The commie org that I am a member of is looking to move off of Discord given the fuckery with their age verification controversy and general insecure-ness about it.
A couple options have been put forward, mostly Discord clones because that’s what people are comfortable using.
Personally, I am pushing for something that supports end-to-end encryption like Element/Matrix, but there are of course some drawbacks (it’s a bit buggy/glitchy sometimes esp with video calls, and it doesn’t seem to support whimsical emojis unless I am mistaken)
Is anyone able to provide some suggestions? Ideally I’d like to encourage something that is open source and supports encrypted messaging, but also user friendly if possible. I have used Element/Riot/Matrix for years and I know it can be a pain in the dick (especially for n00bs) with setting up encryption keys and whatnot, but IMO is probably worth the trouble.
What other options should we be looking into? Telegram? WhatsApp? AFAIK there is Pissraeli Pegasus (and probably other) malware that specifically targets broadly used applications even though they are touted as secure and encrypted etc.
TLDR: Check out Mattermost, look out for Fluxer in the coming months.
You will probably need to lean in to something self-hosted to get what you want.
Look into Mattermost which is a company-backed open source Slack alternative. I haven’t uses it extensively, but I thought it was decent. Its a bit annoying that there are paid features though.
I am also closely keeping an eye on Fluxer, which is being developed as a FOSS Discord alternative with full feature parity. It already has some momentum with people looking for a Discord alternative as they plan for an IPO this month (plus the face scanning and stuff).
Once they have self-hosting properly documented and supported, I’m going to give it a go.
The issue with apps is that it kinda sucks to ask you users to get something new that they aren’t using yet. I only like to do that when I have confidence in the product. i think Fluxer will have its own momentum, so I won’t be the only person saying “hey everyone, let’s get tf off discord”