I made the mistake of signing up for Discord with a new email address a couple years ago and the amount of spam I started getting to that email was insane. I wasn’t using that email to sign up for any other accounts yet so I know it was them. Happened like a week after signing up, I figured they just immediately turn around and sell whatever info they get from their users as soon as they get it. I won’t be giving them anything else, thanks.
Yeah fuck that
Lol I’ve never been a big discord user, but this will definitely stop me from ever using it.
Gross. Ok, who’s the next best competitor? Matrix?
XMPP, by a landslide.
Stoat is probably the best competitor, although it shot itself in the leg by changing its name recently. It’s also missing video and screen sharing last time I checked, and the audio functionality barely works.
Matrix is utter chaos as far as organization goes. When you join a Discord community, chats are clearly laid out and separate from private messages or group chats. When you join a Matrix community, you must individually choose extra group chats to join, and they are often indistinguishable from things happening outside that community. It’s messy. And we haven’t even gotten to video or voice.
XMPP makes Matrix look organized and feature-complete. Good luck corralling a group of people onto that platform and figuring out disparate servers and disparate apps… I wouldn’t recommend it.
Basically, I don’t think the open source space has an answer to this, and I don’t think they can come up with one anytime soon.
Spaces work pretty well if your client handles them
Stoat is the best option imo
Stoat
Sadly, not enough people will realise Matrix is a shitty alternative.
Simplex is a project made by a very weird dude who’s very weird about his politics, and they are jumping headfirst into cryptocurrency and NFTs. I would have said it looked like a promising project a couple of years ago, but no longer.
(From a technical standpoint, it’s also just a messaging app with groups. At that point, you might as well use Signal or Delta as a backup)
The more insane someone is, the more I trust their code. Governments and super intelligent AI have no chance at deciphering code that was delivered direct to a human from God himself. RIP Terry.
Unfortunately, he’s way more Brendan Eich than Terry Davis.
I’ll take delta chat thanks
Big thank you to Discord for lighting their entire business on fire 🖕
That’s well timed! I’ve been migrating to Matrix this past month.
Well, either they know my old account is an adult account or it’s probably easy to break by using a YouTube video in the way that YouTube’s own age verification is broken by YouTube videos.
I actually agree with this decision. If you’re privacy minded, what the hell are you doing on Discord? At the very least, learn Matrix.
But for your average user, let’s recall there are literal pedophile rings on Discord. This is still on-going in 2026, they pay low-tier YouTubers to promote their channel to children, children join, they get blackmail material on them (especially young girls) and then force then to do sexually explicit transmissions, record it, and sell it. This is not one example, there are hundreds per day.
So you know what? Yes, require age verification.
How do you expect age verification to stop the pedophile rings?
neither face scan, ID nor age restricted servers can fix that.
the bad guys can even make a server specifically for kids to get them on there while most adults, who could have noticed coincidentally, would then use an adult server and can’t notice any more.
Yea, because no one can fake their way in.
Keep on licking the boots of the people who want to abuse you…
Yea, because no one can fake their way in.
Then don’t lock your doors, there are ways around that too.
Keep on licking the boots of the people who want to abuse you…
In what part of “learn how to use Matrix” and “they host pedophile rings” did I give you the impression I like or use Discord at all, genius?
Are you suggesting that Discord didn’t have any technical means to detect and ban that activity before? And that having face scans of some users not only gives them that ability, but it’s the most reasonable and sensible way to achieve it?
Are you suggesting that Discord didn’t have any technical means to detect and ban that activity before?
I’m suggesting that’s irrelevant in face of the magnitude of the issue, versus the irrelevancy of the threat here. I see no reason why a person obsessed with not showing ID would join Discord. It’s like joining a Facebook group and complaining the admins aren’t protecting your privacy.
Most FOSS projects have Discords for some god-forsaken reason and will not help you unless you join their Discord. Events I attend socially choose to use Discord. I am forced into this ecosystem. I only use the web app, ive never installed it on my phone, never given them a phone number, and use a temp email for every account, of which I make a new account for every server I need to be in.
Stop with this bullshit both siding, its bad for everyone prick.
We need to socially stigmatize developers who choose to use discord and “like and prefer to use it”. The only real way people will migrate from discord is if it’s socially icky to be on Discord.
