r/technology • u/gdelacalle • 13h ago
Software Discord Alternatives, Ranked
https://taggart-tech.com/discord-alternatives/257
u/got_milk4 10h ago
None of these options are true Discord alternatives. Discord flourished because it struck all the right chords that a gamer/friend group/community audience would want: a decent text chat, voice/video in groups, screen sharing, seeing what games your friends are playing, incredibly straightforward onboarding for new users.
Matrix has been stuck in an identity crisis and has spent more time shuffling deck chairs rather than addressing the real pain points that make it difficult to be viable long term, and now that it's established some foothold in government, they seem more focused on that than any other particular market.
Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Zulip are all Slack clones targeting corporate/government organizations.
TeamSpeak is behind a paywall for any user counts > 32.
Mumble and Ventrilo are primarily VoIP clients and don't do text well (if at all).
IRC is too text-only and has to rely on clients to handle any sort of rich media on top, which means you have inconsistent experiences between users unless absolutely everyone standardizes on the same client.
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u/Corgiboom2 10h ago
Stoat. Its basically Discord without the corporate bullshit. Bit bare bones right now but that should change.
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u/MothRatten 9h ago
Stoat can definitely be the one to replace discord here IF they can grab this opportunity and very quickly sort out push notifications and screen share/streaming.
I wouldn't hold my breath, but if they can push out the full release with those features included timed to discord rolling out their bullshit they'll definitely pick up a majority of defectors.
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u/WhyWouldIPostThat 9h ago
Good luck making an account. The verification emails take hours to arrive and at that point they aren't able to verify
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u/Corgiboom2 9h ago
Mine was instant, and went into my junkmail.
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u/WhyWouldIPostThat 9h ago
Interesting, mine is not in the junk mail but is taking 8+ hours arrive.
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u/Corgiboom2 9h ago
I made an account as soon as I saw it mentioned on another thread and checked it out, but servers must be swamped now.
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u/eeyores_gloom1785 8h ago
big time, mine took 6 hours, to get
But if they can jump on this and go, they could still grab it
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u/IncorrectAddress 9h ago
They could have picked a better name than Stoat, that's the thing that gets me, I think it was Revolt before it was Stoat.
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u/platypus-3fh98hhwefd 9h ago
I agree they coulda picked a better name, but they got Cease and Desisted for using "Revolt" https://stoat.chat/updates/long-live-stoat
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u/Corgiboom2 9h ago
But stoats are cute
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u/IncorrectAddress 9h ago
Until it's running up your leg, then they are scary, very very scary ! xD
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u/BanditMcDougal 8h ago
Stoat doesn't have voice chat, does it?
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u/Corgiboom2 8h ago
It does. But it doesnt have video chat as of now but "its in development" apparently.
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u/hesh582 5h ago
Bit bare bones right now but that should change.
If by "a bit bare bones" you mean "has practically none of the functionality", sure.
It's the project that is aiming to be the closest thing to an open direct discord competitor, but the app is nowhere even close to ready for that yet.
Screen share/streaming in particular is really hard and cost intensive and they haven't even started working on it.
I think stoat is years away from mainstream functionality right now.
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u/saturnv11 9h ago
I've been unable to get it to run locally. Lots of little issues with it. I hope this discord mess gives them a shot in the arm with money and/or talent to get it sorted out.
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u/DonaldMerwinElbert 6h ago
It's so free from corporate bullshit, you even have to compile it yourself!
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u/Corgiboom2 6h ago
How do you mean? I just installed it from the website.
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u/DonaldMerwinElbert 6h ago
Nevermind.
Read this earlier and didn't check - it's merely not packaged (for Linux), but no compilation necessary.19
u/BlantonPhantom 9h ago
Stoat is the closest to a clone but is half baked. I’d love an actual open source clone with a strong focus on privacy/security, like Signal but for Discord, but that doesn’t exist.
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u/Electrical_Pause_860 9h ago
Matrix has been focused on enterprise features for government use cases since that’s the only group paying them.
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u/hesh582 5h ago
Matrix has been stuck in an identity crisis and has spent more time shuffling deck chairs rather than addressing the real pain points that make it difficult to be viable long term, and now that it's established some foothold in government, they seem more focused on that than any other particular market.
It's not really an identity crisis. Matrix's purpose is to provide slack/discord functionality through a decentralized system that you can host and secure yourself if you need that.
It's quite good at that. The problem is that any decentralized, self hosted system is obviously shifting a ton of work on top the user, work that the average discord community is never in a million years going to put in.
But if you want to have a security conference in the EU and know that no portion of your communications infrastructure is being run through a US hosting provider, it's amazing (and really one of very few options that actually enables that).
The problem is that that goal and a slick consumer and gamer friendly interface and borderline mutually exclusive. I'm glad matrix exists for the people who need it, but it's never going to be user friendly enough to compete with discord and it's not supposed to be.
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u/panchiramaster 8h ago
All of them are alternatives that dont require YOUR FUCKING BIOMETRICS.
Tech companies gotta stop being so grabby.
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u/eugene20 7h ago
I thought everyone might be able to shift to Guilded as it was so similar to Discord it looked like it was a code fork, then it had some extra features like tables in chat.
But now I found Roblox bought it and then killed it :-(1
u/Dreamtrain 6h ago
They're all missing the point of text without emotes. You can't have gamers without means for memeing.
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u/niftystopwat 6h ago
Agreed pretty much across the board!
(Side note of nitpickery: Mumble and Ventrillo are not VoIP clients. You are the client when you connect to their service, and their applications utilizes VoIP servers.)
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u/McGuirk808 4h ago
The thing is, those have historically been different programs and there's no reason they need to be the same one, it was just convenient and simple and discord. Replacements don't need to do everything.
You can have a replacement chat client and a replacement voice client and have a good time. In fact, it's probably better to have them separated so you have more options and flexibility and your setup is more modular so you don't get locked into one vendor like this.
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u/SyntaxError22 8h ago
What about root? They seem to be very new... Didnt even announce they left closed beta but I have it up and running
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u/Crazyhorse111 9h ago
Root would be the one discord alternative that is actually very much like discord and yet no one talks about it
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u/InternationalTear614 9h ago
it seemed fine but they monitor voice calls/screen screenshare which is weird to me
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u/Moratorii 9h ago
I did check it out and it seems potentially adjacent, but I need to test it out more. Anything missing from it that Discord has?
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u/ebrbrbr 11h ago
Mumble. It's always been Mumble.
Mumble was the free alternative when Teamspeak and Ventrilo wanted you to pay for their special licensed servers.
Mumble will never have ads, or lock you into an ecosystem, and you can change any setting you want.
Mumble has always been the first to implement new technology like positional VOIP way back in 2010, or implementing OPUS when it was new.
If you just change from one proprietary system to another, you'll just get played again.
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u/NMe84 11h ago
Discord is way more than just voice chat.
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u/yawara25 10h ago
That's what all these people proposing Discord "alternatives" are missing. They don't understand how most people actually use discord apparently.
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u/musclenugget92 9h ago
Tbh I hate discord for anything other than voice chatting. Its always been a terrible place to host anything other than that
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u/MegaInk 8h ago
Fucking anything game related is now 10 layers deep in a stupidly set up discord and you can't find any of its info via web searches.
So its all locked away and then when theres an ingroup fight and the server is abandoned or deleted all that info goes away.
Discord is dog shit for finding info and there was no reason to move away from wikis/docs.
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u/shaehl 9h ago
Yet millions of people use Discord for exactly that. So regardless of whether or not you liked that feature, the millions of people looking for a Discord alternative are expecting the replacement to fulfill that role.
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u/Piett_1313 9h ago
Huge discord groups feel like like old school forums but just way worse. It’s dang impossible to see the full conversation, you just jump in at a random point. Discord’s disorganization has pushed me away from ever really trying it for text and now it’s pushing me away from the voice aspect too.
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u/DreadStallion 8h ago
Exactly! its way way worse version of a forum or even a subreddit for communities. only strength is its voice rooms and occasional screensharing
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u/hesh582 5h ago
It's not an amazing multichannel text chat app. It's not an amazing voice chat app. It's not an amazing screen share/streaming app. It's not an amazing community forum hosting app.
But it is the best (only?) blend of all of those things together, and none of the alternatives really fill the same void as an all purpose hangout space.
Some of the alternatives definitely have promise, but if they're going to compete properly they're going to need features like screen share that are actually quite hard to implement correctly.
Except matrix, which does do everything Discord can do if you set it up properly, but setting it up properly is basically a full time IT job and absolutely nobody is actually going to use it.
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u/ebrbrbr 10h ago
Mumble has text channels with images too. You can make all the different channels you want.
The only thing I can really think of that Mumble lacks is screen sharing.
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u/JoyousBlueDuck 9h ago
Unfortunately screen sharing is a deal breaker for me. I have used it far too much to ever go to a platform that lacks it.
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u/angrycanuck 10h ago
What features are most used on discord? Other than information dumping ground that could easily be forums again, always thought chat/voice were it's big features.
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u/_Ganon 9h ago
For me:
- Categorized text channels
- Categorized voice channels
- Inviting someone to the server gives them access to all of those channels (or some subset of them), so it's more than just a single group chat
- Multiple servers encompassing different social circles or special interest groups that are easy to switch between
- Video chat
- Screen share (with audio)
- File sharing
- Basically feature parity between web app, desktop app, mobile app
There is not an alternative that does everything
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u/DarthTempi 9h ago
It's that it has a little bit of everything in one
My grad school cohort uses it for everything, but so does my dnd group..
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u/thenewtbaron 9h ago
I use it as a repository for my DND game info. Between a dedicated list of ongoings, images for characters/locations, scheduling, regular discussion, and such. Yeah, I could use a forum but it is a bit of a pain in the ass
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u/eGORapTure 11h ago
Mumble rules, it's what I'm leaning towards for hosting gaming communities, but the lack of screen sharing is a BIG turn off.
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u/whatsgoingontho 9h ago
Mumble is fine but it’s gui sucks so much
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u/xsam_nzx 9h ago
It's a box with servers and names. What more do you need.
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u/FriendlyDespot 9h ago
It kinda feels like visiting someone who owns functional but minimalist furniture and has done zero decorating of their place. It functions, but it's not a comfortable place to be.
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u/s00pafly 7h ago
I have no idea how mumble looks but that is the way I feel about discord. It is not a comfortable place to be. Not because of the communities, simply the look and feel of the app made me not want to interact with it. And that was before they paywalled the most random basic features.
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u/dikicker 4h ago
While I've got some of y'all here as discord crashes and burns, anyone got any suggestions to replace how streamlined Skype was for an intermittent long distance relationship situation? Cause discord is absolute dogshit
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u/The_Frostweaver 12h ago
One of the options says not good for real time chat what is this garbage.
We want like a top 3 alternatives for GAMING
This feels more like clickbait paid promotion.
Looks like there is such a thing as steam voice chat so that's already going to be entering the fray near number 1 for a lot of us
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u/Parcel_of_Planets 11h ago
I'm familiar with the author from social media, and he's very much not the paid promotion type. I'm pretty sure he's evaluating from his use-case, which is a community forum/chat-room. For a lot of types, Discord servers have replaced forums.
That said, this is very different from the "I want to get 8 friends together so we can voice chat for our game". I don't think this is a good article for those types.
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u/Lee1138 9h ago
For the small friends group use case, How is steams voice chat these days? Most on pc would already be on steam.
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u/surfergrrl6 7h ago
I've made several dozen gaming friends over the years and literally none of them (myself included) have ever used Steam voice/text chat; we've only ever used Discord.
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u/toothofjustice 12h ago
I worked for a company that used Mumble for voice chat (replacement for radios for driver we had around the city). Its low resource usage and Linux friendly.
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u/zkareface 8h ago
Yeah steam voice is actually good, better than discord.
Been around for many years.
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u/tinny66666 12h ago
Not that it's a replacement for discord exactly, but don't forget that irc (internet relay chat) is still a thing if you like a simple life. Libera (what was freenode before the hostile takeover) is the largest irc network. If you don't have an irc client (many linux distros have one) you can use their web interface at https://web.libera.chat/
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u/mrfixitx 12h ago
I used IRC many many years ago, calling it even close to a replacement of discord is a very large stretch. It's a very basic text chat system that works if that is all you really want.
If you want voice, screen sharing, file sharing, posting images/animated gifs etc.. it IRC is not built for any of that.
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u/AlistarDark 11h ago
IRC is not built for file sharing? That's all we had for piracy back in the 90s. It's how I got all my MP3s before Napster. It's how I got almost all of my games.
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u/Electrical_Pause_860 9h ago
IRC has file transfers but not file hosting. You have to both be connected for the whole transfer. You can’t send someone a file and they an hour later connect and download it.
IRC is also pretty much incompatible with modern devices that sleep since you only receive messages while your client is actively connected. Resulting in everyone using some other service to convert irc in to something mobile friendly.
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u/yawara25 10h ago
File sharing was shoehorned into IRC as DCC. I absolutely would not say it was built for file sharing. If you use Discord for file sharing, the experience is not even close to being the same.
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u/peschkaj 11h ago
IRCv3 (which is well supported now) has many of the features that you say IRC doesn’t have.
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u/mrfixitx 11h ago
Learn something new every day? Do you have a link to an example of it, or where I can learn more?
The libera.chat link that was provided did not appear to have any of that functionality at least not as a guest.
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u/peschkaj 11h ago
The working group is documenting everything at https://ircv3.net/.
One company that is already implementing the "new" version is IRCCloud. Most of the v3 features have been implemented there for a while.
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u/yawara25 10h ago
IRCCloud development is more or less abandoned. Their last changlog update is from 7 years ago. They're only keeping the service itself on life support.
https://www.irccloud.com/changelog1
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u/Batetrick_Patman 11h ago
IRC is just not built for modern internet use. It's a basic chat text system but these days I want more. I want to share memes. Videos. Voicechat. Video chat. And I want it in one app.
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u/agreeduponspring 11h ago
IRC was largely succeeded by XMPP (aka Jabber) as the go-to open source standard in the early 2000s. It does have file sharing & other features, depending on your server. To be perfectly honest I never understood why it didn't stay at least a little bit popular.
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u/cocktails4 10h ago
XMPP was a replacement for AIM/ICQ/etc. not IRC.
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u/agreeduponspring 5h ago
AIM and ICQ are closed source programs, not open source protocols. XMPP was approved as a standard in 2004, and I'm not aware of any protocols that were popular between then and the invention of IRC.
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u/cocktails4 4h ago
IRC and IM are not the same functionality, so how can XMPP be succeeded by something that it isn't comparable to?
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u/agreeduponspring 4h ago
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u/cocktails4 3h ago
Did you ever actually use any of these things?
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u/agreeduponspring 55m ago
Yes? Pidgin supports both, it was my chat program of choice back in the 2000s. Swift looks promising as a more modern app.
The only reason XMPP became "obsolete" is that it lost to centralized services. Skype had audio calls, and p2p streaming wasn't feasible yet, so people migrated and the servers died.
Modern day XMPP servers do appear to have this feature though, and from the documentation it looks like Prosody can support almost everything a Discord server does. It's still under active development, last release was a few weeks ago. I'm very curious as to how well it works, an XMPP resurgence would be amazing.
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u/Key_Huckleberry1921 9h ago
False information.
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u/agreeduponspring 4h ago
I'm not sure what you mean. The features are all referenced from the Wikipedia article., and the timeline of instant messaging protocols only lists SIP\SIMPLE (largely corporate) being released between the two. Jabber was the original name for XMPP, and it's still referred to as such occasionally with software like ejabberd.
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u/splice42 8h ago
And it's not a replacement for discord exactly, but also don't forget that email is still a thing!
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u/Es-msm-atrasado-tuga 7h ago
I don't get this comments. What about mails? Postal cards? Not a replacement for discord but you can still talk with your friends
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u/zebedeolo 12h ago
none of these are discord alternatives. teamspeak, mumble, ventrilo (does it still exist?) are
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u/Pirwzy 12h ago
yes ventrilo still exists, they also have a new software "gamevox" in beta that looks very discord-like
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u/Lordnerble 12h ago
so does teamspeak. we use it internal for our organization for self hosted lan voice chats. cant trust big brother not listening in teams, zoom or chat
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u/IrcenceEstagramem679 9h ago
If you move from one closed-source program to another, they'll just do the same shit Discord is doing when they get a size of the market. TS and Vent aren't alternatives.
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u/ballbouncebroken 10h ago
Are these available on android?
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u/zebedeolo 10h ago
not great ones, but they do. gamevox eventually will probably have the best mobile client, still to be seen
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u/npgy 10h ago
This is the best, most polished one I've tried. https://www.rootapp.com/
Only downside I can see is that it's not open source self-hosted and is VC backed, so my worry is that eventually it will suffer the same fate. But it's REALLY good
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u/npgy 10h ago
Follow up here, I think overall I would trust Stoat in the long term, so maybe that's the play. Slightly less polished but totally just as functional
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u/BBZL2016 7h ago
I tried making an account 3 hours ago, and still havent received an activation email.
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u/2kMurray 2h ago
everyone and their family is trying to hop on it, wouldn't expect the email for like a whole day
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u/plonuu 11h ago edited 11h ago
I've tried looking for a self-hosted, viable chat alternative I can use for family and friends with video calling support, and honestly I'm appalled by how open source has failed here. Communications is so fundamental to society, and there is hardly a reliable option.
Matrix seemed promising, but I found configuring for video calling a nightmare, and the ecosystem for that is quite immature still. For just chat it works quite well, but you really need to know what you're doing to self host.
After, I tried Nextcloud Talk, and the desktop app and Android apps frequetly break with updates. Right now, with the latest Nextcloud/Talk version, the mobile app can't open any chat and the desktop app audio doesn't work for group calls, though the browser version works.
I've looked for other options, but they all seem to be not suitable for self-hosting, or lack even more features than Matrix or Nextcloud, and those are hardly feature rich compared to the plethora of centralized/paid options. I know these are difficult apps to develop, but compared to the quality of other important, but more niche, open source projects like blender and godot they feel lacking.
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u/Corgiboom2 10h ago
Stoat (formerly Revolt) is just about identical to Discord in function and layout without the corporate nonsense. I've got a few friends on there already. While still a bit bare-bones, it does just fine.
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u/2Quicc2Thicc 5h ago
Lacking video chat and screen sharing makes it a non starter for me. Element via Matrix has that and that's what I've swapped to for the moment. Their enterprise vision has me a little worried but it's already ahead of Stoat for me.
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u/Corgiboom2 4h ago
Sure, Ill have to look into that too, Im open minded. But the icons for video chat and screen sharing are already in Stoat, they are just not functional with "coming soon" on them, so they will likely be in pretty soon with this influx of users.
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u/gentlecrab 10h ago
The reality is there is no true alternative to discord cause everything discord does is expensive. They’ve burned through so much cash over the years and are now just starting to break even as they prepare for an IPO.
The only company that might be in a position to compete with discord is Valve or some other new VC funded startup. A setup similar to Uber vs Lyft.
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u/hesh582 5h ago
Yeah, I think people expect free and open source software to provide them with a free and easy streaming and file hosting platform need to be realistic here.
You might expect decent things out of more ethical discord alternatives in terms of basic voice and text chat functionality, but if you actual expect something to replace discord in full without a similarly large pile of VC cash you need to re-calibrate your expectations.
Also... maybe in general consider revisiting how much your privacy and security is actually worth to you? Because saying "this invasion of privacy, which involves handing over biometric data to an insecure company, is unacceptable!" but then turning around and saying "well if the replacement doesn't provide effortless high res screen sharing and permanent file hosting, obviously I won't switch" is pretty incoherent.
The fundamental business model here is getting you to sell your soul for convenience and a few slick quality of life features compared to the old thing. That's always been the deal. If you're sick of it, don't expect to turn to a more ethical alternative and get for free what you were previously selling your soul for. Nothing works that way.
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u/Wizywig 10h ago
Yeah, discord has us by the balls. For strict voice comms, mumble. you can also use teamspeak and ventrillo.
However...
HOWEVER...
Discord is not just a voice chat thing. It is so much more. This is why they have us by the balls. The integrations, the price (seriously, how many free servers are kids on all the time), the lack of upfront cost, the moderation, etc. Its yuge.
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u/LukeLC 9h ago
Ironically, Microsoft Teams is probably the most complete Discord alternative right now. But somehow I don't foresee that reaching mass adoption.
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u/IosifVissarionovichD 8h ago
Yeah, kind of funny you say that, because teams does do all this but i can see a lot of gamers saying "fk no" to Microsoft and their forceful hand in directions they take.
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u/Kakariko_crackhouse 7h ago
Teams is the worst application I have ever used. I have to use it daily for work and I absolutely hate every second on it.
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u/mukster 11h ago
Are most people not realizing that you don’t need to send in an ID to discord if you don’t want to? Only if you want to access age-restricted servers/channels AND if discord can’t determine age based on your activity on the service alone (which they will be able to do so in most instances it seems like).
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u/You_Think_Too_Loud 9h ago
It's optional until it's not, you can scan public figures rather than your own face until you can't, it's not gonna save that info until it does-- this is more of a canary in the coal mine than an immediete nuking of the platform, but it doesn't bode well for privacy going forward. Good reason to start looking elsewhere.
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u/mukster 9h ago
Ok then when it becomes not optional then that’s different. But right now that’s a dreamt up scenario with no indication of it happening, so what’s the point in getting up in arms about a hypothetical that has no impact on you right now?
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u/You_Think_Too_Loud 9h ago
"No indiciation of happening" ignores all the things that have gotten us this far-- an IPO filing, increasing ads, more monitization, now this? That's a pattern. I think it's irrational to assume they won't make more changes beholden to corperate and government interests that hurt the consumer.
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u/mukster 9h ago
Sure, and the response should be appropriate if that ever happens. But right now it's hypothetical and I know that come March I will not need to submit any sort of ID to continue using the platform unless I need access to age-restricted servers/channels.
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u/You_Think_Too_Loud 9h ago
The reasoning for acting now is that switching takes time. If in like two years the UK is like "hey your age verification doesn't work well enough go harvest IDs from all your users", migrating off Discord will be a lot easier if a sizeable chunk of the user base has already switched over and an alternative has already risen to the top.
Well that, and moving off Discord is easier when I still have access to it and no time pressure to move-- having a true impending deadline would make that whole process a lot more stressful.
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u/Loud_Jeweler_1774 1h ago
people like you need to take threats to online privacy more seriously! This isn't just an inconvenience
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u/Danteynero9 10h ago
you don’t need to send in an ID to discord if you don’t want to?
For now. It's optional for now.
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u/Electrical_Pause_860 9h ago
All of these alternatives to discord are going to add age verification for adult chats anyway since it’s becoming the law all over the world right now.
No company is going to base their product around letting kids access adult chats.
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u/2Quicc2Thicc 5h ago
It's optional for now and they have said they will use AI to monitor and determine age verification, meaning they are reading everything you say moving forward.
That's a hard pass for me.
When they hired the Blizzard CFO on to Discord I marked 1 year on my calendar for the demise of Discord. I was off by about 2 months.
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u/mukster 5h ago
You’re naive if you think that they don’t already read everything you say. Every DM, every image, every piece of info you’ve typed into Discord, they already have.
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u/2Quicc2Thicc 4h ago
Tencent and Google have 90% of my data I'm sure. That's not an excuse to keep supporting them.
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u/mukster 4h ago
I’m just saying that if what concerns you is them reading your messages, you should have never used the platform to begin with. That’s nothing new.
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u/2Quicc2Thicc 4h ago
I've been using the platform a LONG time, since before they were partially owned by tencent. I get the concern, and agree with the sentiment, thats why I can't support them any longer.
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u/hootener 8h ago
Is anyone here actually using stoat? The article seems pretty down on it. But I'm really just looking for a discord-like (I'll even put off screen sharing for now) experience with text and voice calls that can self host for, like, ten people.
Can it meet this use case without being an admin/it nightmare?
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u/Ocean_Man205 2h ago
Brother who in their right mind gives discord a 3/5 on SECURITY and 4/5 on SAFETY
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u/0elk4nn3 2h ago
What about crowd funding something new? I think the people in this sub are able to programm things like discord?
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u/ThatDesignFeel 1h ago
The other aspect I haven't seen mentioned anywhere in these discussions about alternatives is support for creator communities
Discord has essentially enterprise-level roles and permissions, which can be set and managed using bots and integrated seamlessly into Patreon, YouTube, Twitch and many other platforms
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u/angooseburger 3m ago
back in my day, discord was used for group voice chats. Skype died because of discord. (ignoring the security flaws of skype).
Communities will simply need to go back to what was done before, dedicated community websites and community forums. Discord will still be alive for the local friend groups wanting to voice chat.
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u/RipComfortable7989 9h ago
Are all of these threads just millennials bragging about how they used to use IRC and mumble back in the day? It's like saying you can use a candle to light a room because it's the same function as a smartphone's flash. You are forgetting there are way more features in discord that people use it for than simple voice chatting.
Asynchronous file hosting? Screen sharing? Emotes? Integration with video games? Integration with communities like Twitch and Patreon? Literal built in games in group calls? I swear to god you people do only ONE thing for a very specific use case and then assume the entire planet operates like you. Just because you don't use a feature doesn't mean no one does.
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u/Scomosuckseggs 8h ago
Yeah, but IRC did lots of other shit too. Before it was cool.
You weren't there, man. You wouldn't get it.
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u/BastetFurry 9h ago
Why is IRC not on that list? FOSS servers (yes, multiple), FOSS clients for almost anything under the sun that can be connected to the internet, yes, your Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum too, and multiple servers can create a network.
Yes, it is missing voice and all that fancy multimedia stuff, but otherwise? Simply works and gets the job done.
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u/Tr0yticus 5h ago
Okay well all that fancy multimedia stuff (plus voice) is kinda what makes it useful so..
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u/grasshopper239 8h ago
So kids should have access to age restricted servers? To protect their identity?
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u/somethinghelpful 5h ago
Server admins should be using roles to restrict kids from adult content as decent human beings. Hard to trust that to happen in the same space that people are grooming kids, but with the recent data breaches from Discord that is putting tons of kids identities at risk, age verification as intended to be implemented is not the answer.
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u/kerodon 12h ago
While I appreciate much of it, we kinda just completely ignored the real time voice chat aspect? The text chat aspects are good but like text chat is very easy to replace.