Ditch Discord!

[freesoftwarecaucus@fosstodon.org]

Ditch Discord! In early March, Discord will begin age verification for all users world-wide. This is a violation of your freedom and privacy!

Consider one of the following alternatives:
www.stoatchat
www.matrix.org
www.signal.org
www.rocket.chat

https://beyond40.miraheze.org/wiki/Ditch_Discord!

#Privacy #Discord #FreeSoftware #Tech

[travisfw@fosstodon.org]

@freesoftwarecaucus #Zulip is also a great option for FLOS communities to #ditchDiscord ( #ditchcord ? )
#communityManagement

[jd@todon.eu]

@travisfw @freesoftwarecaucus

www.stoatchat ?

correction: https://stoat.chat/

[martinaneumayer@mastodon.social]

@freesoftwarecaucus Fuck matrix/element, they are cop supporters!

There's also #Movim, which is actually pretty nice foss alternative to dirty shitcord.

[dinofp@fosstodon.org]

@freesoftwarecaucus
What about #XMPP

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@freesoftwarecaucus @MartinaNeumayer irc

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@freesoftwarecaucus uhm. Jabber exists. And for Discord use cases, even IRC. Hell, IRC is probably the best option.

[aoi_x_kaizaki@mastodon.social]

@freesoftwarecaucus So that's what it is. Someone I followed said Discord blew up. This must be the problem.

[beli@mastodon.online]

@freesoftwarecaucus Forgive me for pointing this out, but we might have to rule-out Matrix.org because it's based in the UK, and it has been compromised by this push for ID-verification by force of law.

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1mdgbi4/matrix_homeserver_the_default_one_set_in_the_uk/

Any online service which is based in the UK, Australia and New Zealand would be subject to this same legislation. Perhaps instances located outside of the Commonwealth would work?

[trebach@functional.cafe]

@freesoftwarecaucus @Beli Rule out any service in the US as well due to similar laws being implemented in various states besides the obvious reasons

[travisfw@fosstodon.org]

@trebach @freesoftwarecaucus @Beli rrright 😵‍💫 where does that leave us? France? Self-hosted? Federated? Orgs that have made public statements to not collect IDs?

[freesoftwarecaucus@fosstodon.org]

Note that this flyer is preliminary and only a draft: if you'd like to help us in listing potential alternatives and their pros/cons feel free to weigh in on the talk page of our wiki!

https://beyond40.miraheze.org/wiki/Talk:Ditch_Discord!

[trebach@functional.cafe]

@freesoftwarecaucus @Beli @travisfw I don't know about the EU due to possible age restriction laws.

I don't know about the rest because I'm not a lawyer and it's going to be jurisdiction specific.

Maybe Canada or Switzerland?

[jowek@autonomous.zone]

@freesoftwarecaucus Matrix are getting more and more connected to the military industrial complex. And historically has some bad israeli ties.

Its UX are bad - and its a nightmare to host.

More info about matrix: https://hackea.org/notas/matrix.html

and on hackea too; a presentation of #Deltachat which I also really, really recommend.
It takes 30 seconds to try, and doesn't need any info from you: just pick a user name > go!

https://delta.chat/en

and delta chat intro: https://blog.feld.me/posts/2025/03/deltachat-is-actually-good-though/

[feld@friedcheese.us]

@jowek @freesoftwarecaucus I can't believe anyone would recommend Rocket Chat when they're constantly making it worse for people who aren't giving them money

25 user limit for self-hosted (they did increase it to 50 users in 7.x I think, but still)

https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues/31149


edit: and 1000 push notifications per month unless you build a custom version of their apps and point to your own APNS/FCM service. Which is a ridiculous requirement nobody would do.

meanwhile DeltaChat is doing millions of push notifications per month for free (it's not like it costs extra money for each notification you trigger, it doesn't even require a super beefy server to do it)

[xavi92@fosstodon.org]

@freesoftwarecaucus XMPP is missing from that list