What is the best alternative to Discord? (technology)

submitted ago by Delacourt

Discord is a great service, but it is extremely cucked when it comes to its management and data security.

What is a more secure and independent alternative?

Some that I have heard of:

  • IRC. This is a great standard, since it has been around forever and it's easy to run your own server. However, there are issues with functionality and many newer applications have more features that many won't want to give up.

  • Tox. This is a great little P2P messaging app. Extremely secure. However, the P2P makes it difficult in that you can't send a message to anyone who isn't logged on. It also means that your IP is exposed to anyone you chat with unless you use a VPN or route it through TOR.

  • Riot. This is a modern application similar to Discord, except it claims increased ownership of data, better privacy, and is open source. It's possible to operate your own server on it, but there may be loopholes I don't know about. You can also use one of the official Riot servers, which allows for very modern functionality familiar to Discord-users, but it's unclear who owns Riot and whether they are truly committed to privacy and free speech.

dorferino ago

unsolicited, but 6cord is a command line interface for discord.

TekJax ago

My favorite alternative to Discord is going outside.

G0P2 ago

Dissenter? It works great for me

TheKalergiFan ago

TeamSpeak u faggot nigger

copper_spartan ago

I haven't tried it myself, but I hear Google Voice works, and likely several other VOIP phone services. You could also buy a temporary SIM.

harmlessgryphon ago

It didn't used to (without asking the maintainers) but GV does work now for signups. According to my phone number, I live in some little town in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico.

copper_spartan ago

I wouldn't stake my freedom on it. It's probably alright for shitposting with friends and family without Zuckerberg tracking your every move and suspending your account on a whim.

harmlessgryphon ago

Telegram is fine for general shitposting, but you are correct - anything that needs to be secure goes through other channels that I have control over.

soabirw ago

Signal is one of the best options for that criteria. Telegram's security is more about bureaucracy and rather clever at that. Breaking the decryption key into multiple parts and spreading it across servers in different legal jurisdictions. So a warrant only gived them a portion of the key, making it useless.

But it all depends on your needs. If you need super guaranteed encryption I'd say Signal. Telegram does have super secure chats that do device based encryption instead of server based though. So it is similar to Signal in that regard. But Signal is open source and audited.

For quite secure but maybe not ultimate secure group chats, telegram is quite nice. Good features, user friendly, and more secure than most (but not all) options.

For alternative to Twatter and Cuckord, encryption levels don't matter so much as it's largely public. In that case what matters is their ban hammer policy and if they will bow to political pressure. And it seems that they don't.

harmlessgryphon ago

The only problem I have with Signal, and this is right out of their FAQ for setting up desktop versions:

"Confirm Signal is installed and working on your Android phone or iPhone."

Nope. Sorry.

soabirw ago

Right. Because Signal does not have decryption on servers. The decryption mechanism is only on your phone. So if you want to have desktop messaging then you need to be on the same network as your phone. It hooks it up via qr code and uses sockets (if I remember correctly) to communicate back and forth.

Would you prefer Signal have the means to decrypt all your communications on a centralized server?

harmlessgryphon ago

I think the biggest problem I have is, according to your reply, Signal is a purely mobile service. If I read your reply correctly, the phone does the heavy work (via a service that's probably running all the time) and your desktop simply acts as a terminal for the mobile device's output.

I would prefer that Signal not require a phone to work at all. I don't IM on my phone. Period.

soabirw ago

Telegram would still be a good fit then. I recommend reading over their security FAQ to know what it does and doesn't provide.

https://telegram.org/faq#security

harmlessgryphon ago

I use telegram for just regular conversations with friends. I'm well aware they're a closed-server, homegrown crypto shop. My friends are not/don't understand/don't care, so I make it my duty to keep things of interest off Telegram channels. I will say that they're a great respond-o-bot platform, having a well thought out bot setup method.

For everything else, I have my own encrypted XMPP server that doesn't run on normal ports and won't accept S2S.

FecalDemiurge6000 ago

Chaos and Confusion are good alternatives.

Yogus ago

Mattermost is entirely opensource.

Jeww ago

A book.

Vocabularix ago

Phone bad book good amirite

NiggerVirus ago

TAX

Satirical ago

For irc/slack like features: MatterMost

For voice chat focused: Mumble

WrongThunk ago

What's a good IRC server & room to talk to some goats and make fun of niggers?

foxtrot45 ago

Riot, put a small server in a data center and install synapse. Its not too hard, also you can install nextcloud on it. That also can be used to make calls, video chat, share files, in fact the recent update you can work on documents with others in real time. Its somewhat tricky to set up, you need a document server (its free from onlyoffice) setup.

There is also kamailio if you want a SIP phone type system. It works with TLS and you can setup ZRTP for encryption. Its pretty nifty. Riot is the most similar to discord and I highly recommend setting up your own synapse server. Get a domain, setup synapse, turn, letsencrypt certificate, apache2, python.... The riot app for android is available on f-droid without google framework crap. It integrates well with android, you can video, call, chat, send pics and stuff plus its encrypted (option). It is a work of art IMO

Goys-R-Us ago

Harmony.

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soabirw ago

Telegram has channels for more open discussion. Not sure on feature set matches but they won't shut down your channel for Wrong Think.

ex-redd ago

IRC is a hidden forgotten gem. It's still my hassle-free go-to for downloading mp3 singles

kneegr0w ago

What server(s) and channel(s) would you recommend for that? Funny fact I used to run one of the biggest mp3-channels on EFnet almost 25 years ago.

ex-redd ago

mp3-best-of

HillaryClintonsShoe ago

The best alternative to Discord is Cohesiveness.

IslamicStatePatriot ago

Have you compared irc clients to see if any have added discord like features? Text codes could trigger inline images, etc, etc. There might be something out there that gives the feel of discord.

TimberWolfAlpha ago

Anybody who needs the frilly shit that discord has and IRC doesn't, needs to pare back on the soy in their diet.

albatrosv15 ago

How do you anonymize your connection on irc?

insanitea ago

I do know that weechat has built-in proxy support. Not sure about other clients.

Blompf ago

uwu

J_Darnley ago

Depends on what sort you're looking for. Discord is mostly like IRC with eye candy, isn't it? For whatever its worth I am on IRC all day and all night.

rcb ago

Harder to share photos and files. The different rooms can be a feature too. Being able to scroll back to times you weren't logged in is nice.

IRC channels often have logs but someone with a bot has to make those, side-topic channels have to be joined seperately, link to textfile bins etc...

J_Darnley ago

Being able to scroll back to times you weren't logged in is nice.

People always say that, especially the shills on Hacker News, but I don't find that to be that useful. I don't care what happens in a channel when I'm not around. And I say this even while running my own ZNC instance. I only do so because my employer insists so he can leave messages for me rather than sending an email or some such.

thelma ago

https://coub.com/view/afk4m

Just stand on a corner ?

CarthOSassy ago

I had great success with mumble, and don't know why my friends stopped using it.

lanre ago

Same. It seemed like a good step up from teamspeak in terms of voice quality. But I guess everyone wanted the ease of sharing and joining chat rooms.

lexsird ago

What was that you're mumbling? Maybe they couldn't hear each other? Ironic for a voice chat name, isn't it? Why not Speak Up? Too straightforward?

green_man ago

Mumble for voice.