I wish we could use something other then discord, like societally
At some point maybe Fluxer will be ready.
I’m hoping xep-0503 gets implemented in a couple xmpp clients at some point soon. That’ll make xmpp have feature parity with discord, except for ease of use, which is a barrier I’m willing to help friends/family work through in order to never have to switch chat clients ever again, since xmpp has been around for nearly thirty years now.
My group’s been using it since March.
Can you tell me more about your experience with it?
Sure, any specific questions? We use it for text chat and group video calls.
I guess like
How easy it is for non technical people to join and use?
What pain points or annoyances have you noticed?
Has it been reliable/what problems have come up using it?
It’s no more difficult than Discord, as it is pretty unashamedly a Discord clone. Its UI and UX is very similar. I find it more user friendly for a complete newbie than a Matrix community.
We use video calling 2-3 times a week for TTRPGs and sometimes other group hands. It’s gotten a lot more stable and better over the 6ish months we’ve been using it. There are still some weird tech issues on occasion, normally fixed by dropping out of the call and coming back in. I’d say this happens enough that it is noteworthy but not enough that it has made me rethink using the service. I think we had to cancel a session once, very early on, due to the service just being completely down, but not since then. Their mobile support was extremely lacking at first but past month or so they have come a long way and now mobile works great, even though it’s still in beta.
Thanks! That’s just the kind of fair review I was looking for. The timeline helps too, that kind of active development is a good sign for the project
It sounds promising, I’ve got a project in mind that might be a good fit for it
My group and I floated around different services for a while, self-hosting what we could. The requirements for us were really just a server with text channels and persistent messages, voice chat, and screen sharing.
We tried:
- Stoat (Revolt at the time) but we moved on before voice and video were rolled out.
- Matrix but voice and video weren’t really feasible.
- Steam chat but messages are deleted after 2 weeks and screen share didn’t really work.
- Teamspeak 6 was amazing for voice and video but chat was really only useful while online as messages aren’t really stored anywhere to load what was sent while you were offline, so we kept Steam chat for general conversations.
We finally landed on GameVox recently which has good voice and video, easy discord server import for channels and permissions, good chat features, and an extremely responsive dev who fixes issues almost immediately. I find that it isn’t as pretty as other alternatives out there and unfortunately it isn’t open-source, but the additional features compared to the other options will probably make it our new home for quite a while.
My personal best solution is to use both matrix and teamspeak… but its hard to get others on board. If im ever rewuired to give discord proof of who i am, then thats the final straw and friends can come over or rip i guess
then normies wouldn’t be able to pretend to talk to C-suits in their “servers.” The yard sold are yard sold.
I wonder what they could be doing to determine “server types” that isn’t privacy invasive like reading messages
Edit: it seems discord has published a document that somewhat explains how this works. It’s not as detailed as I’d like, but I think it’s as detailed as one could expect without them spilling some trade secrets or implying how to bypass it.
https://discord.com/safety/how-discord-estimates-age-without-collecting-your-identity
- You can check your age group status at User Settings > Account Status. We’ve estimated your age group automatically from account signals like how long your account has existed or the kinds of servers you’re a part of. We don’t look at your messages, calls, or other content. We’re launching this over the course of this week, so it may take a few days to reach your account.
Yeah I noticed this, but the “kinds of servers you’re a part of” line is what caught my eye.
I wonder how they categorize servers and what they use to determine this.
Ah, apologies. I absolutely misunderstood your comment. I definitely need to wake up more before I comment but at least the info is now here for people to see at a glance.
Honey, you’re golden, I think it’s important to note that they claim they aren’t looking at people’s messages.
And immediately started showing ads for gambling!
The “we estimated your age from account signals” bit is the polite version. Australia made the big platforms do this in December, and the regulator’s first report found some of them letting under-16s retry the age check until they passed. So the kids get infinite continues and the adults get checked too.
France tried to ban social media for under-15s this summer and its Constitutional Council struck it down for exactly that reason: to check the kids you have to check everyone, and the law had no privacy guarantees for the adults. Discord just skipped the court part.
