Essem 
there is still no viable alternative to discord and you are kidding yourself if you say there is
regarding matrix: i should not have to fight with my chat application to be able to send a single message and have people receive it
you'll know when an alternative comes along that i'd consider viable when i release an official esmbot port for it
one of my biggest worries is adversarial lock-in; this is a big issue with discord right now, and is part of why i don't see most clones (e.g. stoat, root, fluxer) as viable alternatives
i want to be able to trust that this won't happen, and just saying "we would never do this! ☺️" isn't enough
(this does not have to be through any one specific mechanism; any approach that improves resilience despite ownership or puts more power into the hands of users is fine in my book as long as it works well)
ChloeCrimson@esm 100% underline this sentiment
I started looking for alternatives with some friends earlier (they’re 50% of my reason to be on there) and we mostly came up empty
Yes there are some things like Mumble and TeamSpeak and Stoat but at the end of the day they’re either far away from the discord experience or only cover one aspect (say, mumble for vc)
Right now we set matrix (yes I know, bear with me) as our backdoor in case shit hits the fan.
We ended up with it because we mostly use text channels organized by topic and only occasionally sit in vc
We hope to kinda sorta replicate this with a matrix space that’s invite only and then have different channels for topics.
Far from perfect but the best we came up with considering our usage and requirements
Would love to hear everyone‘s ideas on this because I think so too, that experience-wise discord has a very polished, all-round user experience that’s very hard to match
I started looking for alternatives with some friends earlier (they’re 50% of my reason to be on there) and we mostly came up empty
Yes there are some things like Mumble and TeamSpeak and Stoat but at the end of the day they’re either far away from the discord experience or only cover one aspect (say, mumble for vc)
Right now we set matrix (yes I know, bear with me) as our backdoor in case shit hits the fan.
We ended up with it because we mostly use text channels organized by topic and only occasionally sit in vc
We hope to kinda sorta replicate this with a matrix space that’s invite only and then have different channels for topics.
Far from perfect but the best we came up with considering our usage and requirements
Would love to hear everyone‘s ideas on this because I think so too, that experience-wise discord has a very polished, all-round user experience that’s very hard to match
Diego Assustado@esm what does adversarial lock-in mean?
@diegovsky effectively having everything (e.g. identity, chats) being stuck under the control of a single, large entity, without any way to change that which doesn't involve losing everything in the process
Rexo the Trans Bus 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🚌@esm maybe I'm just burnt by Matrix but is federated chat even viable or (frankly) worthwhile? I think "people get my messages in a decent timeframe and can read them" is a higher priority for most.
I have, however, been somewhat intrigued by suggestions of like, half federation (accounts being a separate thing)??? maybe??? or heck if someone can actually get federation to work then sure if nothing else so the people desperate for it stop complaining but I'm just skeptical of it actually working
I have, however, been somewhat intrigued by suggestions of like, half federation (accounts being a separate thing)??? maybe??? or heck if someone can actually get federation to work then sure if nothing else so the people desperate for it stop complaining but I'm just skeptical of it actually working
kopper 
@rexo @esm yeah i personally believe having "guilds" be centralized (but accounts federated) is the best tradeoff in the current day. matrix is trying to go way too far and failing. xmpp has the right architecture and could likely be made to work, but today at least the feature set among most clients are lacking.
sammypanda@esm fluxer intends to do federation and self hosting, so worth seeing what that looks like
i do think governance though matters, like if you got all ur funding from the worst people who want returns or you go IPO and do that but on a large scale, then it'll reflect. So i think it depends where the money is coming from and the ethos, Blender is a good example.
But, i agree, designing to foundationally resist the issue is def best.
@sammypanda i still feel quite iffy about fluxer, but parts of it seem intriguing; i just made an account since a friend circle i'm part of also decided to take a look
will i feel confident enough in it to port my software to it? we'll see
@esm from discord?