TIL there is an fediverse alternative to Discord

About Matrix Matrix is an open protocol for decentralised, secure communications.

Matrix Manifesto We believe:

People should have full control over their own communication. People should not be locked into centralised communication silos, but instead be free to pick who they choose to host their communication without limiting who they can reach. The ability to converse securely and privately is a basic human right. Communication should be available to everyone as a free and open, unencumbered, standard and global network.

pirat,

Spacebar.chat is very cool, but progress is slow…

GatoB,

What is it missing? At least it has good UI xd

pirat,

Everything. Im pretty sure it’s not installable yet.

AlexWIWA,

This will be a harder sell than Lemmy because I need to convince my friends to move too

Toppa,

The great thing, you actually don’t have to. There are so called bridges which can simply bridge your friends into your matrix chat. I for example can talk to all my whatsapp, discord and signal contacts from the same app. Very convenient.

Sebasdotworld,

What app is that? It’s matrix?

steltek,

Matrix is the protocol.

Synapse is the server software.

Element (among others) is the client software.

Bridges (WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat, etc) are extra servers that run next to the main server. Generally text only. Any Matrix client should be able to make use of a bridge. Bridges appear as “bots” in your Matrix contact list. Contacts from other services appear as “$name ($service)” and work as you would expect of a chat.

You should know that Bridging breaks end-to-end encryption as the Bridge has the decryption key and Bridges work by “impersonating” you on the other chat service. Don’t use a Bridge you don’t trust. Beeper is a paid/commercial hosted Matrix service with pre-configured bridges for you, including iMessage (which Apple makes painfully difficult to bridge because Apple).

AlexWIWA,

I need

WhoRoger,
@WhoRoger@lemmy.world avatar

I basically quit discord when notifications completely broke after the mandatory name change. Nothing I do has any effect. It’ll simply never beep again.

I managed to get most of my co-mods to Matrix. We set up a bot to notify us what’s up. All was good for a while.

Then the bot broke and is moving to Discord, and now my Matrix clients are giving me problems with notifications too.

Modern computing definitely hates me.

Monday2033,

Matrix is slow, unreliable & weirdly centralized shit; i won’t say it’s bad but it’s… Weird. There’s revolt.chat which is a discord clone but has nothing fedi-verse.

80085,

“Slow” in what way? I, and a few other people have been using it as a replacement to Slack for the past 6 months, and haven’t noticed it being slow. We’re just using the matrix.org server. Only downsides I’ve seen is it doesn’t have all the features Slack does (but I have never used them anyways), and search sucks (which is understandable because it’s encrypted).

Monday2033,

Nvm my last response, i thought you were talking about something else and this still kinda wip UI is kinda hard to navigate through…

Pat,

Centralized?

https://tatsumoto-ren.github.io/blog/list-of-matrix-servers.html

Monday2033,

I remember there was a reason on me calling Matrix “Weirdly Centralized” yet i can’t remember it rn lol, the key thing is that it’s not fully centralized but i wouldn’t call it 100% decentralised.

ninchuka,

You can easily host your own so how is it centralised?

complacent_jerboa,
  • matrix isn’t a fediverse thing, it’s its own thing. it does happen to be decentralized, like the fediverse.
  • matrix isn’t an alternative to discord. it’s an alternative to whatsapp/signal/telegram/etc.
  • matrix is nice (I use it with my friend group), but it’s not perfect. we’re looking for something better.
  • if you’re looking for a decentralized, self-hosted, open-source, secure alternative for discord, my friends and I use Mumble. It works great for VoIP (and its noise cancellation software actually seems to work noticeably better than Discord’s), but it doesn’t really have the advanced text chat features that Discord does. We make do with Matrix.
JackbyDev,

not a replacement for Discord

A lot of people only use it chat and never touch the voice features.

complacent_jerboa,

Really?

JackbyDev,

Yeah! My wife does. There are communities she chats with there.

cafeina,

Hi! How much a matrix and mumble server costs?

ninchuka,

For matrix it depends on how big rooms you join, the way matrix federates the more servers in a room the more resources it’ll take to join it and send messages in it since you send a message to every server in a room, conduit is a much more efficient homeserver implementation compared to synapse

complacent_jerboa,

Well, if you host a server, you can either host it on the cloud (which costs $$$), or you can host it by yourself (if you have a spare computer that you can just use as a server). If you host it yourself, all you’re really paying is the same stuff you already pay — internet and electricity.

Hosting a server for something like mumble, matrix, or lemmy only has the costs I mentioned above.

arius,

Why is it an alternative to telegram but not to discord?

Wolfwood1,

It allows you to have personal 1 to 1 conversations and group chats, just like WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal.

Discord isn’t exactly the same thing as Telegram, that’s why Matrix.org is usually mentioned as an alternative to WhatsApp or Telegram but not Discord

WhoRoger,
@WhoRoger@lemmy.world avatar

On Discord you can have 1:1 chats and rooms as well.

But I feel both Discord and Matrix are better suited to room chats than 1:1, if for nothing else because the registration is a tad more complex than just receiving an sms, and you’re not sharing your phone number with a 1000 people.

I think the general vibe is that WA or Signal is for small friends groups exactly because of reliance on phone number, while the others aren’t.

Ed: also the E2E doesn’t “just work” like on WA/Signal.

Wolfwood1,

Yes, you can have 1:1 and rooms on Discord too, but the level of customization of rooms, roles and permissions Discord has is much more advanced than what you can find in WA, Telegram or Matrix.org.

On Discord when you’re in a server you can see (usually) every other user that’s on the same server, and in every room you’ll see some of those people, depending on the permissions. That’s not how the other options mentioned before work.

Also, on Discord you can have specific rooms dedicated to audio/video chats, on the rest (WA, Telegram, Matrix) it works differently.

I think it’s mainly because of those reasons that people compare Matrix to WA and/or Telegram instead of saying it’s a “Discord alternative”.

ninchuka,

there is work in matrix for video rooms, along with native group calls in matrix which once its added to the spec more clients will likely start implementing

HardlightCereal,

Does Mumble have an equivalent to PluralKit? PK is one of the biggest things keeping me and my friends on discord atm

complacent_jerboa,

what’s PluralKit?

tbh, Mumble pretty much just does voice chat and only voice chat, and just focuses on doing it well.

complacent_jerboa,

what’s PluralKit?

tbh, Mumble pretty much just does voice chat and only voice chat, and just focuses on doing it well.

HardlightCereal,

It’s a bot that allows multiple people sharing an account to appear as though they each had their own pfp and username, using webhooks. It’s mostly used by plural systems, which are groups of people who live in the same head. You assign a proxy to each member, which might be something like prefacing your message with a certain emoji, and whenever you type a message using that proxy (prefacing with that emoji), PluralKit deletes your account’s message and gets a webhook with a name and pfp of your choice to re-send the message. The bot makes it way easier to talk to a plural system and know who’s speaking.

ech0,

The True selfhosted open source alternative to Discord are Mattermost and RocketChat. My friends and I use both

HughJanus,

matrix isn’t an alternative to discord. it’s an alternative to whatsapp/signal/telegram/etc

Yes and no.

  1. Matrix is a communication standard. More like SMTP, RSS or XMPP than those things. I don’t know why Matrix specifically has this problem because you’ll never see anyone say “I’ve joined ActivityPub”.
  2. Element is by far and away the most popular Matrix client (similar to how Mastodon is the most popular ActivityPub software) and it has “Spaces”, which functions similar to Discord “servers” (not actually servers). Better in some ways but mostly worse. Namely in terms of stability and the function of “spaces” specifically.
complacent_jerboa,

While it’s true people don’t say “I’ve joined ActivityPub”, isn’t that synonymous with “I’ve joined the Fediverse”? Besides, the organization behind it does market it that way — they themselves refer to it as “joining Matrix, using one of these clients” (Element, Fluffychat, etc). Like, that’s what their website is called, and so is the Matrix server they host.

Their centralization is, I think, a little more advanced than Mastodon’s. The organization that maintains the protocol regularly adds features to it, and then of course immediately updates their own client and server implementations to have those same, recently added features, meaning the other client and server implementations are always behind on at least a few features. It’s becoming reminiscent of how the web browser spec is so bloated, and gets new stuff added to it with such regularity, that new browsers are basically impractical.

vext01,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I wanted to like matrix. I really did.

But it never really works properly for me. And when it does, it’s slow.

And the e2e implementation is a nightmare for multiple devices. They tried to make it easier, but it never quite worked for me.

ninchuka,

Did you stay on the matrix.org HS by any chance?

vext01,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Yeah. That explains slow, does it?

ninchuka,

yeah, thats homeserver is very slow since its the one most people use if they just install the element apps and dont know that matrix/element is a federated platform so its very overloaded

SevereLow,

Matrix is a security nightmare. Everyone should stay clear from it till possible solutions are found for the ongoing concerns.

dragonfly4933,

Tbh, I don’t think encryption matters that much for are usually public chat channels.

The private communication should be safe since i think the users will usually pin the keys for each other.

SevereLow,

The problem comes from federation. You never know where your messages are synced to + what will happen if instances are defederated. Matrix might become something really cool, if it spends 1-2 years solely on security. Otherwise… it’s just nothing more than an epic (and misleading) name + some IRC legacy vibes.

ninchuka,

Rooms are stored on every server that’s in the room and if a server goes offline even the one that created the room it keeps working just fine and no one notices

caffeine,
@caffeine@lemmy.ml avatar

But you do know where your messages are synced don’t you? You can check your chat partner’s homeserver. Or am I mistaken?

ninchuka,

yeah, messages are only sent to servers that are in a room, so its very easy to see and know what servers are storing the messages/metadata

quent1500,

What are the ongoing concerns ?

SevereLow,

Here’s a great and beginner-friendly article on the topic of secure (and private) messaging and why Matrix currently doesn’t fit there: proton.me/blog/whatsapp-alternatives

steltek,

That link says nothing of the sort! It actually says that Matrix is a strong choice for privacy and the underlying protocol follows best practices for security.

What are these security concerns you’re talking about?

quent1500,

Thanks !

ninchuka,

That doesn’t go into detail on the “server network reliability” and it’s used by multiple government agencies around the world and they likely paid for private audits before they picked it

PutangInaMo,

Which government agencies? You’d be surprised…

ninchuka,

germanys armed forced, their health sector, france seems to use it for their entire government as well and some others Icant remember off the top of my head

PutangInaMo,

Use it for public message distribution or internal comms?

ninchuka,

internal comms I think

SuddenlyNope,

I wish Matrix/Element focused a bit more on their experimental P2P version, released as experimental in 2020 and then left it in the drawer :/

matrix.org/blog/2020/…/introducing-p2p-matrix/
github.com/vector-im/element-android-p2p (… and just why the zuck are they hosting builds on a gdrive instead on the github proper ???)

dilan,

deleted_by_author

    •
    SuddenlyNope,

    …and not open source… thank you, but no thank you!

    Also from their FAQs:

    Who’s behind WireMin?

    The WireMin team consists of a group of experienced technical experts and Web 3.0 advocates all over the world.

    Web3 = crypto

    Not a single personal name on their website.

    Marked the domain as crypto-scam in uBlock and good riddance. Unironically thank you!

    Mesaji,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    emberwit,

    all the features seams very decentralised

    registering an account

    Uhmmm

    Kushia,
    @Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

    Are you aware that some of those terms are crypto too?

    ninchuka,

    Yeah it’s going slow but it’s not something that can be quickly done and it’ll require some big changes in the core protocol to really work well with p2p

    Floufym,
    @Floufym@lemmy.world avatar

    Never used it but I though Matrix was more an alternative to Messaging apps (like Telegram, Signal, …) than Discord. Am I wrong ?

    Koordinator_O,
    @Koordinator_O@lemmy.world avatar

    No I think that’s correct. Comparing it to Discord is a bit of a stretch. Just the UI is similar to Dirscord with the rooms and Spaces. Function wise it’s an alternative to Telegram or Whatsapp. Most of the most used functions (at least for me) are not present in any Matrix client.

    mdwalters,
    @mdwalters@pawb.social avatar

    but its not activitypub, but its still a good alternative

    snek_boi, (edited )

    Is Activitypub designed for encrypted messages? Edit: My impression is that it isn’t

    Mesaji,

    Nah, its more like fediverse

    snek_boi,

    Thanks for the reply :P I do have an idea of what Activity Pub attempts to do, and I would’ve been very surprised if it turned out that it’s well-suited for an end-to-end encrypted chat protocol

    Mesaji,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    snek_boi, (edited )

    Thanks for the recommendations. Unfortunately, Signal is centralized and WireMin is closed source. Session does look interesting! Edit: Session actually has some security and ethical problems… Matrix may not have the equivalent to onion routing, but so far it seems like the best option

    ninchuka,

    to run a session node you need to buy a certain amount of their shitcoin and it has no perfect forward security so its alot less secure

    Xttweaponttx,

    Element is an amazing platform! It’s not perfect, but given what it implements it’s doing a helluva good job!

    bizzacore,
    @bizzacore@lemmy.world avatar

    I feel like Rocket.chat would be the best Fediverse alterantive to Discord

    PolarisFx,

    It is the best Discord alternative, and it can be self hosted. But there’s no interconnectivity between instances. So not really a fediverse alternative

    meisme,

    It’s federated with matrix now

    barryamelton,

    Rocket.chat started using the Matrix protocol and became federated on June last year, so you can use both ;)

    ryan659,

    I still don’t see why we can’t just use IRC anymore. The protocol itself is old but reliable, and just needs a good client or two to help people compare it to Discord a bit more favourably. Though I suppose the need for a BNC to fully match it is probably a bit much of an ask for most.

    EthicalAI,

    It takes a lot of work to support encryption and it’s definitely not end to end

    It’s not really federated, you make a new account for each server I think.

    needs rich messaging support. At very least markdown. Matrix supports images.

    bamboo,

    IRC not allowing users to receive messages while offline, not having multiple synced clients, not natively supporting media, not supporting voice or video calls makes it a complete non-starter.

    vext01,
    @vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Does the new irc protocol fix any of that?

    Ildar,
    @Ildar@lemmy.world avatar

    And there is XMPP

    vext01,
    @vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Trued xmpp, but all the good features are extensions and not all client support them.

    Ildar,
    @Ildar@lemmy.world avatar

    Psi+ supports almost everything, but there is no good mobile client

    callcc,

    Snicket is pretty good

    vext01,
    @vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Right. Its about finding clients with a feature intersection that supports everything.

    I dont have time…

    Kushia,
    @Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

    Hey you discovered why it never took off in the first place once Google and co got their mitts into it.

    EpicGamer,

    The only thing holding me back from using it is that it doesn’t remove the background noise of my mic well. (I also have to convince my less privacy minded friends and they really don’t like the extra background noises)

    ook_the_librarian,
    @ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world avatar

    is it possible to do something like open the sound of a virtual stream from OBS and use OBS’s audio filters before the discord-clone gets your audio? not sure if that makes sense, but that would be the steps I would try in your shoes.

    EpicGamer,

    I tried that with noisetorch, but it quite amazingly destroyed my linux haha. I still don’t quite understand how. That isn’t the problem, the problem is that there are too many hoops to jump for my friends to get started without a whole bunch of background noise.

    But thanks! I’ll still look into that to investigate if there is something really easy

    senseito,
    @senseito@lemmy.world avatar

    If you have an Nvidia card, try RTX Voice (works with GTX models too)

    EpicGamer,

    It doesn’t seem to support my RTX 1070 :( and it would also not work for my friends

    But thanks for the reccomendation

    Ultra980,

    Does it work on Linux tho?

    ninchuka,

    Easy effects has a option to help with that, I use it and it works amazing you can’t hear my keyboard when it’s on

    Beowulf,

    Been just using TeamSpeak with a free license for friends. 32 slots with little overhead on a linode from Dallas I’m already paying for.

    They just need screenshare capabilities to move over 100% of my friends

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