Yep most of the communities I like are on Discord nothing I can't do.

I have happily succeeded. While there are some communities that are still on Discord, the vast majority of my friends are accessible on Matrix.

I'd love to be able to disagree in any of your points, but I can't.

The vast majority of users want something that simply works, is polished and intuitively usable. Reading docs, remembering anything other than the bare minimum, running into issues that don't get magically resolved within 5 minutes will turn them away forever.

Even people with a technical background will at least partially compromise and migrate towards the services with the most users to not isolate themselfs.

Matrix is neat, Lemmy is neat, Nextcloud is neat (well, in theory), Immich is neat, so many other privacy friendly solutions are neat. But they'll always be irrelevant in the global context.

I am a big fan of Matrix and glad to see it getting some attention in this post. But it is definitely a bit rougher around the edges and esoteric compared to Discord. For more technically-inclined people, it's fine. But it's a bit much for some people.

I'm no fan of Apple (and don't want to divert discussion here), but part of their winning formula is ease of use.

I hate this recommendation because Matrix is just a terrible user experience.

Heck agree. In my experience, IRC is a much better alternative.

Someone else mentioned Revolt.chat higher in the thread and it seems to be a promising FOSS replacement for Discord. It's looking to fix some of Matrix's issues like not having voice channels (voice calls on Matrix aren't the same)

some new upstart closed Source program that is shiny just like how Discord took over from Slack

Guilded already exists. It's a Discord clone with more features, but no one uses it. I assume they are just waiting for Discord to fail one day.

The Discord server I spend the most time on is constantly looking for alternatives in case something better pops up or we need a backup.

I need something like the discord screen/gama streaming to consider changing apps.

I second this. It’s one of our most used features. Whether it’s streaming for team mates or for spectators there’s almost always 1 to 2 people streaming/watching.

Don't get me wrong, I love matrix, but works like a charm is not how I would describe that. Element Just seems to make everything harder because you have to keep track of your session keys. That way if you have a new device and can't use the previous device you don't get locked out And then to top it off you have the export and import of end to end encrypted room keys which even for somebody like myself who is technical enough to manage it has managed to screw it up almost every time. I find something like session or SimpleX easier because you're not having to manage keys like that. SimpleX has an actual database file export instead of key management and you need only remember the decryption key. Session of course uses session IDs with a neumonic seed phrase like crypto

I will gladly leave this shithole called discord, as soon as matrix start to support screen sharing