Hot take: looking for a single silver-bullet Discord replacement is solving the wrong problem.

[valk@social.treehouse.systems]

@xgranade That’s what I do now, different people on different apps. The problem isn’t that none of the apps do enough of discord’s weird secondary features, it’s that they do not replace discord’s core functionality in a way that works for the kind of people i communicate with on discord at all.

[flesh@transfem.social]

@kat_cal2@ck.catwithaclari.net @xgranade@wandering.shop I don't feel that's quite true, though I would ask what these particular features are.

[kat_cal2@ck.catwithaclari.net]

@flesh@transfem.social @xgranade@wandering.shop the most important thing that i want from a replacement is the structure of servers; not group chats, but the whole deal, with the division into channels (especially now with the extra channel types but that's not that important) and roles with permissions.

[flesh@transfem.social]

@mr_daemon@untrusted.website @xgranade@wandering.shop I'm curious how you'd draw the distinction between "decentralised" and "federated with a hearty dose of data sovereignty".

[mr_daemon@untrusted.website]

@flesh Sure! Decentralized implies some amount of peer to peer with no central authority at all, federation implies one or many central authorities _that I can have control over_, or self-host, where I have control over the data. Where it lives, what's done with it, how it is backed up etc.

It basically moves the "authoritative node" one level up in the hierarchy, instead of keeping it at the individual level.

Basically, I am ok with one or more central servers being part of the equation, as long as it possible for me to be in control of one, more or less.

@xgranade

[flesh@transfem.social]

@kat_cal2@ck.catwithaclari.net @xgranade@wandering.shop That is a pretty important defining feature, yeah. I think a few projects attempted it, but I'm not too aware of the state of the field right now.

[flesh@transfem.social]

@mr_daemon@untrusted.website @xgranade@wandering.shop Ah, I see. Some would consider that a decentralised model as well, but I see the reason for your distinction now. Thanks.

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@dragonfi @xgranade Because they grew up with those their whole life and there aren't nearly as many of them. On my phone there are 22 different messaging apps of one sort or another, each with their own UI/UX, some radically different. Most didn't exist 20 years ago.

And that's just one type of interaction. Now repeat for streaming, photos, shopping, etc.

It's a lot even for those of us who are used to it.

And then there are the unique logins for each...

[iamada@tech.lgbt]

@xgranade Discord was best when it was just chat & vc for gamers. Felt like such a step up from teamspeak/mumble/ventrillo at the time :/

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@xgranade @iamada granted, people traded convenience for independence.

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@xgranade EXACTLY THAT!

#Discord is like #MicrosoftTeams a "Shitty #App that tries to be a jack of all trades, and thus is a master if none!"

• #IRC, #XMPP+#OMEMO (#gajim & #moniclesChat), #PGP/MIME (#deltaChat), #Zulip and #RocketChat exist for good #TextChat.

• #JitsiMeet offers #Vieocalling and #ScreenSharing and #Mumble offers #VoiceChat…

Instead if one #Bloatware, multiple smaller tools can do the same aspects better.

• People don't expect #Thunderbird to be a spreadsheet program nor do people expect #LibreOffice to be a good #Browser or #Firefox on it's own to be a good IDE to develop Linux Kernel Drivers!

The same goes for anything else...

[dragonfi@social.jsteuernagel.de]

@reflex @xgranade you are right. My phone doesn't have "a phone" inside it, it has at least 3. And they are very different.

[ben@mastodon.lubar.me]

@xgranade people keep asking on the Steam forums for Valve to add all the features of a forum to Steam's chat window and I don't think they realize that what they're asking for is for Steam to add no new features but to move the existing ones around in confusing ways

[zyd@yap.zyd.lol]

@xgranade Discord is hardly an 'everything app'. Its a way to have a group chat with subchannels, along with voice and video/web sharing, rolled into a unified interface. I suppose that makes it 'everything'? I don't know, I feel like you underestimate how much low friction matters to maintaining even your small friend group chats.

[ryusei@techhub.social]

@xgranade

I don't mind this approach and most nerds don't, but as you said, the issue is selling this to the people who use Discord. It's free, easy, and is the home of so many large communities that would break some of the solutions we propose. The idea of having 3 different apps for calling, chatting, and long form communication is just not appealing to most people, even if I really like it. I'm pretty sure my friends would sooner text or call me before ever using a Mumble or XMPP server lol. I find Discord overwhelming and exhausting, so I hope we're really able to solve this.

[tojikomori@urusai.social]

@xgranade hmm. this makes me think federation beyond oath / user profiles is an anti-feature for these use cases 😬 (these use cases: closed-door and smallish open-door interest-specific communities having mostly unthreaded, chat-like conversations)

the best experiences i've had on Discord were on servers with firm moderation. reading your post, i realized moderation of a federated chat room can only be as good as the weakest popular instance. defederate that instance and you end up with malformed chat; keep them, and you have to accept their weak moderation.

i'd rather be in a room where moderators try to apply themselves more consistently, and if i don't like their room then i'd rather find a different room on a different server than end up in a space that overlaps with their mess.

[xgranade@wandering.shop]

@tojikomori I've long said that moderation on Discord is best-in-class. I do think good moderation with federation is entirely possible, but it's much more challenging than moderating something centralized.

In the case of Matrix, part of the problem is that a room administrator has comparatively few tools for blocking bad homeservers as compared to selective defederation on the fediverse.

[tojikomori@urusai.social]

@xgranade i'd like to believe it's possible, but given the unthreaded nature of chat-like interactions i don't see how. defederation on the fediverse mostly works ok because our conversations here are so heavily threaded. even then, instance owners are cautious about defederating popular instances like mastodon.social. but imagine removing all the mastodon.social-equivalent posts from an unthreaded chat stream.

[bryanredeagle@beige.party]

@tiotasram @Canageek @xgranade It also has some pretty good administration docs.

[0xtero@ohai.social]

@Canageek @xgranade XMPP & Teamspeak + web based discussion forum used to be the default combo for lot of hobbies in the days before Discord. They never went away, but users disappeared. Still a viable solution. The problem is getting your users to leave Discord. Looking at what happened to Twitter and Reddit, it seems the cost of leaving is still higher than enduring enshittification for the majority.