this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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About Matrix Matrix is an open protocol for decentralised, secure communications.

Matrix Manifesto We believe:

People should have full control over their own communication. People should not be locked into centralised communication silos, but instead be free to pick who they choose to host their communication without limiting who they can reach. The ability to converse securely and privately is a basic human right. Communication should be available to everyone as a free and open, unencumbered, standard and global network.

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[–] [email protected] 133 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I like Matrix but it's far from Discord right now

[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That's a good thing. Discord is chugging its way through the last half of the Web 2.0 service to social media pipeline. It's a VC-funded multimedia enterprise extended around a novel technology core optimized for its original service offering, real-time voice/text. Nobody is immune to bloat, but because Matrix is a protocol standard, not an app, users have the option of sticking with minimal clients and servers that won't (necessarily) get destroyed by feature creep.

If you've tried Element and thought "ah, slow Discord," maybe have a scroll through https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/. I don't want to get off topic but all my favorite software is standard/specification-based.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I loved Discord back in 2015/2016. I hate it now.

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Matrix isn't the alternative for discord. Others have been named.

Matrix is a chat with a high regard for encryption, more an alternative to Whatsapp and signal then discord.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Matrix is considerably more like discord than both Whatsapp or signal.

You can get a WhatsApp/signal experience out of it but overall it is very similar to discord

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't see anything mentioned about calls... kind've a big part of discord.

Is it supported?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes. There is voip. Also video and screen sharing.

Both could work better, but they're there, if the client you're using supports them.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Matrix is the federated alternative to XMPP and IRC first and foremost, imho

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I would say it’s a lot more than discord. Putting it that way doesn’t give it as much credit as it deserves. My favorite out of the laundry list of features and benefits is that you can synchronize your messaging across all platforms into a single interoperable client if your choosing. You can use a better standard while not having to bug others to switch.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I just had to go and look this up to get more details

https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/

Looks like you need to be hosting your own server, then you can install plugins for separate services. Very cool..

I'd love to tie together a few different systems I'm using but I worry that the bridges will break every time a platform does an update

Have long have you been using it? How's your experience been? What bridges are you using?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You don't have to host your own, just join an instance with bridges. That being said, running your own is easy and nice with docker, including the bridges.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Where would be a good starting point to check out a list of instances with these bridges? And how safe are they?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

this is why I never got into matrix. I don't actually know how lol, the page doesn't list servers available and i don't really want to just spin up my own just for myself

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (17 children)
  • matrix isn't a fediverse thing, it's its own thing. it does happen to be decentralized, like the fediverse.

  • matrix isn't an alternative to discord. it's an alternative to whatsapp/signal/telegram/etc.

  • matrix is nice (I use it with my friend group), but it's not perfect. we're looking for something better.

  • if you're looking for a decentralized, self-hosted, open-source, secure alternative for discord, my friends and I use Mumble. It works great for VoIP (and its noise cancellation software actually seems to work noticeably better than Discord's), but it doesn't really have the advanced text chat features that Discord does. We make do with Matrix.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

matrix isn't an alternative to discord. it's an alternative to whatsapp/signal/telegram/etc

Yes and no.

  1. Matrix is a communication standard. More like SMTP, RSS or XMPP than those things. I don't know why Matrix specifically has this problem because you'll never see anyone say "I've joined ActivityPub".

  2. Element is by far and away the most popular Matrix client (similar to how Mastodon is the most popular ActivityPub software) and it has "Spaces", which functions similar to Discord "servers" (not actually servers). Better in some ways but mostly worse. Namely in terms of stability and the function of "spaces" specifically.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (7 children)

There is certainly some overlap in what Discord and Matrix can do, and personally I like Matrix about a thousand times better, but it's not really a direct replacement. That's not a criticism. I don't really even want Matrix to be more like Discord. I just think presenting Matrix as a Discord replacement kinda sells it short and is likely to leave people looking for an alternative to Discord disappointed.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it's federated, but it's not a part of the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (8 children)

i wish people would stop thinking these words mean something that everyone knows

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Anyone can host a server that'll talk to the others seamlessly (like Lemmy), but it doesn't talk to Lemmy

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (21 children)

It is unfortunately such a PITA to self host. Spent hours a few weeks ago trying to set it up and failed.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (8 children)

The only real Discord alternative is https://revolt.chat

It's not e2ee but it is FOSS and you can self host. Also, unlike Discord they actually have discriminators

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't federate though. So if you stand your own "discord" server up, you can't message anyone and have to ask people to join it. Matrix allows you to not just set up your own server but also interact with everyone else's servers so you're not isolated. Revolt is nice, but you're, like discord, limiting yourself to a single instance who has access to everyone's data.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Matrix is almost there but the last bit might make chat impossible to be federated. And i say this as a matrix user and a server maintainer.

"Instant messaging" is a service with high demand. When all servers are in one location or have high bandwidth pipes between them its not much of an issue. But once you have a group chat with people on instances all over the place, some running on Raspberry Pis...you might as well be running an email mailing list.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

How did irc resolve this issue?

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Matrix is a great beginning... But it is still FAR from Discord right now.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Plain Matrix rooms are a bit too foreign to Discord users i'd say.

There's another alternative being built which resembles Discord a lot more, is federated and as i understand is built around Matrix communities: https://github.com/commune-os/commune-server

Here's a demo instance: https://shpong.com/

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

I would say it's more a Slack alternative, Discord does one click screen sharing, streaming, voice rooms, has a soundboard, and other stuff that's fantastic for friend groups.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

Personally I don't think it's quite there yet. Element is probably the best Matrix app but not quite at parity for ease of use to a regular user and the general design and feel of discord is better... For now

I believe it will get there though. We've seen the enshittification cycle happen so many times to chat apps historically it's basically the most inevitable that discord will collapse eventually. Is anyone still using AIM? MSN? Case in point.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I still don't see why we can't just use IRC anymore. The protocol itself is old but reliable, and just needs a good client or two to help people compare it to Discord a bit more favourably. Though I suppose the need for a BNC to fully match it is probably a bit much of an ask for most.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IRC not allowing users to receive messages while offline, not having multiple synced clients, not natively supporting media, not supporting voice or video calls makes it a complete non-starter.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

It takes a lot of work to support encryption and it’s definitely not end to end

It’s not really federated, you make a new account for each server I think.

needs rich messaging support. At very least markdown. Matrix supports images.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Looking into Matrix...(again apparently because I had an account already logged in on element) I hate to say it but, I can't forsee myself ever using that. It's waaay too complicated while simplistic at the same time. There is a permission system but, this is more similar to IRC then discord. Graphics wise it's super basic and easy to use, but I can forsee that being way too much of a pain to moderate or administrate on.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Matrix was introduced a few months before Discord was launched in 2015, so better say that Discord is the proprietary and centralized alternative to Matrix 😜

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Discord was always a Slack clone from the start, so this goes further back.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is an upcoming foss client called spacebar / fosscord

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never used it but I though Matrix was more an alternative to Messaging apps (like Telegram, Signal, …) than Discord. Am I wrong ?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I like Matrix. I have one running on a really low end VPS mostly for bridges (painful to setup but it works) and some family members but I haven't enabled the calling or video calling features. I also have never joined any public rooms. I use a different account for that with a public instance.

I'm only concerned about performance issues. It doesn't perform bad for me right now but I'm afraid if I enable calling or join larger rooms, it'll be a pain. I've heard Dendrite is supposed to be more efficient so I might try that. I also might try XMPP as I've heard it performs and scales better.

edit: I'm also looking into Revolt but it isn't decentralized and I don't think it has bridges.

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