A couple weeks ago Discord announced their plans to go down the IPO route. This means that there is now a ticking clock until the platform goes full-on enshittified like so many others before them.
Last time i checked last year there weren’t many options to migrate to, mostly Matrix communities (which are not quite the same thing) and Revolt Chat (which is a non-federated but FOSS and self-hostable drop-in replacement for Discord). Revolt sounds like the logical route as it’s clearly designed for just this exact role, but it seems it’s still early in development and not yet ready for the average Discord user (looks like the voice functions in particular are still in development)
Has this changed or improved since then? I feel like the use case of “IRC servers, but modern!” should have been solved years ago but feels like it hasn’t, i have lots of non-technical people who heavily use Discord who I’d love to rescue from it before it starts actively burning, a replacement that isn’t complicated and has all it’s features would be welcome.
I love the Element client for Matrix. I use it with my friends and I have joined a lot of communities on there. It’s Discord-like, but I personally find it much easier to navigate than Discord. It’s free, open source, decentralized, you can self-host if that’s your jam, it’s got some solid security and usability features, call quality is great, and I’ve found it to be very stable and reliable. I’m a little biased because I personally don’t like Discord, I find the UI clunky and unpleasant to use, but I love using Element. If you love Discord, you will find Element familiar, but you may or may not appreciate the differences.
I’m amazed you find Element easier to use, their idea of cramming a pile of channels into a “home” that you can’t even see unless you specifically look for it is absolutely bizarre, and you can’t make voice rooms either, you have to enter a text chat and then start a ‘call’ which is odd.
Discord is a mess and very hard to use. Element in the other hand is designed logical and easier to learn.
How do you find communities to join on element?
You can just search terms right within Element to find public “rooms” (like a Discord Server). There’s rooms for all kinds of things. There are private rooms, too, but someone in the room would have to send you a link to it.