Yep, hate when I want to follow some project and they link you to X, Reddit and Discord lol

I can say as a member of the PCSX2 project that I understand why we and other FOSS emulators use it as official support – but nevertheless wish that we didn't. We've discussed practicalities before, and the project doesn't stay there just from inertia or because of personal preference; there are major practical reasons to prefer it over a forum (which we have), a wiki (which we have), or Matrix.

I'd be willing to endure the pain points and to scale back support in order to be off of that shithole, but I also get that's a fringe minority sentiment shared by only a couple others. All of us would be tech-literate enough to use a client like Signal or Element for intra-project discussion, but very few people would come to Matrix for support (nor would we probably want them to due to the much greater moderation burden per end user), and the chatroom model – to most of us – is much easier for support than a forum. The only reason I'm still begrudgingly on Discord is for PCSX2.

I share your hope, but I seriously doubt this will come even close to dislodging us. Smaller projects, perhaps.

https://stoat.chat/download

Stoat looks promising as an open source alternative

There are layers to this.

Persistent chat rooms are here to stay.

As a user? I dislike this. I am sure you do too.

As a developer who gives a shit about the users? The number of times I have had to spend sometimes upwards of a dozen back and forth emails trying to explain to someone that I am not lying to them and the answer they found on the forums are for a bug that was fixed 5 years ago... Let alone having to, politely, tell a greybeard to shut the fuck up because they keep telling people to search instead of ask for help...

Whereas a more ephemeral approach that actually encourages people to ask questions? Yes, it does cause long term issues when someone is trying to debug a project that has been on life support for years. But, by and large, just checking the current FAQ and then asking in a chatroom results in a better experience for the users, the devs, and the community managers trying to bridge the gap. And... you should really try to avoid being dependent on said EOL software. Not always possible but... yeah.

And that isn't going to change. So they'll either stick with discord or use something MUCH less stable... like Matrix.

This is bad.

irc

now there's some letters I haven't seen in quite some time.

/poke

I love IRC, just need some user friendly client recommendations if we want wider adoption by less tech savvy folks. Though I get the impression there are a good few IRC users who prefer how that filters out the "normies"

The main problem with IRC is that it isn't asynchron, like I can write something now and a friends only comes only tomorrow to check up on me messages.

I mean yes there are/were bouncers when I last used irc but if I remember correctly that's just not the same...

From my experience, the average joe will just do whatever is asked of them to continue using a service.

I just deleted my account. So there's one less.

Discord is going to be the age-verification-service for gaming, if they can get laws to follow fast enough.
They have the gaming community, they have chats/friends/DMs/VoIP.
If they release a dev toolkit that implements in-game chat, in-game VoIP, friends list and age verification... All while not being tied to steam? Imagine if they offered a system for in-game purchases and gifting purchases to friends (oh yeh https://gam3s.gg/news/discord-adds-in-app-purchases-for-in-game-items/ )
They are positioning themselves to offer a huge range of features, easy navigation of legal minefields, and no distribution-platform tie-in - while also offering out-of-game functionality of all of that (likely leading to player retention for games that leverage it properly).

They are positioning themselves to be a market-leader/industry-standard for game social networks. Everyone that has ever used discord is the product they are selling, and they are now releasing the features and tools for companies to leverage that.

Let me know what you come up with. I have a server of about 600 that I’m about to just shut down if this process is invasive or privacy disrespectful.

Not to go all conspiracy-nut, but it feels like the net (at least the social spaces) is decaying, and it feels intentional / coordinated.

At this point, I don't think it's conspiracy-nut to say this. We have a group of tech oligarchs in the US who are openly collaborating with a fascist administration. It is a conspiracy and this kinda shit is the result.

Can you elaborate? My people and I are seriously considering migrating to matrix and I'd love to hear your concerns.

One problem will be that there are way too goddamn many software projects that use Discord as a shitty replacement for a blog and documentation, and they’re gonna be a pain to move to proper content platforms.

Mass migration like that occurs (from my memory at least) when the newer alternative has much better functionality, performance, and ease of use compared to the status quo service and has a low barrier to entry (sign up is quick and straightforward). Do any of the decentralized Discord alternatives fit these criteria (honest question, not rhetorical)?

Revolt (suppose stoat) had problems with noise cancellation and people complained to me the UI wasn't intuitive.

They absolutely have their users by the balls and I guarantee most people will continue to use the app after this, unfortunately.

On one hand yeah sure, people ditched Skype and MSN as soon as something better came along but that was a long time ago. Discord has sadly been the go-to for people for over a decade. Many users literally grew up with it. They are conditioned. A lot has to happen for them to leave their comfort zone. It‘s like asking someone to stop drinking coke or get McDonald‘s after they‘ve had it for their entire life.

I‘ll say this probably won‘t be the straw that breaks the camel‘s back but there is a silver lining. Discord will lose revenue over this and might change course quickly. This already rolled out in Canada and from what I‘ve heard many users cancelled Nitro at least. That‘s a start. Discord may also try to milk remaining users even harder as a result very soon and that will definitely put them into a down spiral.

I just went through an EXASPERATING experience installing and signing up for Stoat. It DOES NOT WORK. Don't recommend it.

I hope people using fake IDs to bypass it becomes common knowledge. Felony or not it's effective and the ID verifying part isn't.

Drop anything that's not opensource and federated, except if you want to live the enshitification process over and over.

Matrix might be the closest to Discord. XMPP should also be considered.

Zulip is great for text based communities, but doesn't have built in voice or video.

Care to make a remix of "7 Words You Can Never Say on TV" for blahaj? YOU might abhor all censorship, but your admins don't, and I'm inclined to agree with them.