Brace yourself for Discord to get worse: Reports swirl that the company is in talks with bankers about opening itself up to shareholders

The worse discord becomes, the easier it will be to convince people to switch to matrix :)

Matrix can't do game streaming, which is arguably a huge part of Discord.
- If you mean screensharing, then you can totally do that with game footage in element call tho. Someone i know had the same concern but it worked fine for them. This is the call software used in the element matrix client so you can try it out and tell me if it works https://call.element.io/
We've been saying that about Windows and Linux for forever.
- It might be slow but its happening. Linux just has 1 more barrier for me to switch: games with kernal anti cheats.
  
  "Dual boot" - I'd have to switch so often its not funny, I value my time at least a little bit ok "Don't play those games" - I have friends, those friends want to play those games, I want to hang out with those friends because they're fun people
- And it is slowly happening :)
- It's happening. Slowly.
  
  I first dabbled with Linux around 2015 by dual booting. Ran into too many issues, then I royally fucked shit up by accidentally deleting the bootloader or something, so I was pretty hesitant to try again. I finally got a hold of a surplus laptop from work so I could install Mint on it without any worry that I'd lose important data.
  
  I've been using that as my primary PC for a few months now. I've run into some minor challenges, but nothing critical that I couldn't figure out with a search engine.
  
  I had another old laptop still running Windows 7 that has been having weird issues, but I'd been too lazy to backup the files so I could wipe it. I finally pulled the trigger today, fully wiped it, and installed Mint on it.
  
  I'm not ready to preach Linux to my "normie" friends yet, but do mention it to them here and there in hopes I'll be able to bring them over in the future.
Personally, I’m a bigger fan of Revolt… or at least the idea of it. The GUI is nearly identical to discord, the basics are all there, all they need is time to get it fleshed out and working. Also it’s open source, so that’s a plus. Edit: I should clarify, it does work. But the team is small and the current vision is large. To get Revolt to be equal with discord would probably take a couple years. That being said, if you want a strictly text and voice chat platform with built in css editing, Revolt is a good option.
Does Matrix have screen sharing where multiple participants can screen share simultaneously yet? Because that’s the feature all of my friends use.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Discord, but if no one brings up screen sharing when Matrix is mentioned as an alternative then it’ll never be implemented.
- This is the public test version of the new call system that you can try without an account https://call.element.io/
  
  Its pretty new and still evolving, but this is basically just embedded in Element if you start a call in the client. From my test just now it doesnt look like you can have two people screensharing at once :( The screensharing itself works fine tho, it looks like a new share by a different person will just overwrite the previously started one.
- That's a somewhat weird, to me, use case. Even in a business setting, we share our screens with colleagues via meet or slack only one or two at a time. How does this work on Discord and why would a party of people do it?
Isn’t it a shame that it takes discord to get worse and not matrix to get better?
- That's just natural. Discord has a huge weight of numbers. People stay where they already are, unless there is significant motivation to move.
  
  Matrix would have to be MUCH better than Discord in terms of features to attract people to move their whole communities and friend groups, not just simply on-par. And that's pretty tough.
  
  So yes - we're basically waiting for Discord to continue its slow march into enshittification.
- Matrix is getting better constantly tho. I havent had any issues introducing non techie people to it.
- it is getting better at least
- Any service whose main strength is "OSS, privacy, freedom, security" will usually never hit mainstream success. I say this as a FOSS enthusiast.
- You need funding to get better easier, which is something matrix doesnt have alot of
Is there a fool-proof beginner's guide for Matrix? I started reading the documentation the other day and got a bit overwhelmed. Never did end up figuring out how to use it.
- You probably already know that its federated, so first step would be picking a server. I would pick one that is on your continent from this list. https://servers.joinmatrix.org/
  
  I would not recommend using the matrix.org server but im too lazy right now to explain why. (basically the same as the arguments against pushing users to lemmy.world)
  
  I would also not use a web based client long term. In the next step you will need to for registration, which is kind of stupid, but you can just log out of the web client after the registration is done.
  
  ===========================================
  
  Im just gonna randomly pick the server https://gemeinsam.jetzt/ (Austria) from the earlier list. From the list it links you to https://element.gemeinsam.jetzt/ for registration. If you click on "Create Account" it will give you this prompt:
  
  After you fill everything out (+ email confirmation) you will be logged in. Now you have an account that you can use to log into a proper client with an address that look like this @username:gemeinsam.jetzt
  
  You can now log out of the web client as you dont need it anymore. (It might warn you that you are logging out of your last device/session but thats ok).
  
  ===========================================
  
  Now you can pick a client (there are many but these are the most up to date ones).
  
  For desktop use: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/element/
  
  For mobile use the newer: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/element-x/
  
  So now you have an account on a server of your choosing and a client which means you just give the client your full address like @username:gemeinsam.jetzt to log in and the client will automatically figure out what server your account is on. Put in your password and you are logged in.
  
  Every time you log into a new client, it creates a new session/device that will have its own independent set of message encryption keys unless verified by another existing device/session. That means to keep your keys synchronized (and messages readable) the client will always request you to verify new devices (other than the first one) upon login.
  
  As you logged out of the only remaining session/device earlier, this newly created one should again be the first and only one of the account. You can verify this in the client settings by looking at the "Sessions" section.
  
  Thats basically it for the initial setup. See following section for why you should have either multiple devices/sessions or set up a recovery key.
  
  ===========================================
  
  Your messages are stored in your account data on your server, but they are encrypted, so if you lose access to all your devices, then all those messages are gone. To prevent that you can create a "recovery key" which is just a long password that is used to encrypt your encryption keys so they too can be stored safely on your server. This allows you to restore your messages even if all devices are lost by entering the recovery key after logging in from a new device.
  
  If you want to use multiple devices just log in on that device and follow the prompt to "verify this session from another device". (works by QR code or comparing some emojis) By verifying a session, you synchronize all your message encryption keys to that device/session. The easiest way to verify new devices is like this, by using an existing device.
  
  Let me know if you get stuck anywhere and i will try to help you out :)
- If you're on lemmy then there's nothing that new and different about matrix. It's the same idea for chat apps: you can join an existing server, or host your own. Matrix doesn't federate, so you just need to add whatever new servers you want to join.
  
  Element is one of the bigger client apps. Matrix.org is the biggest server. Those will get you started.
You mean switch to Jabber, right?

Good riddance. I'm so tired of FOSS projects using that platform as their main communication channel because it's completely disconnected from the Web.

"Let's have the chatroom be the knowledgebase!" Fucking brilliant, no notes.
- IRC baby! Always searchable. I hate discord search.

As a genuine fan of video games as art and multiplayer video games as digital communities, seeing everything go to Discord, even open source projects, has been really sad to watch happen over and over again.

Honestly... Lemmy would be a FAR better platform to run a video game community on than Discord.

Fuck Discord.

Like... the format of Discord is fine (except if you are going to use it to manage a software project, it needs to be designed to facilitate technical support, questions about bugs, and facilitate creating an easily searchable wiki of info along with the live chat), I am fine with the idea but Discord has used its massive popularity and capital to completely eat entire swatchs of video gaming niches and not only is that scary, Discord SUCKS as a tool for handling complex communities with lots of moving parts.

Before someone defends Discord by saying "it works great for small groups of friends" let me pre-emptively answer -> true, yes it does work great for small groups of friends, that is what it was designed for originally probably right? Ok... but small groups of friends is literally the easiest possible usecase for a communication tool, if Discord was bad at that it wouldn't be good at anything.

Lemmy would be a FAR better platform to run a video game community on than Discord.

Lemmy does not have voice chat.
- If only discord had stuck to just voice chat. They are miles better in that arena than other options were at the time. I just hate how it also replaced forums. And issue trackers. And some people try to run wikis and image boorus and everything else under the sun as a discord server
- This is an issue I see with Lemmy regarding Discord. Many people here seem to think of Discord as a messaging platform only. Which is weird because I don’t know anyone who uses it strictly for text. For example my friend group is probably 60% voice, 30% video/screen sharing & 10% text.
- Just use Jitsi for anything other than perzistent chat.
Discord was recently integrated with PS5 and XBOX. Its not going away anytime soon.

Back to Ventrilo and Teamspeak it is then

IRC, XMPP, Usenet.

We need open options that aren't beholden to a given company. Email is the last vestige of a more civilized age.
Mumble too!
Never left

Is Revolt any good?

It's not a full replacement for Discord, but it's working towards that. If you just want a basic server for yourself and friends with emotes and voice chats, Revolt works. If you want polls, events, threads, forums, etc., it can't replace your setup. I think the goal is to be a full Discord replacement in the future, but it's still a work in progress (such is often the case with FOSS software maintained by hobbyists).
- Nice, thank you for the reply. Do you know if the devs are involved in any drama that might affect the project? Seems like every day we find out about dev drama in alternative projects.
No. I tried to use it for 10 minutes and couldn’t figure out how to voice chat. No way it fills in for Disc.

I mean, it's already an over-monetized corp shitshow, because everyone joined it. I knew when so many groups centralized in one place, money and greed would soon follow. All we ever needed was IRC with built in logging. The voice chat and video are always going to be corp run because of bandwidth and storage.

It's like some eternal September shit. Of course a private for profit entity like discord is going to eventually turn to shit*. It's like the scorpion and the frog fable**. People should know that. But there are just so many people who this is their first time ever encountering these ideas.

And some people just don't care about things. I had that galaxy brain realization a couple months ago. Imagine if everyone cared just a little more. So many problems would just go away.

*Valve arguably being an exception so far, but that could change on a whim

** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

There are two reasons to go public, for one to make as much profit as and otherwise to get more funding than they can get through normal means to then make as much profit as possible.

Revolt.chat

right answer. hopefully upryzing adds federation support or polyproto pops off
How does this compare to element [matrix] ?
- Revolt is a 1:1 copy of Discord.
- revolt doesnt have working notifications on mobile

Time to act like an old man yelling at a cloud as I try and convince all my friends to go somewhere else. Not that it isn't a good idea, just that they don't really care as much as I do.

yeah this is the problem i face. it was a fight 5 years ago to get my friends to ditch messenger for discord. they wont go thru it again...

I don't get the hate... It's a solid free product. I can't recall it ever going down unlike every commercial product I pay for at work. It has granular access controls, plethora of capabilities through integrations and bots. Yes, it's not FOSS. Okay.. is that a requirement for any and everything? Wtf is people's problem with it? I sold to their trust and safety team and they were the best humans I ever met. I use it for tons of personal projects, have made friends all over the world.. it's more like early internet vibes than here tbh

Privacy of my data, for one. I've had lots of conversations about things like trade and sale of used items, or just plain meetups (they've got my address in many PMs with friends). They've got my conversations and opinions about TV and viewing habits. They've got intimate conversations and vulnerability about mental health. The addition of AI already makes me nervous as F as an artist, and I've shared my art on there before. It has data about my gender identity and sexuality in conversations I would never want shareholders, in this political climate, to use against me.

I wish I could wipe all my data from discord, but i doubt deleting it would do that. And I don't want to lose my communities. I know some of the responsibility is on me for being so open on a communication service, but seriously? When it's privately owned you at least had some semblance of an idea of what to expect, and it originally was for gamers. That aesthetic, while expanded to every day chat, still had a layer of fun and usability that I am just afraid is going to disappear for whatever shareholders want, and shareholders are many many liabilities wrapped up in ideologies that can be bought.

I'm tired.
This is just a guess, I might have some availability bias (or whatever it's called, not gonna bother looking it up), but I think a lot of the hate stems from how inaccessible content in Discord is without having access to the server or a Discord account. It's not indexed by search engines. So many projects use it (because it's so easy to make a server and get it going) and post documentation, issues, etc. exclusively there.

The Lemmy community is not very diverse yet. There are a lot of tech enthusiasts, FLOSS enthusiasts, privacy enthusiasts, and leftists. Most of these groups of people have reasons to dislike Discord. Tech folks hate it because of what I said above. FLOSS enthusiasts hate it because it's not FLOSS. Privacy enthusiasts hate it because it's not end to end encrypted. Leftists hate it because it's it's a company.

So while everything you're saying is true, I think it's that most of the types of people who use Lemmy have various reasons to dislike it.

Don't know how much worse it could get, really, but I'm sure they'll find a way.

I wonder what's become of Mumble these days.

Ugh gods damn it. I can't enjoy anything anymore.