Mastodawn

So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—

Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use it

I have muted replies to this post due to the usual reasons

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abadidea Feb 12

note that I didn’t even touch on audio/video calls and screen sharing, which are HEAVILY used features of discord, but we can start with “a solid chatroom experience” as the minimum viable replacement; if you can’t get that part right, discussing the rest with a straight face is clownshoes

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gabboman the wafrn dev Feb 12

I do consider federation important. Single point of failure and all that

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Fea Crow Feb 12

To be honest I do not think the normal user who is just sick of Discord and looks for something similar does really care, but it is good to have it in case you want it later I guess

Most of my friends do not even know what federation means, I have to explain to them what I learned from using Mastodon and WAFRN myself

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FreediverX

@crowfea
That normal user will care in a few years when the platform is bought out by a sociopathic billionaire and everyone has to start all over from scratch.