We are all going to have to start figuring out how to socialize face-to-face again.
Sorry guys, the internet broadly is dying for anything but corporate interests and people with rotten agendas trying to manipulate people. It brings you nothing but stress in your personal lives, why stick to it? Who is using it that you need to spend all day in discord to keep them company? Live for a better tomorrow with actual experiences, dust yourself off and start going out and experiencing the world while you still can.
You’re going to get sick of the fleeting, rare experience of getting lost in a video game, it doesn’t last forever, at some point you will grow idle and feel like something is missing, and you will have a choice at that moment of closing down your PC and doing something you’ve always imagined doing or staying there and drowning that nagging feeling by browsing the algorithmically cultivated feed for some new, equally fleeting dopamine hit.
I’ve made Stoat and Matrix accounts.
Matrix because it seems like the most logical choice - largest platform that’s federated/decentralised and has end-to-end encryption.
Stoat because realistically being more similar to Discord I know more users are going to go there. So I thought I’d hedge my bets. Just hope it also gets end-to-end encryption, the lack of that on Discord was always one of my gripes with the platform.
The one I’ve been seeing crop up a lot these past couple days is Fluxer, which is literally almost a 1:1 discord clone, even more than Stoat.
Though E2EE isn’t currently on the solo dev’s roadmap, which is a shame.Matrix seems like the best bet in terms of privacy and security, but I swear every single client is hot garbage for some reason or another. I can’t imagine non-tech-savvy users will ever be willing to stick to it.
Realistically I think Stoat or Fluxer is going to win out here. I’m setting up all 3 for now, and I plan to ditch discord completely at the end of this month.
Oh yeah I was looking at Fluxer too, though haven’t made an account yet.
In the “What’s coming next” section on the website it mentions opt-in E2EE. So maybe it is actually on the roadmap? Unless the listed features aren’t actually on the roadmap or I’m misunderstanding.
I hope it is anyway, I accepted no E2EE with Discord just because every single person I knew was using it, but I’m crossing my fingers to not have to make that compromise again if possible.
I’ll probably give Fluxer a try as well then and give all three a go and see which one sticks, hell maybe I’ll end up on more than one.
Ah maybe the article I was reading was a bit dated, good to know it might be on the horizon. Honestly I almost worry the dev’s gonna get slapped with a cease and desist because it’s almost literally a discord clone in every single way.
It did rub me the wrong way at first to see paywalled features already, but reading it more closely it seems to be mostly to offset server costs, and a self-hosted server seems to have all the paid upgrades available by default, so that seems fair enough.
After playing with all 3 a bit, I have a feeling Fluxer might be the one that sticks, mostly due to the ease of use and familiarity.
Out of curiosity, does Fluxer have any sort of directory/server list that you’re aware of? I’ve always been very reliant on Disboard to find servers with Discord, and both Stoat and Matrix seem to have similar sites but I couldn’t find one for Fluxer. Wonder if I’m just searching poorly or if one hasn’t been made yet.
Aside from wanting to use it to find servers I was curious to get a gauge on how many people are actually using it too.
For Matrix on android, I use Shildichat. Works great, very boiler plate UI and it keeps things simple. I will admit Element for everything else is fine… Enough.
literally almost a 1:1 discord clone
If you read the blog, it’s because the dev studied the Discord code very closely and did their best to mimic it.
Though E2EE isn’t currently on the solo dev’s roadmap
It is on the roadmap. It says it right on the project homepage.
Your link is to example.com. The actual link is fluxer.app
I have decided on Haven, since self-hosting is a requirement (I don’t trust anyone but me), it’s UI is similar, and it can do text, voice, and video. I found it a few months ago when the discord data breach broke, but waited because it doesn’t have a docker image. It does have a Dockerfile and compose file now because of my suggestion and work of a couple different contributors, but no image yet.
Well a week into this and I have been giving issue reports, feature suggestions, and feedback to the dev, and I think it’s the best combo of ‘in control of my data’ with ‘ease of setup’ and genuine, working, features. And the dev seems really excited to see users, and the back and forth on Github is something I don’t expect - just the excitement, the welcoming of ‘can we do this’ and ‘could this be changed to make that easier’.
It’s almost discord, as a web app, controlled by you, and made by just the one dev and a couple contributors. And the differences are easy to understand.
It sucks the entire world turning into a privacy nightmare. Will any country remain the lone hold out against pushing stuff like this on their people?
They’ll get couped and subterfuged by the imperialist powers. Here is the thing, there are no American billionaires, there are no Chinese billionaires, there are no Russian billionaires, there just are billionaires who see the whole world as their footstool and see all of us as pesky slaves and pests.
They will not hesitate to make money and gain power over every single human being they can. And no government or organization will stop them. Only we can, the people who are also all one. And we better get cracking…
Not when $ is involved, fuck everyone, gimme my dolla!
I’ve moved my friends to fluxer which has way more features and just works.
Obviously this is tougher for large communities, but as of now Fluxer is much further along and more stable than Stoat and easier to understand and use than Matrix (Commet) for non-techies. It also is the most like discord unlike Teamspeak, Mumble, etc.
It also is going to support self hosted soon with a major refactor, is EU based, and seems to have a sustainable donation based model for long term development. I think it’s going to support federation at some point as well, but don’t quote me on that.
I worry about it being a single dev. Feels like that’s going to be a lot of pressure and could cause trouble scaling the platform to accomodate for a growing userbase. That said, the more I read about Fluxer, the more I’m convinced it could be the most fitting contender to actually replace Discord, and not just be an alternative.
E2EE and federation are both in the roadmap, and if it gets those, you’d have the conveniences and bells and whistles of a Discord like app, with the security and freedom from interference of an app like Matrix. To me that sounds like the app a lot of us have been dreaming of.
Right now it’s still just a pipe dream, especially with just one dev, but I’m hoping if it picks up in popularity that maybe it has a chance of coming to fruition.
Keep us posted on how Fluxer handles, I read their website/github and it looked fairly undercooked and their documentation needs help. The app probably works fine and the main host is likely in for a shock when with the flood of new users and I worry about them, it looks promising.
How did no one see this coming?
