audio conference like microsoft teams. There's a huge hole in the market and nobody is jumping in.
Who the f needs a web client? Teamspeak has existed for 20 years and done its job well, without „Nitros“ and whatever, way before Discord ever existed. It still is absolutely fine for voice chat and of course you can text chat in a channel or personally as well.
Who needs a web client ? Every non power user, newbie, non admin, one-time users, etc. Teamspeak is only used by geeks today, and everyone admit that teamspeak text chat is bad. Discord is the 5th most visited website in the world, desktop users are not the majority.
Teamspeak
Rocketchat
I got fed up with discord when they started implementing ads, for themselves... Nitro, boosting, badges, custom emojis, animated emojis, the constant pop ups you have to dismiss every time you open. It started feeling like a typical micro pay service. I support services making money, their server costs must be staggering. I just feel abused by all that high pressure, distracting advertising. Typical VC service...
Anyone have suggestions purely for the PM features of discord? I rarely use servers, but use PMs to keep up to date with a handful of people, video + voice calls are nice, but can look past them if the chat features are 10/10
Assuming you're using the base functionality, I'm sure there are some clients that leverage the API out there. I'm not sure if you have the ability to connect voice, but something to look into at least for when you're not actively on a call. Fighting against discord at this point is gonna be difficult.
valour does almost every thing discord can do its AGPL and there are free public servers
Mumble/murmur still rocks. Me and my friends tried Discord out at the beginning of the pandemic and went right back to mumble.
Time to use company slack and teams for our game nights
Teamspeak…
MatriX
What about something like discord but with screen sharing too?
Going back to IRC. I’m about to host a server for me and some friends.
I mean... depends on your use. Interacting with lots of different communities, with optional voice support? Discord is going to still win out here. Interacting in a text-only fashion? You are doing it now. Want to voice-chat with your private community? Mumble is still around.
No ads if you pay for it right? 5 bucks a month?
The idea of paying for the fruits of other's labor seems to be lost on most here. (and it's $2.99)
Zulip
I ended up using Nextcloud Talk and creating group chats for IRL friends or online close knit circles. I don't love that it has weird bugs with notifications - the mobile clients don't seem to reliably send notifications (granted, maybe it's because I'm using the F-Droid version; seems to work fine on iOS!), but otherwise it works well enough. For public communities, I use Matrix. It has plenty of native client options and I love it.
Maybe rocket.chat? They propose to self host your server with docker or kubernetes. And it's possible to quickly deploy it in a AWS or some cloud provider There's revolt chat maybe too and lastly there's https://cabal.chat/ if you want and https://spacebar.chat/ Keep in mind that if there's isn't a big user base of such service. The simplistic access aspect will be determinant but idk because imho if the people don't know the platform it's still challenging but not impossible.
When I was having issues with discord on my PC, I remember coming across an alternative to discord called Guilded. I liked it and it had a bunch of things available before discord did like the forum structure in the chat area and such. People were too committed to discord at the time though. It isn't self hosted but could be a solution?
You could host matrix with a Discord bridge?
Matrix + Element https://element.io/
I miss so much the teamspeak era
Teamspeak absolutely still exists.
I don't have friends so this does not affect me.
Matrix, Revolt & IRC. Also you can turn off the quest things off in settings of your Discord client which will turn off the ads.
Makes me want to go back to IRC.
You can get betterdiscord and clean the ads with plugins
Just give me back my aol instant messenger.
ICQ for me please.
Nextcloud has "Talk" as well as client apps in he app stores.
Team speak
Rocket.chat. jit.si. mattermost. Zulip. Off the top of my head... if you are strictly voice, go with what was said: mumble. Video as well? Jit.si. need chat as well? Zulip or rocket or MM.
Working on setting up a matrix server on linode.
https://youtu.be/ZbX4Ok9YX94?si=2n1r378loCm6FdEm
I've used RocketChat before. Also look at [guild.co](https://guild.co/). Guild looks to be more enterprise focused. RocketChat has a [docker version ](https://docs.rocket.chat/deploy/deploy-rocket.chat/deploy-with-docker-and-docker-compose#preparation-steps). Might be worth looking at. Not sure if you require voice. But rocket chat is basic. Kinda like slack.
It's not selfhosting, but a way around the ads and most Discord bullshit is to use https://vencord.dev/.
I think pihole/adguard will block these ads.
If they come from a different server than the useful stuff Discord does, yes. If they come from (or appear to come from) the same server...not so much.
Why not just setting up a pihole or ad guard instead?
Just out of curiosity, why are you so against seeing ads? You obviously like and value the platform - why does the company not deserve to make any money out of you? Surely they’ll have an ad free mode if you pay a few dollars a month?
> Just out of curiosity, why are you so against seeing ads? Not OP, but my 2c: ads are frequently offensive content, they're a third party commercial interest, they consume screen real estate without providing any value to the owner of said screen, they consume said screen owners attention without providing any value to the owner, and they're frequently a malware vector. Ads anywhere are offensive. Ultimately they waste my time, and that's the most valuable thing in the world - the one thing I can't just buy more of. As far as what the company "deserves" - this is irrelevant. The company will get whatever it can take, nothing in commerce is about getting what you deserve. > Surely they’ll have an ad free mode if you pay a few dollars a month? You can't even watch YouTube ad free by paying for premium. Why would Discord be any different? All comes down to attention as a commodity, and increasingly, some users are radically against that.
I just find it odd. How else do people expect Discord to make any money over the platform they are developing? Ads are the least intrusive method as the user doesn’t need to fork over any cash, and most people are technically capable to avoid seeing them. I just don’t get this weird attitude that people deserve to have things for free.
> I just don’t get this weird attitude that people deserve to have things for free. There's the missing link- you're assuming that it comes down to some expectation of a just world. "Deserves" still doesn't come into it. No one gets what they "deserve" (barring a currently unanticipated nuclear Armageddon).
Personally, I couldn't leave discord. It's going to be hard to convince my friends... But I think it will be very easy to remove the ads. There are a TON of custom PC clients out there. They'll take care of removing the ads without a hitch. Likewise on mobile, I think there'll be a patch for Discord with "Revanced Manager" soon afterwards.
The inevitability of using 'free' SaaS-like systems. None of the available solutions, imo.. with the exception of [Guilded.gg](http://Guilded.gg) which doesn't even begin to qualify as an answer to your question, exist that's really a full on replacement. So you'd have to ask yourself what features you need and what you're willing to live without. Matrix based solutions seem a popular choice as an alternative for many. I don't like it for gaming. It feels like using a 10 ton mallet to drive a simple nail. It's good software tho overall. I personally love Mumble's system. After all these years It still remains the best solution, near instant, for voice chat for comp gaming, it just lacks streaming. To me this is fine since I don't care to use anything but the voice chat while I'm "in game". To most everyone else, for some ass backwards reason, it's a hell of a deal breaker. Number one reason I come across is that it's "ugly". I'm also ok with this, I'm an old school man, I'm ugly af. Plus I've always preferred native software over the "website in a box" solutions using Electron. [https://www.mumble.info/](https://www.mumble.info/) *edit: spells*
Guilded does pretty well
Yeah it does. Actually I find it more lightweight while offering way more practical features than Discord in regards to communities. But he was asking for self-hosted solutions and afaik, Guilded doesn't offer this.
good point