Discord Alternatives - Avoid the Vermintide

[The Proctor]

So today I got this in my inbox!

I've been forced to use Discord since roughly 2014 when every single one of my friends migrated off Skype, TS and Xfire to it. Back then I was an innocent thing who had yet to be corrupted by evil shitposting websites like Kiwifarms. Today I got a five-day Discord suspension. I don't know exactly what for, because why would a content host ever tell a user what content they posted violated their ToS? That's just crazy talk! On the bright side, Discord is retarded and didn't IP-ban me, so my alt accounts that I had the foresight to set up in advance will let me stay in contact with people.

I am completely at my wit's end with this shit. I hate these platforms. I hate how we somehow live in a world where all of our connections with other people - people we might've known for decades - can simply be cut off without any accountability. I have already contacted Discord support for information, but I have 0 expectations of anything but a canned response.

If you need to keep using Discord for various reasons, I VERY STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO DO THE FOLLOWING:

1) Register multiple backup burner accounts using protonmail and use https://receive-sms.cc/ to bypass their awful phone verification system.
2) Write down your Friends list and store it somewhere safe, or pre-emptively get them to add your burners to their Friends lists.
3) Use Discord Chat Exporter to save important conversations and contact details.
4) DO NOT USE DISCORD FOR ANY KIND OF PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS CONTACT. EVEN IF IT IS HIGHLY CONVENIENT. THE RISK IS NOT WORTH IT.

I have already been vocal about not wanting a Discord server for this forum. This event has absolutely shattered even the smallest remaining doubt in my mind that this was a good decision. Discord is one of the worst platforms I have ever used. I hate it deeply and profoundly. You can find blatant paedophile communities right there on the public server listings, some of which are months old and openly distribute CP. But DARE to say that troons aren't perfect people in a large enough server? You'd better fucking be prepared to eat a ban within hours.

So... what are the alternatives?

Honestly, I don't know right now. I have not yet tried most of them. However, I'm obviously now rather highly motivated towards doing so. I have no idea if any of them are any good or not, but here's a few links to content that suggests alternatives. I'm also open to hearing about other people's experiences with similar platforms, and how tolerant they are of speech that doesn't rigidly align with an extremist child-mutilating leftist vision of the future.

Spoiler: Alternatives

27 other Alternatives.

 

[thhrang]

I don't know exactly what for

You can't keep sexually harassing Kirsche, Proctor!

 

[The Proctor]

You can't keep sexually harassing Kirsche, Proctor!

View attachment 22039

Different account. This ban was almost certainly for recommending interviews with detransitioned individuals to somebody in a server where everyone else was unironically telling them to burn every bridge with their family for questioning their week-old metamorphosis into a they/them that was already on a list for receiving hormone blockers. I have never seen people I thought were at least borderline rational turn into blood-crazed zealots so fast. I would rather hang out with active mujahedeen insurgents than people who display their pronouns in their account biography.

 

[Nenélove]

So today I got this in my inbox!

View attachment 22027


I've been forced to use Discord since roughly 2014 when every single one of my friends migrated off Skype, TS and Xfire to it. Back then I was an innocent thing who had yet to be corrupted by evil shitposting websites like Kiwifarms. Today I got a five-day Discord suspension. I don't know exactly what for, because why would a content host ever tell a user what content they posted violated their ToS? That's just crazy talk! On the bright side, Discord is retarded and didn't IP-ban me, so my alt accounts that I had the foresight to set up in advance will let me stay in contact with people.

I am completely at my wit's end with this shit. I hate these platforms. I hate how we somehow live in a world where all of our connections with other people - people we might've known for decades - can simply be cut off without any accountability. I have already contacted Discord support for information, but I have 0 expectations of anything but a canned response.

If you need to keep using Discord for various reasons, I VERY STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO DO THE FOLLOWING:

1) Register multiple backup burner accounts using protonmail and use https://receive-sms.cc/ to bypass their awful phone verification system.
2) Write down your Friends list and store it somewhere safe, or pre-emptively get them to add your burners to their Friends lists.
3) Use Discord Chat Exporter to save important conversations and contact details.
4) DO NOT USE DISCORD FOR ANY KIND OF PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS CONTACT. EVEN IF IT IS HIGHLY CONVENIENT. THE RISK IS NOT WORTH IT.

I have already been vocal about not wanting a Discord server for this forum. This event has absolutely shattered even the smallest remaining doubt in my mind that this was a good decision. Discord is one of the worst platforms I have ever used. I hate it deeply and profoundly. You can find blatant paedophile communities right there on the public server listings, some of which are months old and openly distribute CP. But DARE to say that troons aren't perfect people in a large enough server? You'd better fucking be prepared to eat a ban within hours.

So... what are the alternatives?

Honestly, I don't know right now. I have not yet tried most of them. However, I'm obviously now rather highly motivated towards doing so. I have no idea if any of them are any good or not, but here's a few links to content that suggests alternatives. I'm also open to hearing about other people's experiences with similar platforms, and how tolerant they are of speech that doesn't rigidly align with an extremist child-mutilating leftist vision of the future.

Spoiler: Alternatives

27 other Alternatives.

Discord is honestly one of the worst platforms, I used to use it a lot more to chat with some online friends (I stopped hanging out with them 2 years ago) but now I don't really use it for anything other than being in a couple servers to get news.
I go into one of the servers to look for new updates and the general thread has people sperging out about politics and world issues, then some guy starts (kind of) advocating for why pedophiles aren't such bad people (the pedo was a troon), then an attention seeking fággot rejoins the server for the upteenth time because in his words "I can't stop checking my phone when I get new messages from this server and it stresses me out!" as if anything posted there was even worth looking at, in reality he just looks for attention by leaving and rejoining the server like 20 times a month.

Giving people the ability to create their own personalized micro-forums is one of the worst ideas in human history, it allows the worst filth of humanity to easily gather and convene in relative privacy, and it gives them plenty of prey because this platform is mainly used by fucking children and tweens who give their personal info to anyone who even asks.
Discord incentivizes short attention spans and just spamming whatever random trash pops into your mind to get attention and validation, it's also a perfect place for people to power-trip like a server I was in which is for a game but one of the commie admins who isn't even the developer starts using announcements to post political bullshit (leftie shit obviously).
It gives me the same feeling as reddit, everyone is so """nice""" and """welcoming""" but it feels fucking fake, almost like those chemical sugary smells that are too sweet and perfumed to be real and it ends up being sickening. These people will turn on anyone the blink of an eye and not even mind it as they pummel you to death for your sins.

 

[Last Of The Mohicans]

Matrix, tbh.

You could even host a Matrix Homeserver for TVA for livechat.

Revolt is more explicitly meant to be a Discord replacement.

There was a project called Fosscord that is supposed to be a full on Discord replacement so much so they reimplemented Discord's entire API and client so shit like plugins and bots should work with minimal effort. Thing is the project is still in infancy. It got renamed to Spacebar https://github.com/spacebarchat because Discord said "Nahhhhhh that Fosscord name is too close to ours, change it or talk to our lawyers"

 

[The Proctor]

Trying Revolt.



we're off to a great start

edit; literally the first server i join has an admin with a pride flag avatar

 

[Superduper Samurai]

All discord alternatives are gonna be even more pozzed or degenerate than discord itself

Either by lefties/troons thinking regular discord wasnt conforting enough or their ideological opposites who also support some shit like lolicon

 

[Last Of The Mohicans]

All discord alternatives are gonna be even more pozzed or degenerate than discord itself

Either by lefties/troons thinking regular discord wasnt conforting enough or their ideological opposites who also support some shit like lolicon

Correct.

Hence, Matrix.

Just host your own server with your own rules, blackjack, hookers, and go back to how it was in the IRC days.

Yes I'm repeating myself.

 

[The Proctor]

Correct.

Hence, Matrix.

Just host your own server with your own rules, blackjack, hookers, and go back to how it was in the IRC days.

Yes I'm repeating myself.

Spacebar gave good vibes at first, but then I join their supporter Discord and see a disgusting furry avatar with the 'developer' tag and one of the first messages they send is 'Trans Rights [Fist Symbol]'.

I did specifically ask if they had the ability to ban/delete/interfere with self-hosted instances and they said 'no'. But can I trust that stance? I don't know.

Matrix I remember briefly looking into some years ago. I will look into it again next.

 

[Last Of The Mohicans]

Matrix I remember briefly looking into some years ago. I will look into it again next.

Fair warning, you run into the same problems Sunflower Samurai was mentioning if you stick to the publicly hosted images. Pozzed in one direction or the other.

The magic is from hosting your own instance. The "public" world can block you from federating but can't fuck with your ability to host for a private community.

 

[Compressed jpg]

After all the years of skype, discord, ts, etc a selfhosted irc server/channel has always seemed as the ideal.
Too bad nobody uses it anymore.

 

[Last Of The Mohicans]

IRC unfortunately doesn't have support the modern featureset people expect out of a chat client like Discord. Stuff like voice and video. Image and video embedding. Personal identity shit like avatars and profiles, yeah yeah in the grand scheme we say it doesn't matter, but stop preteding you don't like having a profile picture in forums and on Twitter. I love my SSRB. People give a shit about these things that IRC wasn't built to support meaningfully.

For all everyone says about the issues with Discord and the pozzed shit, they all get pushed back into the fact that it's a central service run by a single company. Even the pozzed stuff.

Once you go back to being a more distributed model like IRC that all vaporizes into thin air. You don't have to worry about whether any individual server is a bunch of furries and troons, or full of furries and nazis, because yours isn't so you don't have to worry about that.

Hence this is why I push Matrix. It's got most of the modern niceties of Discord, just missing voice and video calling, but going back to the IRC model of everyone has to run their own instances/servers/networks. And if you want voice/video calling, that's what Jitsi is for.

 

[The Proctor]

Looking into Spacebar further, it feels so heavily WIP at the moment that it's not worth looking into further. The obsession with Discord parity is also misguided.

I find this problem crops up very often whenever I deal with code monkeys on the internet. They can have great technical ability, but almost no idea what people might actually want to use. To me, interface is everything. I'll forgive an awful lot if presentation is good and customization is high. But that's not the case for most projects, and I'm convinced it's why they so often fail. It's... deeply frustrating.

Edit: Also, BRANDING. Matrix is a terrible name for a service. I google it and I get nothing but Matrix movie results. I need to actually dig to find out Matrix as a chat service. Don't name your projects like this.

 

[Nenélove]

Looking into Spacebar further, it feels so heavily WIP at the moment that it's not worth looking into further. The obsession with Discord parity is also misguided.

I find this problem crops up very often whenever I deal with code monkeys on the internet. They can have great technical ability, but almost no idea what people might actually want to use. To me, interface is everything. I'll forgive an awful lot if presentation is good and customization is high. But that's not the case for most projects, and I'm convinced it's why they so often fail. It's... deeply frustrating.

Edit: Also, BRANDING. Matrix is a terrible name for a service. I google it and I get nothing but Matrix movie results. I need to actually dig to find out Matrix as a chat service. Don't name your projects like this.

Who knew socially inept tech nerds were bad at understanding humans? This is why good tech startups usually have a guy who's the PR person or the salesman.

 

[Last Of The Mohicans]

Edit: Also, BRANDING. Matrix is a terrible name for a service. I google it and I get nothing but Matrix movie results. I need to actually dig to find out Matrix as a chat service. Don't name your projects like this.

You are right, but I can say it's going to be amusing as you start to grasp the concepts of Matrix being a protocol, but you still need both a server and a client, which each will be entirely different projects with new names.

Looking into Spacebar further, it feels so heavily WIP at the moment that it's not worth looking into further. The obsession with Discord parity is also misguided.

I find this problem crops up very often whenever I deal with code monkeys on the internet. They can have great technical ability, but almost no idea what people might actually want to use. To me, interface is everything. I'll forgive an awful lot if presentation is good and customization is high. But that's not the case for most projects, and I'm convinced it's why they so often fail. It's... deeply frustrating.

In their defense, I did say the project was very immature, and is WIP as you said, and you ran into it before it was "production ready".

Thing is, you're ranting about a chicken and egg problem in software. Do you write the backend first so the code actually does things, or do you focus on frontend so it looks pretty and presentable? (Despite not actually doing what it says it should do)

 

[The Proctor]

@LastOfTheMohicans I signed up to Matrix and am using Element right now. I want your input as somebody who evidently actually uses the thing. I'd like to know the following;

1) If I self-host/buy an independent host from their list of recommended hosts, can Matrix do anything at all to censor or disrupt the content I host on that server? Is there anything that even resembles the ability of Discord to just lock you out of your account, ban your ability to post, etc?

2) What's the closest Matrix client to Discord? I'm using Element right now and it seems pretty similar, but I'm curious if there are other clients that have better features. Basically I want a client that can do everything Discord can and hopefully more. I value flexibility above just about all other factors. If I decide to make a Matrix space, I want to be certain it can fit every possible use-case I might have for it.

 

[Last Of The Mohicans]

1) short answer no
Long answer is the worst any other server can refuse to federate with you. All this does us ban their users from joining your channels and ban your users from joining their channels. No meaningful effect on your users hosting your content.

2) Just use element. It's always going to get the latest biggest features when something new gets made for matrix since it's the reference.

EDIT

buy an independent host from their list of recommended hosts

This would be your weakpoint. You would be subject to the host provider at this point and aint no telling how pozzed any provider is

 

[The Proctor]

This would be your weakpoint. You would be subject to the host provider at this point and aint no telling how pozzed any provider is

This is pretty-much the issue. I sadly lack the ability to self-host. My access to the internet is already heavily jury-rigged because I live in a country that has worse overall internet availability than Estonia. I'm legitimately considering contacting potential hosts and directly asking them 'look, I want somewhere I can post public links to subject matter like interviews with people who regret gender transition surgery. Do you have a moral objection to platforming individuals who would watch this content?' and get a response in writing so there's no ambiguity.

 

[Last Of The Mohicans]

This is pretty-much the issue. I sadly lack the ability to self-host. My access to the internet is already heavily jury-rigged because I live in a country that has worse overall internet availability than Estonia. I'm legitimately considering contacting potential hosts and directly asking them 'look, I want somewhere I can post public links to subject matter like interviews with people who regret gender transition surgery. Do you have a moral objection to platforming individuals who would watch this content?' and get a response in writing so there's no ambiguity.

I've got a server provider I like to use that seems pretty based and permissive.

I'll DM you how to get in contact with them.

 

[Nenélove]

This is pretty-much the issue. I sadly lack the ability to self-host. My access to the internet is already heavily jury-rigged because I live in a country that has worse overall internet availability than Estonia. I'm legitimately considering contacting potential hosts and directly asking them 'look, I want somewhere I can post public links to subject matter like interviews with people who regret gender transition surgery. Do you have a moral objection to platforming individuals who would watch this content?' and get a response in writing so there's no ambiguity.

Even if they say they don't mind the total retard war showed that these hosts will do a 180 the second they get harassed by the vermintide army.