So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement
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@0xabad1dea as someone who uses discord mostly as IRC but with emojis and images... What *are* the main reasons people use discord? Like this seems like there should be so many open alternatives, but I'm obviously missing something.
@varx @0xabad1dea its a very polished experience for the most part, also profile customisation and the cool bots discord already has
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So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement
Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use itI have muted replies to this post due to the usual reasons
@0xabad1dea for a minimum viable replacement, sure you don’t need end to end encryption. But I hope that someone can design E2EE seamless enough that users barely notice, so we can avoid things like Discord selling users out to the feds for making fun of Charlie Kirk.
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So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement
Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use itI have muted replies to this post due to the usual reasons
@0xabad1dea You know what I would *really* like? A modernised Usenet.
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@RandomDamage @nojhan @0xabad1dea Sadly, #Mattermost is only "open core" and thus #OpenWashing...
@kkarhan @nojhan @0xabad1dea charming.
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A system with end-to-end encryption has no access to message content on the server because that is literally the definition of E2E encryption.
That means you will never have access to past content – you weren't in the receiver list of a channel when the message was sent, and you won't retroactively get it, because the server cannot add you. You are essentially joining an empty channel or even server.
That also means that the server cannot look into message content, for example to identify and autoban spammers, work on message moderation or otherwise do what anybody would reasonably expect a server to do in terms of safety and abuse control.
It also means that the server cannot provide you with a meaningful server based search at all. Instead the client has to download the content it has keys for and then search locally. That won't happen except on desktop devices, and even there it won't work well.
You could add a server machine user to every message so that search and automoderation would have access to message content. But that means effectively you don't have, and don't need end, and don't want to end-to-end encryption.
Which you don't.
It's not a cool feature, for anybody except the most limited set of users, and these will still hate every second of the experience they are forced to have by their circumstances.
@enejjohhem @0xabad1dea @isotopp
Aber bei WhatsApp klappt es doch auch...
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@0xabad1dea @gabboman if you don't make it distributed, you also have to host the entire bloody thing - which gets expensive once you add video chat and/or screensharing at any meaningful scale
@ratsnakegames @0xabad1dea @gabboman I'm not sure it's true that adding video/screensharing would significantly increase cost. I think the centralized service could facilitate establishing the network link between the parties and have them send the feed more-or-less directly. But I may simply be mincing words here - that could be interpreted as making it distributed.
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So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement
Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use itI have muted replies to this post due to the usual reasons
@0xabad1dea (mute acknowledged; replying anyway) AFAICT, there are many jabber clients and servers that fulfill that checklist and have for ages. It's also got a bunch of the nice-to-haves, and options for most of the other features.
IMO, Pidgin did a terrific job as a client, and there is support for voice. Screen sharing is available but it seems there were some security issues with some of those plugins. FWIW, I'm not a fan of the large window interfaces used by Teams, Slack, etc...
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So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement
Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use itI have muted replies to this post due to the usual reasons
@0xabad1dea @cadey oh..... so I do not need to write the Operating System.... that makes things a bit easier…..
The largest issue that overrules all technical work is marketing: you need users, you need the first several thousands to not pay, but you do not need to have ads so that they learn about it and have those ads everywhere so that people know that your tool exists.
PS: For those that do consider doing one with e2ee: MLS (RFC 9750) now exists
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@krapp @0xabad1dea I think when she says no federation she means that each organization hosts its own server which functions completely independently of others. Since discord is divided into different "servers" which you have to switch between, its fine if its replacement makes you switch between different REAL servers in order to message different groups.
@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea So basically - The servers are fine if they do not communicate, the clients just need to be capable of swapping between server instances? Overall sounds like it could work.
That *does* open up a weird UX setup though that the DMs between User A and User B are bound to a specific server.
So suddenly you can have *multiple* DM conversations with the same User as long as you both share multiple servers. -
@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea So basically - The servers are fine if they do not communicate, the clients just need to be capable of swapping between server instances? Overall sounds like it could work.
That *does* open up a weird UX setup though that the DMs between User A and User B are bound to a specific server.
So suddenly you can have *multiple* DM conversations with the same User as long as you both share multiple servers.@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea Yeah, that could be weird. However I don’t think person to person DMs are the main use case of Discord— signal works well enough for that. My impression of discord is that servers are generally created for some sort of social group— a college club, all the students in a specific class, a Minecraft server, etc— to be a place to talk about things relevant to that group or activity.
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@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea Yeah, that could be weird. However I don’t think person to person DMs are the main use case of Discord— signal works well enough for that. My impression of discord is that servers are generally created for some sort of social group— a college club, all the students in a specific class, a Minecraft server, etc— to be a place to talk about things relevant to that group or activity.
@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea I might not include DMs as a feature and instead have people manually create a chat with a single person. This would be annoying but it would make it clear that the conversation is tied to a specific server.
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@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea I might not include DMs as a feature and instead have people manually create a chat with a single person. This would be annoying but it would make it clear that the conversation is tied to a specific server.
@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea As someone that does use discord I'd say private chats make up about ~20-30% of my usage, the rest being VC and group chats. So I'd agree it's not the *main* use-case, just that it's also *a* major usecase.
Another thing that might get lost would be server discovery.
A client could still work if "add server" means pasting in a server-URL somewhere, you could even "mitigate" it by hard-coding the major server instances, it just adds a limitation to be aware of. -
@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea As someone that does use discord I'd say private chats make up about ~20-30% of my usage, the rest being VC and group chats. So I'd agree it's not the *main* use-case, just that it's also *a* major usecase.
Another thing that might get lost would be server discovery.
A client could still work if "add server" means pasting in a server-URL somewhere, you could even "mitigate" it by hard-coding the major server instances, it just adds a limitation to be aware of.@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea How do you discover discord servers other than someone already on the server giving you an invite link
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@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea How do you discover discord servers other than someone already on the server giving you an invite link
@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea
Have an interest and desire to join a community somewhere for that interest.With the discovery functionality such as that from matrix and discord I found:
- Angular Discord Server
- React Discord Server
- Nim Discord Server
- "Shape of Dreams" Discord Server (Gaming)
- Nim Matrix channel
- GTK Matrix channel
- Accessibility Matrix Channelsetc.
These do actually have a fairly valid usecase.
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@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea As someone that does use discord I'd say private chats make up about ~20-30% of my usage, the rest being VC and group chats. So I'd agree it's not the *main* use-case, just that it's also *a* major usecase.
Another thing that might get lost would be server discovery.
A client could still work if "add server" means pasting in a server-URL somewhere, you could even "mitigate" it by hard-coding the major server instances, it just adds a limitation to be aware of.@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea Another option might be to do federation but a very simple form of federation where when using a chat on another server, your server simply acts as an intermediary between you and the other server, authenticating you and forwarding requests and responses between you, without storing any data from the other server.
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@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea
Have an interest and desire to join a community somewhere for that interest.With the discovery functionality such as that from matrix and discord I found:
- Angular Discord Server
- React Discord Server
- Nim Discord Server
- "Shape of Dreams" Discord Server (Gaming)
- Nim Matrix channel
- GTK Matrix channel
- Accessibility Matrix Channelsetc.
These do actually have a fairly valid usecase.
@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea Interesting.
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@0xabad1dea To clarify about federation, dozens if not hundreds of projects have tried federation, and there are only two that have actual federation and an actually decent UX.
@november @0xabad1dea Everybody wants federation until they get it.
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A system with end-to-end encryption has no access to message content on the server because that is literally the definition of E2E encryption.
That means you will never have access to past content – you weren't in the receiver list of a channel when the message was sent, and you won't retroactively get it, because the server cannot add you. You are essentially joining an empty channel or even server.
That also means that the server cannot look into message content, for example to identify and autoban spammers, work on message moderation or otherwise do what anybody would reasonably expect a server to do in terms of safety and abuse control.
It also means that the server cannot provide you with a meaningful server based search at all. Instead the client has to download the content it has keys for and then search locally. That won't happen except on desktop devices, and even there it won't work well.
You could add a server machine user to every message so that search and automoderation would have access to message content. But that means effectively you don't have, and don't need end, and don't want to end-to-end encryption.
Which you don't.
It's not a cool feature, for anybody except the most limited set of users, and these will still hate every second of the experience they are forced to have by their circumstances.
@isotopp@infosec.exchange @enejjohhem@mastodon.social @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange You could just... not enable encryption in your communities, then. But it should absolutely be an option for vulnerable groups where "no full text search :(" and "no automod :(" are less important than ensuring their own safety.
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@isotopp@infosec.exchange @enejjohhem@mastodon.social @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange You could just... not enable encryption in your communities, then. But it should absolutely be an option for vulnerable groups where "no full text search :(" and "no automod :(" are less important than ensuring their own safety.
@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange @isotopp@infosec.exchange @enejjohhem@mastodon.social like not to get all Political
but we are seeing attempts to backslide on LGBTQ+ rights and censor queer content in many countries around the world. we can't just design another messaging platform that easily hands over conversation logs from "Undesirable" communities to the authorities. -
So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement
Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use itI have muted replies to this post due to the usual reasons
Aye, federation is no silver-bullet against enshittification/EEE tbh (just ask *checks notes* oh, XMPP). Great (ish) if you have 50 niche projects and 10,000 servers on a shared protocol, but even the fediverse barely manages that (and certainly not well). But it also only really protects against the host going all
– users can (in theory) flee the sinking ship (in theory – product finishes may differ from promotional images, terms & conditions apply, users may only seek redress through non-binding arbitration (while stocks last)). But if you're self-hosting and the project goes all "I think I'd prefer the 24ct trim on the next yacht", you're a bit fucked either way tbh (along with everyone else who uses that project/fork/spoon). And before that, you've got to get your 50 niche projects (and 1 or 2 not-niche projects to coalesce around, because let's be real) to agree to a single protocol. Which, at least when twitter went all goose-stepping, AP was already there.
But all we've got now is XMPP and, like, idk lads, we're probably asking a bit much of it to become an actual Discord replacement, even without voice/video. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it to happen, but we're kinda trying to build the runway here while we're already being flung down it at 500kts.
"But I don't want to have a bazillion different accounts on different sites!" tbh I don't give a shit. I have a password manager. What I absolutely do not want, however, is a bazillion different apps. That shit stacks up fast, and I don't really expect the vibe-coding crew to be too circumspect about resource efficiency. "Well then just use a web-browsURK *wheeze*" Any other questions? Not-stupid ones, I mean.
PS: People suggesting things with per-user pricing structures somewhat catastrophically fail to grasp the last point in the OP.
