It's Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp for me. I ditched the Facebook app a long time ago, but Messenger and Whatsapp remain on my device because no one wants to leave them. I try to keep my chats there as superficial as possible.

Also, this is my first comment ever on Lemmy, so hi everyone!

Asking people to leave things means they're losing a line of communication to friends, family, and interest groups who still use those things. It's probably more productive to ask people to add the services you prefer rather than leave the ones they're used to.

I've encountered some resistance from Americans who use iPhones and hate the idea of adding a third-party messaging app. None of them seem very interested in justifying that position.

Discord is a hard one because it has some uniqueness to it.

It has bots, text channels, voice channels, and hundreds of thousands of people can join it if you need to.

A lot of my college clubs use it and there are a few thousand students in our biggest ones

It's because our marketing sucks. People don't care about their privacy, they like what is cool. So what does that mean? It mean we gotta make using open source app so cool that people can't help but join because all the cool kids are here. You feel me? Preaching alone is not enough although it will benefit all of us

Networking effect

People use whatever is most popular even if its the shittest thing such as Facebook.

Only time people will care is when it personally and tangibly affects them.

For Facebook/whatsapp watomatic can be used to remind people you are leaving or such.

I less have an issue with people getting trapped in software they understand is insecure, and more with people who will push shit like telegram and pretend its the most private and secure thing ever invented. If they want to use discord, sure, fine with me. As long as they know not to do their activist work on discord I'm fine with it. People doing activist work/planning over telegram will never make me not cringe.

Signal isn't something I personally want to use, but its tolerable, and it was doing a good job of replacing telegram in activist spaces I felt, but I've recently seen a few different groups using telegram again because they don't trust signal.

xmpp with omemo is what I wish I could get people to use but uh, well, that just will never happen.

People don't typically like change. It has to feel like it's their decision to drive them there.

Not really. I have none of those apps or alternatives. and I don't know anyone I want to chat with on Discord, WhatsApp, Insta, or other. Not that I'm antisocial, I just have no interest. Lemmy is about as close as I want to get to anyone. Before, it was Reddit, but they have tanked as a place to search for knowledge.

What are some good alternatives to discord?

Network effect and the path of least resistance.

People usually resist change until there's a net and obvious gain, or when thing don't work as expected anymore.

And you need to consider that what's important in a messaging platform for someone, might be vastly different for another.

Yeah, this is so fucking annoying. I've been banging on about Signal for years, but everyone except a small handful of my wisest friends insist upon using WhatsApp and Discord.

Almost everyone I know also uses Instagram, and no other social media. I am yet to meet someone in real life who even has Mastodon.

Probably the idea of "all my other friends are on the mainstream platform so why would i move to another platform specifically for you?"

I have the same issue, but got 2 Discord users to try Jitsi Meet with me (a friend of mine on my Snikket server invited her friend). After a while, her friend asked me why it looked so much alike Discord and my friend agreed. I gave them a big smile and said, "because this is awesome".

Jitsi Meet + Snikket has been my saves since I deleted my Discord account during the pandemic.

SMS

Nobody wants to use a messaging app at all. At this point I'd rather be stuck on WhatsApp. But its all family. Big family and try to get them to agree on anything is like pulling teeth.

I even sent everybody a "contact card" I made with my links to signal, simplex, and even whatsapp (figuring that's the path of least resistance) saying I'd prefer to communicate on any of those apps. ZERO people changed nor did they even ask about it, options, or my reasoning.

"privacy? Yeah whatever, they just use it to catch bad people right? I have nothing to hide. I don't have the time to learn all this VPN stuff. Don't forget to like my posts!"

Get their parents to sign up. Feels like grannies sharing minion memes and Bible verses was the end of facebook's cool era.

The inconvenience of switching and learning a new thing is the largest deterrent. People complain but don't care enough due to those reasons to switch.

I only text people on Signal, except the old grandparents or potential new friends that I will in time get to switch to Signal.

Because people keep pushing for them to completely leave a platform.

Instead try to get them to dual-use platforms.

Discord for me. A bunch of my family and friends are avid gamers. Discord is the universal standard app they all use for general communication.

Not only do they use it for all their gaming related stuff, they have additional servers and channels for just chilling, chatting, off topic stuff, memes, politics, etc etc.

It's the network effect. Even if there was an open source app that perfectly replicated all the functionality of Discord and was just as simple to install and run as Discord, most of them still wouldn't switch to it, because all of their friends and family are still on Discord.

So they would have to have two completely separate apps with totally separate social groups to maintain, and nobody but hardcore advocates for FOSS and privacy are willing to do that.

Sure, I have Discord, Matrix, IRC, Signal, XMPP clients, and a Private Mumble server, all on my systems, but I'm hardcore about FOSS. None of my friends and family are willing to do that. It took all my energy to convince two of my most techie friends just to get Signal on their phones. And only One has been willing to install a Matrix client to chat just with me.

Threaten them with having to communicate with you using email - they'll install Signal 😂

I don't have very many friends, although of the ones I do have the majority of them use Signal, or are terrified of recent politics and I'm trying to move them over currently. I'm not concerned about platform lock-in for communicating over proprietary platforms since if something happens we can just move, I am concerned about the security implications.

It's network effects. People have other friends on the network who have their own friends on the network, and so on. Leaving the network means convincing a critical mass of your network to leave along with you.

These are just opinions, but here are the two I know about (I don't use WhatsApp)

Discord: It's not just you. You would have to get their other connections, all their servers, and all the connections from those servers to switch. Frankly speaking, Revolt isn't ready for that to happen. You are one person. I'm sorry, but if I have 1 friend vs. all of my servers and friends, I'm not going to make a meaningful change for the one person. And tbh I'm more likely to be the one than the many. What I would suggest is to try and put yourself between the two services, help to build the communities you want to see, then invite people over.

Instagram: Same issue as Discord. The fediverse doesn't have the variety of content, the wide range of users, or half the stuff to engage with.

Cory Doctorow refers to this as the Anatevka problem.

Comfort and scared of change. The dopamine these sites give you is close to sex for some people as weird as it sounds. So if you tell them to stop using Instagram, they can't process that and simply say no.

This is just part of human nature. Some of us are able to say "hey this website is run by horrible people and I refuse to support it." We leave and find other options and help them grow. We are in the minority.

Most people simply do not want to try something everyone else doesn't use cause they don't want to seem weird. Stupid societal norms.

I convinced my friends to get Discord so we could communicate as a community without Facebook. Now I have figured out it is just as bad. I tried Matrix and couldn't figure out how to log in before I heard it's enshittification is underway.

I had my wife and best friend using signal until they dropped support for sms. Switching between apps was too much for us.

People will still use discord even if it got entirely banned, there just isn't a good alternative now that is clear

For me it's Discord, I can't find a good enough self hosted alternative with all the features me and my friends want.

Can't speak to the other apps but I have like 6 or 7 Discord servers that I'm actively involved in and a half dozen others I use sporadically. Even if I got all my friends to switch apps for our group chat I'd still need Discord for the servers I use and I'd rather not juggle two apps that are doing the same thing (actually already doing this with Discord and a text group chat and it's annoying as fuck). Also, switch to what?

Because everyone else they know is there. If the people they follow and interact with moved to Mastodon or switched messengers to Signal, you’ll see how quickly they will move. It’s hard to convince someone to sign up or install a new app if it’s only you they’ll find there. I was able to switch my family over to Signal and they literally use it only for family group chats, because they don’t know anyone else who uses it. And they were a little easier to convince because they’re family. I won’t be able to convince people with less close ties to me like friends, acquaintances, and neighbors.

People can’t be convinced of anything, it’s a losing battle to try. The only way to get people to change is to live a certain way and if people admire it, then they ask you about it and you share.

So for example-I’m a minimalist and I really wished my sister would declutter because her place is overcrowded. But instead of trying to convince her, I just shared what my life normally was like. Eventually she asked me for help decluttering, and she felt a lot better about what I helped with. Now we share cleaning and organization tips.

For me, I just put in my insta bio I left for Pixelfed and to come friend me there.

I’ve told my friends I’m off insta because I’d rather be on a platform where I control my feed that’s ad free. And that I rarely see my friends content on insta so it doesn’t matter that much to me to have friends on there. If they get interested, great if not, I’m still happy.