Fluxer continues rapid development and is now self-hostable.

I wish they’d do a cheap “Nitro Classic” style tier, rather than just having only “Nitro Premium”.

They don’t have either.

It’s called Plutonium or something. They do have the equivalent of Nitro.

Yes but unlike Discord you can just ignore it.

If they had a super cheap $1 tier just for being able to use custom emotes anywhere, I’d honestly love that. Though I feel like the $5/month for Plutonium is a lot better than $10/month that discord nitro goes for

yea, that’s exactly why they don’t do that. They know the only main feature that they offer that people who subscribe actually want is the emotes everywhere, they won’t offer a super cheap tier offering only that as the jump would be people on the 1$ tier and then people on the 10$ tier. Nobody would do nitro basic.

The current stand alone client doesn’t allow you to specify a self hosted server though I’m limited to the web interface until there’s a fix, hopefully soon.

Really like fluxer though! Highly recommend it was very easy to set up and looks exactly like Discord.

Can’t you specify instance when logging into a canary client?

Not on Linux and the forums said it’s an oversight or bug and would be fixed but not when. Frustrating I am trying to migrate friends but they whine about the web interface.

It should also be a very easy fix so i wonder why it takes so long

Genuinely the one issue I have with it at the moment. Had been using Matrix since early this year. Got Fluxer up recently when they got the beta apps. Shut my matrix server down about a week later. It’s just nicer. Missing some things like E2E (for now) but my friends hated the additional step of having to put in that decrypt phrase anyway. Fluxer is easy and incredibly familiar out the box. Gonna keep my eye on Matrix clients though, but neither Element, Cinny, nor FluffyChat impressed.

It’s also a slop project. Matrix exists: join it and enjoy the federated future.

It’s not. Matrix is awful.

Ok go ahead, and please explain why matrix is awful. Please only speak from recent experience.

Slow loading, constant encryption errors, difficult to use, and way too many people on the flagship instance.

I’ve been on matrix for over about two years now. There is no noticeable slowness on the client, on any that I tried (and I’ve tried a lot of them), and the chats for our groups open immediately.

There have been 0 encryption errors so far. We use encryption only in private chats and chats where we exchange important data. I have only been on large encrypted rooms (100+) once, and I did have an initial loading phase which took a couple of seconds. One should be able to live with that.

I have brought 12 people including my mother on element. Three of those people are what I consider “techy”, and the rest managed to join and use it by themselves with zero teaching from me (other than giving them the home server URL).

Hating matrix because lots of people are on the flagship server is like hating email because most people use Gmail. It’s not relevant for you. They can use whatever and you can use whatever.

I have a feeling that I have this talk once a month because there are misconceptions and misinformation on matrix. Matrix does have some issues, but these are not it.

I don’t know what to tell you, that has been my experience, and the experience of many others I have discussed it with.

Hating matrix because lots of people are on the flagship server is like hating email because most people use Gmail.

Well for one, yes, I absolutely do hate that most people use Gmail. This i s simply not the case with many competing protocols. For another, no, it’s not the same, because Gmail makes no illusions of being private.

What client are you using?

Matrix is cool but the lackluster custom emote support on mobile clients is kind of a deal breaker for me

github.com/matrix-org/…/2545 Exists since 2020. But are custom emotes really the reason that you don’t use matrix?

Sure Matrix supports custom emotes, but clients’ support for them is still spotty. Element X didn’t even show them at all when I tried, and fluffy chat would let you see them but had no emote picker. you just had to type the name into chat between colons

I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, but yes custom emote support is that important for me and my friends

Matrix has its benefits, but it is not a 1:1 replacement for discord, for one thing they still haven’t figured out audio screen sharing. If privacy is your thing, it is also a mixed bag since jitsi is not e2ee while the fluxer video calls are. For my use case fluxer is preferable for less tech savvy people or people who want e2ee video calls, & matrix is good for e2ee chat messages, both have their place, & I use both where their strengths shine

Element call exists and both audio over screen share and encrypted video calls are a thing since couple years now. It’s not a 1:1 discord and it’s good because of that.

I’ve never gotten the screen share audio to work and based on the issue tracker I’m not the only one.

Does it have audio notifications yet? That was my deal-breaker when I tried it 6 months ago.

yep! you can even turn on a notification sound for messages in the current channel while the window is focused

It had audio notifications 6 months ago.

Yeah, my bad, I was thinking of Stoat.

I’ve been trying Fluxer recently and it’s been really great. though not as nice as Stoat with emotes, they still give 500 emote slots and 500 sticker slots for servers on the main instance. The mobile app that recently came out are a bit rough around the edges, but works well enough to replace discord for me (if only I could get all my friends on it…)

My friends and I are in Matrix with the Sable client since march and we are really happy with it.

Can vouch for him. I can’t be happier with Matrix & Sable client.

You self-host or use a public instance? I’ve been curious about Matrix for a while but never found the time to set it up or find a decent instance

I was using a etke as a hosting service for a while but it was a bit expensive and I wanted more control. I set it up on my homelab with a VPS running a reverse proxy and like it a lot more. I believe I deployed it with someone's Ansable playbook I found on github.
Make a matrix.org account and play around with it. I hate the Element client though.

Public atm. The plan is to get ours.

My friends and I use Matrix with the the commet.chat client. It is the best.

Thanks for mentioning that client! Just gave it a go and its probably the best client I have tried so far

Yeah same but with the element client. Now we don’t even use discord at all

IRC exists and works great! :D

I’m on a self hosted network that is active almost around the clock, full of chill, wholesome and welcoming people. I can PM details for anyone who wants to come check us out (there is a webchat option, no need to set up a IRC client if you just want to have a look), don’t know if advertising is frowned upon here or not and I don’t want to spam or upset anyone.

Edit: Since my account is too young to be sending private messages to strangers, I’ll add the info here:

The server address is irc.inthemansion.com port: 6697 Join #lobby and say “hello” :)

Web chat can be found on the front page here https://inthemansion.com/ it will by default make you join #lobby. So if you are unfamiliar with IRC, that is the easiest way to try it out.

I’d like the details to join if you wouldn’t mind pming me. I run a server so I may set it up. Thanks

I would also like the details, if possible.

Well, turns out, I cant send messages because I’m a “very new account or very low reputation” :D I guess I’ll share here, mods can delete the comment if this sort of promotion is not allowed :)

The server address is irc.inthemansion.com port: 6697

Web chat can be found on the front page here https://inthemansion.com/

Join #lobby and say a greeting :)

My problem with irc was not remembering to connect and it not being persistent, so when I did show up it’d be empty unless it just happened to be in the middle of others talking. But I did want to get into it.

That can be solved with a bouncer. The bouncer stays connected and loads chat history, when you do connect. :)

Maybe it was just the server I tried, but I could never get it to work. Or maybe I configured it wrong 🤷🏼‍♂️

How’s mobile support?

Some bouncers need to have the chat history replay set to enabled, some clients need a plugin to replay the history. I use Soju+weechat and had to do a bit of configuring to get it to work, but now it does work fine. Also, some channels have a server side history replay enabled, for example, in our network the main channel replays automagically 15 last messages and you can do a command to replay the last 100 messages.

Mobile support has improved a lot lately. There is a couple of users on the network who only use mobile to chat. Personally I don’t use any, so I can’t say much about it.

IRC is older than World Wide Web, and unfortunately there wasn’t as much innovation over years.

It was designated for a live chat so thought of also storing history and replay it didn’t make sense then (the reasoning was that if you needed to send something that’s not live, why not use email?)

Though people come up with own adhoc solutions like for example mentioned bouncer, some networks also had memo service where you could leave a message and there were also bots storing channel’s log.

If features like these are important to you, I didn’t think you will be happy with IRC, adding them would require rearchitecting the whole thing.

You can see for example slack doing it (it is heavily influenced by IRC although it evolved so much that maybe that is less visible now)

I didn’t have a chance to play with it yet, but I heard Matrix could be the successor to IRC.

Nothing against IRC, I spent years on it and loved it, but it isn’t great if important features for you are things like chat history when you were offline, embedding pictures in chat, threads, audio/video chat etc

The things where IRC still rules is: simplicity, very low resource requirements, and no accounts need, just pick a nick and you are in (this is also why keeping history for each user is so hard to add, when servers didn’t really handle accounts.)

Yeah, I get that.And it’s not so much that these features are important, so much as I just forget to participate. 😅

I’ve been using IRC for going on 30 years now and always love finding new/interesting Servers so I would appreciate a PM with details so I can check it out, thanks!

My account is too young to be sending private messages, so I’ll share the details here:

irc.inthemansion.com port: 6697 #lobby is the main channel

Implying IRC is in any way replacement for discord is absurd.

Yes, I agree. No need to buy nitro, no gif spam, no emoji spam, not relying on one corporations good will. It is indeed much better ;D

I’ve been on IRC for 30+ years. It’s great for what it is.
Until it can do voice and screensharing, it’s not even in the same ball park.

Well obviously. At no point did I suggest that IRC can do everything Discord can, or that it can replace the things Discord does. All I said is that it exists and works well.

What IRC server are you using?

I’m over 400 years old and if you don’t believe me, I still use teamspeak.

Of course you do. Now lets get you back to the home.

That got me a good giggle, thanks

Is the username a reference to Betty?

nah it’s a reference to a wasted month of my life thanks to Taylor farms.

My condolences to your ass.

For reference to Betty: Betty’s Joke

lmao omg I forgot about that movie, gotta rewatch it, thanks!

Bruh, I’m still on ICQ

Netscape navigator is the beast in business

How many digits is your id?

still remember mine: 18982172

1132418!

All the bullshit aside.

Why does any account that literally cannot be under 18 need to verify their age? On any service.

If the minimum age to create account + account age is at least 18, they are an adult.

the discord minimum is 13, unless jurisdiction demands it to be higher (ie 16 in germany and australia)

Yeah so, if someone's Discord account is 5 years old, they must be 18. Therefore they should be automatically verified.

(Id verification should be abolished though, crazy we are letting this shit happen)

I have two email addresses that I use to sign up to everything, and they themselves are both over 18 years old. The only thing I’ve let verify my age is my Microsoft account, and they did that by looking up my email with their “age verification partner” or whatever, and they determined I was over 18.

Not that I was ever planning to give any websites my ID or do any selfie shit with anyone anyway, but now that I know it’s completely possible to be verified without all that I definitely won’t now. Discord never tried to lock me out, so I guess my account there is old enough? I signed up pretty early when they started. I’ll go completely offline before I play along with any of this.

Good thing Matrix and XMPP exist as alternatives.

If I start getting straight-up locked out of Discord unless I show my face or ID, I’mma just stop using it full stop.

I mean, shit, Discord’s already getting ridiculous with their Nitro ads. No, Discord, I don’t want Nitro, stop asking me. No needs to start meaning no again.

Matrix honestly sucks ass and is full of spambots posting illegal content

Xmpp is too confusing for most people

I agree with Matrix Sucking, it needs very heavy work on both frontend and backend implementations to be taken serious, that’s why I stopped pushing it to my friend groups, the people I convinced to join ended up needing features it just doesn’t support yet, like an actual permission system instead of the numeric based > x style, or actual custom emote capability that isn’t a patchwork decided by the software and the huge barrier of getting started. People don’t want to have to pick through 30 different frontends to find one that works perfectly for a server.

Matrix works amazingly for the techies, or for people who want a limited IRC style feature set. But for for the casuals who are used to what discord provides, it just isn’t a good competitor. It’s complicated to get going, isn’t unified and lacks features. Most people I have tried to suggest it have bailed due to that not long after joining.

XMPP being difficult though? I hard disagree. It’s well maintained, it’s super established, and for the most part unlike matrix whom decided frontend needed to make decisions on feature-sets, everything on XMPP is backend based. You have the same issues as matrix client wise but, for the most part client feature-sets are universal due to how long it’s been out. I would push XMPP long before I go back to pushing matrix again. I have had better luck keeping/maintaining people on XMPP than I have with matrix.

and Fluxer, it seems the most feature complete

Moved onto Matrix a while ago because of this. Gonna be real, Discord is better but all Matrix asked me for was hardware verification. I fucking hate this ID verification thing. Like we are going to see a sharp spark in identity theft going forward.

…and shit, I might be part of it. I had to verify with an ID to get my CompTIA tests, which I passed. I am still arguing with Pearson to delete my personal data, but I might be in the shitter with all the others getting their identity stolen.

but all Matrix asked me for was hardware verification.

what do you mean? I don’t think it uses anything like that

They installed “Mathrix” and are now in a someone’s botmining network /s

What Matrix client are you using?

Element.

That is your problem, it’s super slow and server management is hard. I am seeing that Sable seems to be popular.

Is Sable worth getting into? My friends and I have been using Element for a hot second now and it works good enough for us. Like if it does everything we need, so how is Sable better?

I have not tried it yet, I have used Cinny and Sable is a fork of that.

The selfie method stands out: on-device processing with no video retained is a meaningful privacy distinction.

Yea I don’t buy it

That quote from the article also sounds like AI wrote that bit.

The whole article was AI written, the headings the “voice” scream AI

It 100% is. That’s a Claude-ism if I ever saw one.

I read too much AI slop for a living to know.

Yea I don’t buy it

Good. No one should. Not at least after the data breach. I ain’t giving them shit.

Yeah, this just means, if true, it’s totally ineffective. It’ll be hacked to bypass it if it’s all local, which means people wanting to avoid it will.

I’m not verifying my old age with any online service. They can go fuck themselves.

My discord account itself is 11 years old now, most of my accounts are, but they still need to age check me. What did I set it up which n I was 4?

Gotta have massive surveillance in a fascist society.

The age verification isn’t to check age, agree is r excuse they want to tie the account to you.

Ha! Well, I’m glad we moved our gaming community off of it when all this kicked off first time round, knowing full well it wouldn’t be the last time they tried this shit. We started entirely self hosting our community to focus on user privacy and haven’t looked back since.

If people want a link to join, comment or DM, I don’t want this to come across like a sales pitch or shill lol

Good thing I made a Discord alternative that is using p2p and thus making it impossible to verify the age of any user.

They moved my local D&D group onto discordia and ended up kicking me out of a session I wanted to attend.

Discord is perhaps the most unnecessary and readily replaceable service and they don’t seem to realize how short their time is

It’s absolutely possible to build a discord replacement

The real issue is convincing people to move

I even found a replacement called Fluxer that let’s you import your server and all their channels, plus the livestreams don’t run at 2fps like Matrix but my friends still are too lazy to move, it’s frustrating.

in the embedded jitsi based calls you can set the screen share fps in its own settings. if your server uses element call, I don’t think you need such a setting?

Streaming over Matrix seems to work just fine with me and my friends. Might be the client we’re using, or the fact it’s a self-hosted server.

Might be, I made my channel in the default matrix server and was using the default program Element too, and when I streamed a game to my friend he said it was extremely choppy.

Oh, well, yeah. That explains it then. The default matrix server isn’t good for anything because its bitrate is low, yet everyone makes an account there.

So you have a limited bitrate anf thousands of people to serve. Fluxer is the same. It’s just not as bad yet because there aren’t as many people there.

If you’re approaching Matrix like a centralised service, you’re doing it wrong. You must set up a server for you and your friends, and then federate with the rest of Matrix.

there already exist discord clones like fluxer and stoat, but not a lot of people are there yet

I wouldn’t say Stoat. Too many missing features. Fluxer doesn’t have Federation or E2EE yet.

Sable currently is the best drop-in replacement for Discord.

Why does a Discord clone need federation?
Discord is about persistent text chat and non-persistent voice chat. The medium is way more limiting than a single server’s hardware. Each virtual chat server only being on a single (maybe mirrored) physical server shouldn’t be a problem.

The big thing that made Discord so popular is being able to make one account and join multiple communities, often about specific subjects. To use that exact same account to freely communicate, including direct messages, with members of these communities, and have one friend list attached to your account.

Only ways you can have this is either through centralisation or Federation. Centralisation has proven to be junk.

I run a trans discord server for an IRL group. We’ve looked at alternatives for obvious reasons, but we’re still on discord. All the alternatives we looked at come with some compromises. Often they lack some critical feature of discord. And while self hosting is great for an individual, it becomes a liability for a group as now that one individual has a great deal of responsibility and power over the rest of the group. And some alternatives are no where near as approachable as discord.

None of these problems are insurmountable, but they’re also not something that is as easy to brush aside as a lot of tech enthusiasts claim. Our current stance in our group is that we’ll stick with discord for now. If they start flagging our channel as adult content and demand ID to access it, at that point we’ll select one of the alternatives. The drawbacks of the other platforms aren’t deal breakers for us. But at present the hassle of discord’s bullshit isn’t enough for us to overcome the hassle of the alternatives and the transition. We’re aware of alternatives and keeping them in our back pocket, but for now we’re sticking with discord.

We’ve looked at alternatives for obvious reasons, but we’re still on discord. All the alternatives we looked at come with some compromises. Often they lack some critical feature of discord.

I’m no discord user so unlikely I will have an answer, but if you genuinely looking for help you should list what those critical features are (I mean the fact that those services don’t have these features means they weren’t critical for the devs that created them).

Ideally you could list service that was closest to what you want and the features that it was still missing.

I’m not genuinely looking for help. I’m sharing my experiences not looking for tech support.

Laughs in stoat and fluxer

This.

A friend of mine went through the trouble of setting up a whole Matrix server with the Sable client when the first rumblings of this came up late last year.

Everything was made and readily available for everyone one we knew to move over. They just had to make an account and that was it.

Nobody came.

Nobody fucking came.

Its just me and two of my other friends on there, because despite everyone crying how Discord is doing something bad, when it comes to it they have nothing but excuses.

“But all my friends are here…”

“But there’s a videogame community I’m part of…”

“I don’t understand. It’s too complicated…”

“I’ll move if it really gets bad…”

ICE in America is using AI profiling to get rid of or straight up murder peoole, trained on data which includes everything the age verification spyware in Discord sends directly to them. But they don’t care. Their convenience is lore important than the lives of people.

So fuck them.

Same with a local queer server that made an XMPP server. Only 4 (including me) actually made an account. The only reason ANYBODY joined is because were all anarchists but for most lazyness outweighed paranoia

Yeah it’s difficult convincing people due to sunken cost.

You could be chatting on a better platform that offers everything discord offers for free but you’d have to convince your friends and the servers you frequent to all move.

It’s not about the platform itself as much as it’s about the communities that are all already there.

Even the one person I know who is terrified of losing her account and preemptively set up alternatives on other platforms still won’t leave until something forces her.

Yea this right here. People don’t remember, the only reason everyone left Skype in the first place, wasn’t because of skypes enshittification, although that didn’t help.

It was because during skypes implementation of said enshittification, their uptime was almost non-existent. Cloud servers crashed constantly, the linux program for it was unusable and required reinstall every time you opened. Messages weren’t sending and people weren’t getting notifications or history. People were forced to go elsewhere in order to remain in contact, so people moved to discord. The more people who moved the faster the transition become. Eventually everyone realized “Wow this is such a better product” and decided to stay.

So you are saying we need to to DDOS Discord? /hjk

Yeah I’d move if the groups I’m in moved too

Is it though?

I don’t mind making another account, but I’ll have a hard time convincing many of my friends.

They managed to move to discord at one point, they can do it again

Oh, yes. If I mention that “well you’ve made an account before” they will immediately be convinced.

I am still going to try, don’t take my prior comment as me throwing in the towel, but the chances are slim I’ll be able to convince all the people I’d want to. And even if they make an account, chances are they’ll rarely boot up the app and forget about it.

Discord has a certain critical mass that will be difficult to beat.

readily replaceable

I think the last time they tried this showed just how NOT replaceable they are. Every alternative lacks critical features or is still so deep in development that a workable, scalable product is still years away. And that’s not even touching the difficulty of getting people to move.

People switched from mumble and teamspeak to discord because it offered more features and worked better in all but a few edge cases. In the years since, nothing else has been developed that even comes close to matching all the things it does. If you think it’s as simple as slapping together a VoIP program with a chat feature, you are vastly underestimating what every day users would want.

Sable already offers most of the features of Discord, even ones otherwise locked behind the Nitro pay wall.

What’s more difficult is getting people to move. There’s always excuses, and nothing is EVER going to be the exact same as Discord. So the excuses become progressively more granular.

It’s surprisingly hard for normal people to get a chat server running and maintained. It’s the same like with forums. We need something like Lemmy for persistent chat. The software isn’t really the problem - it’s literally just single-server chat with message persistence. Someone needs to host it free-to-use - that’s what made Discord successful.

yes but ai slop article

I’m so fucking tired of AI slop

yesterday I even got google AI search summaries quoting Meta AI summaries of people’s public facebook comments

like guys I just want to know the fucking difference between these two driveway sealer products, I don’t need a 1000 word AI generated food blog post on the incorrect reasons why sealing is important

Literally like they said they would.

Deleted. Too bad.

I hope it helps boost up Matrix as people look to jump ship, I’m pretty happy with Fluffychat.

Does fluffy chat have voice channels?

Honestly not something I’ve used so I’ve truely no clue, the good thing about Matrix though is all the choices of client and I’m sure some will.

Fluffy is has voice experimentally right now. But element and sable have the most feature rich voice chat

I have high hopes for matrix, but the last time I tried it, alot of the clients were close but not all the way there. Have you a recommendation for me to check out? Last one i tried was element

Check out Sable. Me and my friend were in the exact same boat, but then we found Sable.

Cinny is ok.

Google Wallet users can share a passport ID pass; Google sends Discord a birthdate, and Discord derives age from it without retaining that date.

… if google wallet is determining it anyway, why can’t google wallet just reply yes or no to the “is over 17” query… it seems like discord wouldn’t need to know exact age at all in that flow.

it would have to ask daily, because you can be 15 today and 16 tomorrow (idk what the age cutoff is), but it also says the date isn’t retained so you might be onto something

Even then, the prompt could be as easy as a “recheck” button that the user sees on age restricted media. Kind of like how their age verification bucket was going to be. Database side all they need to know is a boolean of true or false of if they are a minor or not. or /maybe/ a trinary (0,1,2) system if that wanted a distinguishment of < 13 13-17 and 18+ It doesn’t have to check daily, it only has to check when the user requests access to age restricted stuff.

In sane countries the government has a neutral service, backed by laws securing anonymity of verification, for this kind of shit. Only in commercial, dystopian, kleptocracies does it seem reasonable to have a company doing this.

While that is nice. Here in the kelptocracy not having a federal ID system is intentional and it has really slowed down the Nazis.

For people that want advice for finding an alternative service, go to the github repo and figure out the state of development. Find the answers to these questions: how many active developers are there? when was the last commit? does this look like LLM code? What do the issues and PRs look like? Remember that we don't want to have to do this again in 10 years, so open source and decentralized are major points.

Fluxer?

Fluxer has no E2EE yet, and no Federation. But it’s very easy to set up your own server.

It’s also very easy to set up your own Matrix server with Tuwunel or Continuwuity. I don’t know about the state of hosting your own XMPP server, but I assume it’s just as easy.

My friend has set up his Matrix server with Continuwuity (what a name…) and it required quite a bit of technical knowledge. With Fluxer you basically don’t need any technical knowledge.

For comparison, it took my friend about a day or two to set up his Matrix server with Sable as his client, and make sure everything was running smoothly. We managed to set up a Fluxer test server within 30 minutes.

Vibe coded slop by one person. It is not really an open source project if nobody can work on it.

debian community is migrating to Fluxer, but a lot of people in that community are still asking for IRC, which has “discord-like” front-ends nowadays, so idk why not. It would allow anyone to use any client they want.

Time to delete account 👋

Yeah, I am only in adult-themed channels. I guess, I’m safe. And if not, those channels will have to move off Discord anyway…

If the UK implementation is anything to go by, anything tagged NSFW demands your ID or face scan to view. Reddit is the same.

Also it is a shit system. NSFW doesn’t necessarily mean adult only. That can fail in both directions too.

I am on Reddit and see porn just fine. I am not in the UK though.
I guess, they will do as much as they are forced to do by local law and nothing more. ID verification providers are companies and companies usually demand money for their service.

Already have sharkord hosted via a VPS via linode, so no worries about uptime. Fuck discord, open source for the win.

Help, I am still looking for assistance setting up the proxy that lets me downvote someone else’s decisions. Getting desperate here.

Wish I could delete it again

Oh right discord, I forgot they still exist XD

I don’t really understand after reading the article what changed? All they did was quote discords blog post from February and this random twitter account … that also had no sources.

Not to mention the article is AI slop.

Is this like some sort of reminder or something? huh?