Discord has announced that it will begin requiring government-issued ID or face scans for use of large parts of its platform, extending beyond its original compliance with UK ID Verification Law and various Online Safety Acts around the world. What we found disturbing was what seems to be Discord’s strange web of connections, including links to the UK Government via partners, links to Peter Thiel and Palantir (and even Epstein) via venture capital-funded identity verification services, and Discord’s prior partner data breaches leading to concerns of the application’s ability to protect its users. This all comes at a time when Discord is rumored to be preparing for an IPO, which would be an awfully good time for Discord to suddenly know a whole lot more about its users – data that could be valuable for marketing or other disagreeable uses. At least as a positive, this has led to a rise of Discord alternatives.

  • CafeFrog@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    6·
    12 hours ago

    The fascist noose is tightening the world over thanks to proprietary big tech. We have to escape now while we can to open-source alternatives.

    Currently the best (in my subjective opinion) self-hostable, encrypted and federated (like lemmy/piefed) alternative is Movim.

    It offers 90% of the features of Discord, including group video calls, group texts, and even screensharing with audio (must use a Chromium based browser currently to share the audio). The only feature missing is discord-style rooms, which the dev is currently working on to release as fast as possible.

    It doesn’t even require an email to create an account, and runs right in your browser, so it has an extremely low barrier to entry. Give it a try with a friend to see if it can meet your needs! :D

    For a more complete guide to swapping proprietary apps for safe open-source ones, I suggest referring to this post: https://lemmy.cafe/post/18663514

  • QuandaleDingle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    2 days ago

    I really hope that Matrix will be getting a large surge of support from this. I for one, will be making a contribution.

      • Bababasti@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        12 hours ago

        Do you actually mean Matrix or Element, the client? Cause I see a lot of people mixing these things up. Element does indeed suck as a Matrix Client but there’s been a sudden surge of quite nice clients.

        • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          10 hours ago

          Both. I’m no expert but I remember reading that it’s tech sucks. It’s search features and keys stuff are not that good. The element client is just bad. I’ve been using nheko client and it’s still no where near discord.

      • november@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        9·
        1 day ago

        Personally, I would like to see them both get new users. And Delta Chat, and XMPP, and other messengers too. Relying too heavily on one option is what got us into this mess.

        • hoppolito@mander.xyzEnglish
          2·
          9 hours ago

          Relying too heavily on one option is what got us into this mess.

          I agree with the sentiment but still feel the need to point out: specifically, relying heavily on one proprietary, non-federated option is what did it.

          Open software with an established, open protocol (yes, even one as bloated as Matrix) has way less eggs-in-basket danger. The difficulty, last I checked, of self-hosting stoat is one thing that makes me a little wary of it too.

          • november@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            2·
            2 hours ago

            Yeah, that’s a valid point.

            I like that Stoat is self-hostable, but the lack of federation or even a way to sign in to multiple different instances in the same app makes me not even want to try. Why should I self-host something when everyone else is going to be on the flagship instance, which mine can’t talk to?

        • astropenguin5@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          19 hours ago

          Yeah they rebranded to stoat, idk about slop coding tbh.

          There’s been talk in one of my main discord servers to move over to it though

      • redsand@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        3 minutes ago

        This is the most secure option but it isn’t discord. Stable, Post Quantum cryptography and defeating metadata analysis is core to the protocol. But the mobile clients are heavy and can eat battery. It also lacks multiparty voice chat which IMHO is a critical discord feature.

        Simplex and Mumble or Jitsi would be close and very secure but not at feature parity.