So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

[amyworrall@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea @drahardja One login, alll your ‘servers’ listed.

Anything that makes you do a new separate signup per ‘server’ has a lot more friction than Discord.

[celestia@tech.lgbt]

@0xabad1dea

you forgot:

• windows live messenger sounds and emoticons

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea @gabboman if you don't make it distributed, you also have to host the entire bloody thing - which gets expensive once you add video chat and/or screensharing at any meaningful scale

[janamarie@mystical.garden]

@0xabad1dea I think a huge part of the last point is the room and privilege management, allowing you to somewhat properly moderate your server. The ability to create thematic rooms is, I think, what drives many people to matrix, even in smaller communities it can be super helpful to have different thematic areas on the same server. A feature that I learned to value a lot

[ntropic@chaos.social]

@0xabad1dea federation is extremely useful though here.

[stella@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@ljrk@todon.eu @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange then you probably shouldnt be the one to develop a discord replacement

[isis@infosec.exchange]

@0xabad1dea Dear user, please download our program and then use this Terminal command to bypass system security feature

[froge@social.glitched.systems]

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange discord has multiparty end to end encryption so you do actually need this for voice and video data

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea @isis yeah, that tends to happen when properly using the system security features require an annual ransom

[rogerbw@discordian.social]

@0xabad1dea (I realise I'm muted here, but I think some of those negative points are significant)
- No federation: some bastard can come along and buy it. Doesn't matter if I can run my own if everyone else is on the Nazi Server. Federation is not proof against this (see email) but it's a necessary start.
- No multiparty e2e encryption: we don't care about black or gay or trans people being allowed to talk without everything they say being fed into the secret police machine. They, however, do.

[michael@weatherby2378.social]

@0xabad1dea

Thank you.

[enejjohhem@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea End to end encryption would be a really cool bonus

[isotopp@infosec.exchange]

@enejjohhem @0xabad1dea No.

[isotopp@infosec.exchange]

@isis @0xabad1dea com.apple.quarantine is not a security feature.

It is a sales tool.

[isis@infosec.exchange]

@isotopp @0xabad1dea If you’re German, I must ask you not to reply to my posts. T.I.A.

[wooshell@chaosfurs.social]

@ay @0xabad1dea If Telegram spent any effort into making their voice calls (p2p and group) more stable and user-friendly, nobody would need Discord anymore.

[troglet@mastodon.social]

@0xabad1dea Certainly, most of this is true. You can always add the Things You Don't Need later. You need the other stuff to gain any traction at all, though.

Admittedly, I do not have any fucking clue how Discord works, and I have literally zero idea why people use it. I've spent some time there and found the entire experience fucking horrible.

(Which is why I'm not trying to write the replacement. I'm more than happy with IRC)

[ury@fedi.trough.lol]

@0xabad1dea I think that federation at this point it's not a luxury, but a necessity. Given the direction of where global net is headed (regulation, centralization, etc), users must have a way to migrate their accounts and friends to some independent server hosted in a neutral location.

[mkoek@mastodon.nl]

@0xabad1dea I fail hard on the last item on your list of needed things, so I will not start such a project, I promise 🙂

[creepy_owlet@mastodon.online]

@RogerBW @0xabad1dea these are fair points, but you need to keep in mind that not every chat room is designed for high stakes conversations. Offline parallel: you're applying the security standards of a revolutionary cell to a comic convention or a book club. Which would be fine if it did not lead to significantly degraded user experience.