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'What a great way to kill your community': Discord users are furious about its new age verification checks — and are now hunting for alternatives (www.techradar.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 67 points 6 months ago* (5 children)

hunting for alternatives

I've heard people mention Matrix, but I've not tried it yet.

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  • [–] 70 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    It's definitely nowhere near as polished as Discord, but it does a good enough job for my small gaming group to have moved over.

    The equivalent of a Discord server is a Space, which is made up of Rooms (channels). Unfortunately Rooms are displayed in order of recent activity; admins can't define a set order to group things by function.

    The two weirdest things: there are no audio calls, you have to do a video call and turn off the webcam. And the process of logging in on your phone requires scanning a QR code from your desktop (a technically-minded person will understand this is necessary for E2EE, but to an average user it's just strange).

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  • [–] 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    And the process of logging in on your phone requires scanning a QR code from your desktop (a technically-minded person will understand this is necessary for E2EE, but to an average user it's just strange).

    Pretty sure discord has the same.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Discord has E2EE?

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    QR based sign in

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    It has QR based sign in. Shit, Steam has QR based sign in so it shouldn't be weird for people at this point.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    I've seen QR-based login before as an option. (Heck, I was an early adopter of SQRL...or tried to be. Sadly that protocol never went anywhere.) But it's not typically mandatory, and I don't think most casual users (the kinds of people who just reuse the same password everywhere rather than using a password manager) aren't likely to be especially comfortable with it.

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    No audio calls

    They added that recently (element-call audio only i mean) its the phone icon at the top

    I think the video call rooms (always open channels) remember your preference but im not sure rn

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    They added that recently (element-call audio only i mean) its the phone icon at the top

    I don't see that. Video, Threads, Room Info, People is all I have at the top of my rooms.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)

    Thats weird? What version of element-desktop are you on? If its element-web it could be that your server is running a outdated version. Its only available in DMs not groupchats. It was added back in december https://github.com/element-hq/element-desktop/releases/tag/v1.12.5

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Its only available in DMs not groupchats

    Oh right, nice catch. Yeah I only use it as a Discord alternative, so no audio calls for me yet.

    Anyway, audio calls in that way aren't quite what I'm after anyway. They'll work. They'll do the job. Just like the existing video calls with webcams turned off do the job. But the Discord style chat room with an assumption of audio only on voice detection, with robust screensharing (including PC audio!) capabilities in an otherwise audio-only call is what I'm really after.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Yeah the video rooms feature is most of that but not quite. The "call" always stays open so you can join and wait until others join without disrupting them. It has good screensharing but no option to share your output audio. You have to turn off the webcam before joining. The voice detection thing would be cool as an optional thing because it can also cause problems. I just use a filter plugin for that on my computer.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah the last thing you didn't bring up was screen share. I've found Element's screen sharing to be rather lacklustre. It's share whole screen only, rather than having application or game-specific sharing (and Discord's gamer-specific feature of detecting you're in a game and immediately surfacing the option to share that is excellent here). And when I've used it, I've found audio from the game doesn't make it through, and I'm not sure if it's possible (I've never really tried looking through all the deep options) to send game audio while also having your mic, without using third-party software to mix the two together into one stream—which would necessarily break your choice detection filter.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago*

    You can definitely select a specific application to share, at least on linux, but it should be the same on windows. Ive used to share my gameplay with friends before like that. But yeah other than mixing your desktop audio into a virtual input, you cant currently share application/desktop audio.

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I never really thought if matrix as a discord alternative.

    They're both messaging apps but directed at different markets / uses.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    I would have said Matrix is a kind of hybrid. Obviously Matrix has 1 on 1 chats and individual IRC-like rooms, which are not at all like Discord.

    But the addition of Spaces is very much positioning itself as an open Discord alternative.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I run a Matrix server and it's deffo YMMV based on the server admin and how good they are at maintaining things.

    Getting the federation to work can also be a chore and a half. Otherwise it works super well. The clients often implement features on top of the protocol (looking at Element and their weird jitsi integration for instance).

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I and my group are all just on matrix.org. We didn't want the risk of dealing with potentially less reliable servers or federation.

    We also use Element desktop and Element X for Android. I think I read that the old Element might have supported audio calls? But these days, it's video only, with the very weird UX of having two different options for video calls (one being, as you say, Jitsi). I assume there's a historical reason for that, but it doesn't make much sense as a design today, to me.

    Having Discord-style audio rooms built around the idea that people are not broadcasting all the time (as opposed to the more chat-like design of today) would be one of the most impactful comparatively low effort (considering they already have video calls working) things they could do, IMO.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    I and my group are all just on matrix.org. We didn’t want the risk of dealing with potentially less reliable servers or federation.

    Absolutely a strong way to go.

    Yea, there are some historical reasons for the integrations, but they could do a better job evolving the UI to match the current state of things for sure.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah, I have no idea why the matrix developers decided to have stuff called "spaces and rooms" instead of servers and channels.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Like the other replies you've gotten, I never really liked "server". It implies something very different from what it is.

    Rooms is pretty obvious and straightforward, I think. And to be honest I rather like Spaces too. It's a lot less immediately clear, but there's something ineffable about it that just feels right to me. I'm just glad to see the old Communities feature (which was their now-deprecated first attempt at a Discord-like functionality) is hard to even find out about now. When I first joined I was confused about the difference between Communities and Spaces and had to search to figure out which to use, but when checking now to remember what the old one was called, I found it hard to even find the name of it.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    It’s terrible. They’ve had years and years to get their shit together and they still can’t. It’s just horrendously bad.

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I use it all the time. There are many mature clients, and matrix is a protocol, so I don’t know what you mean. Since the sliding sync implementations, I have found it really nice to use.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Don’t know what to tell you. I’m literally unable to read messages sent to me, they all show up as “unable to decrypt”. If I can’t even use the damn protocol then how many clients it has doesn’t matter.

    And I have tried different clients.

    And as far as I’ve read, this “unable to decrypt” affects a lot of users.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    What server are you using and with which client most recently? It sounds like your device is unverified so untrusted or the key isn’t present.

    To expand, “unable to decrypt” would affect a lot of users. That’s a good thing and exactly what you want it to do when not correctly trusted.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I'm using the default matrix server and I've tried with Element and FluffyChat. I've never used a different device to access Matrix. It has always been Firefox through Element, and then when that stopped working I switched to try to use FluffyChat which also did not work.

    To expand, “unable to decrypt” would affect a lot of users. That’s a good thing and exactly what you want it to do when not correctly trusted.

    No, you do not want this affecting every user who has done nothing to change their environment. The device is still trusted, else I wouldn't be able to sign in and get new messages at all. Here's a massive list detailing many of the ways this can happen and note that this goes back to 2022. So for 4 years now they've had numerous issues with thousands of users being able to decrypt messages sent on the only device they've ever used and it still isn't fixed.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Maybe I came off as dismissive or just stupid, but I really did mean to be helpful. Of course you don’t want users experience bad interactions. I meant if those interactions were for an actual intended reason. So yeah, never mind.

    Bummer you’ve had a hard time. I think they and the free software community are trying to put together a good solution.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry, clearly I responded too harshly. Honestly I'm just tired of the suggestions to use Matrix, when myself (and several other people I know personally) have constant issues with it. I've tried to use Matrix for over 3 years now and I am required to use it sometimes, but every time I'm incredibly frustrated.

    I think they and the free software community are trying to put together a good solution.

    I agree, and I do think we need that, but sometimes the focus should be on usability before security. I know how much that sucks, but if you look at Lemmy you see the same thing. The focus was on usability first. Security came later, because (honestly) security is kinda pointless when every user can set up their own instance and intercept any posts they want. We'll get there eventually with security, but if people aren't using your platform then security is pointless.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    That error happened to me too, and I created a new account, and saved the recovery key to a password manager.

    Matrix frequently asks for the recovery key (too often, if you ask me, but it's for 'security' I guess). But since I have it saved in the password manager, I never have the unable to decrypt problem any more.

    I've now had at least two matrix accounts for about a year, which haven't had that problem.

    I'm not sure if this will solve the issues you're having, but I thought it might be helpful to somebody to post this anecdote. If you were having trouble with matrix in the past, it might be time to try again.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    they

    Your server, not mine, homie. Shop around for a better admin who actually knows how to install the thing.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

    So the Matrix developers/creators don’t know how to actually install the thing then? lol not a good response homie.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    The overloaded, overbloated main instance?

    No, they don't. It either shouldn't exist or should be broken up.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    So the devs who created it can’t run an instance and it doesn’t scale properly. Yeah, I’m just gonna go out on a real short limb here and say that maybe the problem isn’t the instance.

    Matrix is terrible any way you slice it.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Agreed, Matrix works fine as a toy, but it breaks down after a year or two with even a moderate amount of chat.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Slightly related. Does anyone know of any decent Matrix clients (apps) on Android and/or Linux? Because, and I don't mean to be rude when I say this but...Element is very, very bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Stoat.chat seems to be a more likely alternative. I love matrix, but I don't think it can replace Discord. Not yet.

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