Every alternative I have tried has a few “big” communities that were active for about four days before completely collapsing on themselves. It’s not that there isn’t a viable alternative, it’s that there is literally no alternative it seems like.
I’ve been tempted for the last year to begin work on designing an experience like IRC, but which includes voice chat and screen sharing capabilities. That’s my dream is a melding of a nostalgic chat protocol, with modern services.
From my understanding IRC’s biggest flaw is that it requires the recipient to be online in order to receive messages, and any software that includes voice, video, screen sharing, and proper servers would by necessity have very little resemblance to it.
I suppose I mean the resemblance to IRC would be mostly in the user experience. However, I personally don’t want to add persisted server-side messaging either. The novelty for me is that it’s a “here, now” social experience.
The problem with non-persistent messaging is that for most things people use Discord for it is a non-starter. Most people who are doing more than just socializing really don’t want to spend half their time repeating things to people who were at work, asleep, or in a different time zone when the discussion came it. Any serious Discord competitor would need to focus on practically and low barriers to entery, which tend to be directly opposed to novelty.
@sonori the problem is that Discord tried to mix social media with Instant Messaging. This is not something that’s working well. On one of them, you just talk to people, ask them about stuff and whatnot (this is why it is also called *direct* messaging). On other, you want to have stuff that is rather more easily accessible and has various other social functions - and it is also designed around it.
You also have a place where you can centralize all discussion (i.e. the feed) so you can at least get an idea of what is going on.
Discord (as a messaging app, primarily) is totally unfit for these tasks.
I don’t think my solution would satisfy users who are completely married to the Discord experience. The persisted social media experience isn’t what I’m interested in, personally. I want an old school chat experience, that still works for modern day LAN parties and movie nights.
The company sucks and it being closed source with shitty security and privacy policy sucks but the software is still the best messaging, gaming, video/streaming experience if we’re being honest. Nothing has all the features and convenience when it comes to watching shows and gaming with friends. Theres also never been such an easy way for anyone to run their own irc/etc server with as many features and convenience/price as discord.
They are fulfilling a lot of needs and people won’t leave until something 10x better comes out and nothing is even at 1:1 quality in terms of video, voice, streaming, gaming. Some have messaging and history yes but not even bots and different channels/forums setup. Maybe MAYBE telegram if you’re a super user but and thats only for bots and chats no gaming, watching shows, etc
Discord sucks so much. I wish it wasn’t so popular.
Every alternative I have tried has a few “big” communities that were active for about four days before completely collapsing on themselves. It’s not that there isn’t a viable alternative, it’s that there is literally no alternative it seems like.
I’ve been tempted for the last year to begin work on designing an experience like IRC, but which includes voice chat and screen sharing capabilities. That’s my dream is a melding of a nostalgic chat protocol, with modern services.
So Matrix protocol?
From my understanding IRC’s biggest flaw is that it requires the recipient to be online in order to receive messages, and any software that includes voice, video, screen sharing, and proper servers would by necessity have very little resemblance to it.
I suppose I mean the resemblance to IRC would be mostly in the user experience. However, I personally don’t want to add persisted server-side messaging either. The novelty for me is that it’s a “here, now” social experience.
The problem with non-persistent messaging is that for most things people use Discord for it is a non-starter. Most people who are doing more than just socializing really don’t want to spend half their time repeating things to people who were at work, asleep, or in a different time zone when the discussion came it. Any serious Discord competitor would need to focus on practically and low barriers to entery, which tend to be directly opposed to novelty.
@sonori the problem is that Discord tried to mix social media with Instant Messaging. This is not something that’s working well. On one of them, you just talk to people, ask them about stuff and whatnot (this is why it is also called *direct* messaging). On other, you want to have stuff that is rather more easily accessible and has various other social functions - and it is also designed around it.
You also have a place where you can centralize all discussion (i.e. the feed) so you can at least get an idea of what is going on.
Discord (as a messaging app, primarily) is totally unfit for these tasks.
@wesker
Or “How Signal is closer in functionality to WhatsApp by the day, because it turns out people like the functionality of WhatsApp.”
I don’t think my solution would satisfy users who are completely married to the Discord experience. The persisted social media experience isn’t what I’m interested in, personally. I want an old school chat experience, that still works for modern day LAN parties and movie nights.
The company sucks and it being closed source with shitty security and privacy policy sucks but the software is still the best messaging, gaming, video/streaming experience if we’re being honest. Nothing has all the features and convenience when it comes to watching shows and gaming with friends. Theres also never been such an easy way for anyone to run their own irc/etc server with as many features and convenience/price as discord.
They are fulfilling a lot of needs and people won’t leave until something 10x better comes out and nothing is even at 1:1 quality in terms of video, voice, streaming, gaming. Some have messaging and history yes but not even bots and different channels/forums setup. Maybe MAYBE telegram if you’re a super user but and thats only for bots and chats no gaming, watching shows, etc
What’s wrong with the privacy policy? Can’t they literally not see your messages unless you get reported?
the messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted, so there’s nothing stopping them from viewing them at their leisure.
They’ve talked about the system, they can’t read your messages unless someone reports them.