Mastodawn

Sharp Cheddar Goblin

In my quest for a #Discord alternative for my gaming group, I'm going to toss #Matrix into the bin of "nope". It ticks most of the boxes, but holy fucking hell the constant nagging to revalidate every fucking login is not going to fly. None of my friends are going to tolerate that shit just to talk about #TTRPG scheduling, campaign planning, and general life events. Intensely user-hostile.

Sharp Cheddar Goblin 4h ago

I'm also using curl for admin so far, and I just *love* how fast access tokens expire and having to log into my admin account constantly to get a token that works. /s

Super fun stuff. Love it. I'm sure I can dig around for a config to deal with this but first experiences matter and I'm already annoyed so what are the odds of that happening, rather than just moving on to something else? Pretty fucking high.

sb arms & legs 3h ago

@SharpCheddarGoblin
It doesn't help that their own shit is super buggy - like when you invite a new user to an encrypted room, they often can't see any messages prior to their arrival unless they jump through a shitload of annoying hoops, which they're just NOT gonna do.

Sharp Cheddar Goblin 3h ago

#Discord #Matrix #TTRPG
LOL ok

@SharpCheddarGoblin "validate login"?

Sharp Cheddar Goblin 4h ago

@viq Any time you log in from a different device (which includes browser tab, lol) you must provide your recovery key.

@SharpCheddarGoblin I think you can also confirm the device from another where you've done that previously.
TBH after seeing a couple, that's a pretty well designed and usable system for making sure you're encrypting your messages to the person you think you are, and not someone who managed to inject themselves into the conversion. And quite annoying if you completely don't care about the E2EE part.

🐦‍🔥nemo™🐦‍⬛ 🇺🇦🍉4h ago

@SharpCheddarGoblin try deltachat or arcanechat 💡End of this year in Q4 they will also get PFS perfect forward secrecy and Quantuum security with autocrypt v2 @delta @arcanechat

Edit: Sorry Typo correction, dylsexia 🙏

Roger BW 😷4h ago

@SharpCheddarGoblin You might look at Discourse. This is basically forum software (has live chat but that's not the emphasis), which you can host yourself or pay someone else to. I'm very happy with it. See https://discussion.tekeli.li/ for an example. (For voice chat in games I use Jitsi, similarly self hostable or you can use the public instance free of charge.)

tekeli.li forums, including unofficial SU&SD discussion

Tabletop role-playing and board games

tekeli.li forums, including unofficial SU&SD discussion

Sharp Cheddar Goblin 4h ago

@RogerBW I glanced at Discourse a bit ago, was a bit turned off on how AI-friendly the whole ecosystem was.

Roger BW 😷4h ago

@SharpCheddarGoblin Fair. Certainly there is no difficulty at all in running it without any AI features - this isn't a matter of "clear the tickybox each time you upgrade", it's just "don't attach your own AI account to your instance". There's no built-in AI, just ways to hook it in.

@SharpCheddarGoblin sounds like Delta Chat will be a good fit for you, zero-pain setup, no account creation, no phone numbers, no email address, no bullshit, no data required at all for registration, just set a name and go

besides that it has good multi-device support (and also multi-profile, as many as you want!)

it also supports using several relays node servers at the same time so you can avoid any downtime or problem with some specific server that might make them run back to #Discord

it even has collaborative in-chat mini-apps for several stuff like a text pad editor, to-do lists, polls, mini-games etc.

@SharpCheddarGoblin I keep mentioning #Zulip to people, as I like how it organises things, but people may bounce off of the interface/experience. It's neither federated nor encrypted (besides usual TLS), which may or may not be a factor in your considerations. I saw mentions that they plan to have native video calls this year, instead of integration with e.g. jitsi like they do now.

Benjamin Kwiecień 🇵🇸4h ago

@SharpCheddarGoblin What's so hard about validating your login for e2ee? You could just not do it, that's fine too... you can create group chats without e2ee 😀

@ben @SharpCheddarGoblin I suppose the good goblin refers to not Matrix the protocol but the Element app suite for it, which is, UX-wise, indeed pretty insistent about verification. Which even if manageable personally might throw friend group members off. Though e2ee inevitably will break usage conventions for people, it’s still valid critique.

Sharp Cheddar Goblin 2h ago

@sef @ben Unfortunately Element is the only really mature client, and it's also kinda garbage on the UX front. And mostly run/maintained by fascists.

Benjamin Kwiecień 🇵🇸1h ago

@SharpCheddarGoblin @sef you're right... I realize that other software I use like Conversations/XMPP does automatic e2ee but automatically accepts additional devices and doesn't ask me to verify them

@SharpCheddarGoblin I've been meaning to try Revolt, however their main domain seems to forward to Stoat. Guess they're different?