You know us: at Dyne, we've never been the type to spy on our own people.

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@dyne What bothers me is that it's way, way behind Discord. Obviously like everyone else I want off the platform, but the alternatives all have significant drawbacks. Lack of basic features like Oauth or unifiedpush, apps that only connect to the main instance, obvious AI spaghetti code on the github, etc etc.

I'd like Matrix to be it, but it needs significant targeted investment to get to parity.

[dyne@toot.community]

@reflex No software is perfect. The more people using it, the greater chances of improvement.

Care to share the alternative of your choice?

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@dyne The closest I've seen to being a drop in replacement appears to be Zulip. The drawback is that push notifications must go through their service for apps, no UnifiedPush option, and over 10 users it's paid (with a excemption for non-profits/clubs). From a privacy standpoint that's a problem imo.

Going to experiment with it a bit.

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@dyne Stoat is commonly brought up, but unfortunately it's apps can only connect to their servers, you are on your own for apps if you don't use their server.

[dyne@toot.community]

@reflex take a look at @Framasoft fork of Mattermost maybe. "Mostlymatter" it's called. Sounds like it would be something you're looking for!
https://framagit.org/framasoft/framateam/mostlymatter

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@dyne @Framasoft Thank you, I'll have a look!

[haise@tech.lgbt]

@reflex @dyne
are you talking about matrix here or not?

if so

what apps only connect to the "main" instance? this sounds like stoat not matrix

what AI spaghetti code?

matrix has supported SSO for ages and the spec itself is moving towards native OAuth. Auth methods are up to the server admins, even matrix.org has various social login options like github and google

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@haise @dyne I'm talking about the Discord alternatives, they all have a laundry list of drawbacks.

I mentioned specific issues Matrix has in my first response, the second was about all of the other alternatives.

[haise@tech.lgbt]

@reflex @dyne then please state what alternatives you are talking about :) to me it read like issues matrix has

[setto@tooting.ch]

@haise @reflex
right! maybe i misunderstand what ntfy.sh is and it's different from unifiedpush... but.. i use that for all the notifications from matrix... for the diehard discord peeps, i'd suggest trying @commetchat

@dyne

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@haise @dyne I mean Matrix has in my opinion larger issues than most of the alternatives. Community safety and accessibility are tier 1 concerns for a public server.

The others tend to have other inconveniences, as listed in mine. Some may or may not matter to people depending on their use case.

I'm not dissing on Matrix here, but it's not broadly suitable as a discord replacement for communities of significant size.

[haise@tech.lgbt]

@reflex @dyne have you not heard of draupnir and other projects to help moderate rooms on matrix? and there's policy servers now to fully block messages before users in rooms receive them

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@haise @dyne Yes, and it is woefully inadequate. Have a look at the experience #GrapheneOS had with Matrix moderation. They have listed in great detail how inadequate the tools are.

As a small instance owner I've run into similar myself, but the worst has been UI/UX/Accessibility. It is so damn easy to lose access to message history and having to explain to users repeatedly to backup their decryption keys somewhere safe is ridiculous.

[haise@tech.lgbt]

@reflex @dyne that was before policy servers were a thing :) they can stop media being sent at all and please report UX issues to the applications, so they can be improved

[setto@tooting.ch]

@reflex @haise
Now you got me confused with grapheneOS's discord moderation issues... But i wholeheartedly disagree with your last statement about decryption key. That's mostly a failure of community builders to educate their community. Security is not an app or a killer UX: it's knowledge and experience.

@dyne

[haise@tech.lgbt]

@setto @reflex @dyne it can be both, if the UX isnt good it can lead to even technical people to be confused and lose access to their keys, good UX needs to be easy to understand and work well for people to not be guided on how to get the keys backed up so they dont lose access

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@setto @haise @dyne Fixed, meant Matrix moderation, sorry!

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@haise @setto @dyne I agree here, Signal shows just how security can be intrinsic to the design without requiring the users to do the heavy lifting. Matrix needs to take notes.

[setto@tooting.ch]

@haise good point: it is both, i agree. It's just that modern UX has this tendency to assume people are unable to learn things and make laziness affordable.

@reflex @dyne

[setto@tooting.ch]

@reflex gotcha: for the record, edits don't federate very well! Don't be surprised if someone else gets confused despite the edit 😅