On Discord Alternatives
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On Discord Alternatives
Next month, Discord is going to start requiring age verification. The backlash from gamers everywhere has been predictable and justified. I guess their company name checks out. I've had a few people reach out to me because of my prior vulnerability disclosures and criticism of encrypted messaging apps. (Thanks, Toggart.) Unfortunately, asking a cryptography-focused security engineer for app recommendations is like asking a rocket scientist to…
On Discord Alternatives - Dhole Moments
Next month, Discord is going to start requiring age verification. The backlash from gamers everywhere has been predictable and justified. I guess their company name checks out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-s6HuzZRNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-s6HuzZRNg I've had a few people reach out to me because of my prior vulnerability disclosures and criticism of encrypted messaging apps. (Thanks, Toggart.) Unfortunately, asking a…
Dhole Moments (soatok.blog)
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On Discord Alternatives
Next month, Discord is going to start requiring age verification. The backlash from gamers everywhere has been predictable and justified. I guess their company name checks out. I've had a few people reach out to me because of my prior vulnerability disclosures and criticism of encrypted messaging apps. (Thanks, Toggart.) Unfortunately, asking a cryptography-focused security engineer for app recommendations is like asking a rocket scientist to…
On Discord Alternatives - Dhole Moments
Next month, Discord is going to start requiring age verification. The backlash from gamers everywhere has been predictable and justified. I guess their company name checks out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-s6HuzZRNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-s6HuzZRNg I've had a few people reach out to me because of my prior vulnerability disclosures and criticism of encrypted messaging apps. (Thanks, Toggart.) Unfortunately, asking a…
Dhole Moments (soatok.blog)
@soatok indeed, all of the options right now do not meet the moment.
i think it is fine to have a low-assurance (read: unencrypted, insecure) group chat solution, but even there nothing delivers in terms of reliability, UX and nomadic identity.
and as you allude to, the last part is very important: people don't want to sign up for accounts anymore to join random communities. discord with it's "server" system provides the illusion of nomadic identity, which users have gotten used to.
i have ideas involving the stuff i've already built, but i certainly don't have the time to pursue them.
so i have begrudgingly installed a matrix server with an FAQ that lists workarounds for all of the known issues and advises people to not waste their time on Matrix's E2EE features (which aren't anywhere good enough).
fluxer and stoat look nice from a UX point of view, but the lack of nomadic identity is a dealbreaker. they also do not have enough mass on their own to fake nomadic identity like discord has done.
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@soatok indeed, all of the options right now do not meet the moment.
i think it is fine to have a low-assurance (read: unencrypted, insecure) group chat solution, but even there nothing delivers in terms of reliability, UX and nomadic identity.
and as you allude to, the last part is very important: people don't want to sign up for accounts anymore to join random communities. discord with it's "server" system provides the illusion of nomadic identity, which users have gotten used to.
i have ideas involving the stuff i've already built, but i certainly don't have the time to pursue them.
so i have begrudgingly installed a matrix server with an FAQ that lists workarounds for all of the known issues and advises people to not waste their time on Matrix's E2EE features (which aren't anywhere good enough).
fluxer and stoat look nice from a UX point of view, but the lack of nomadic identity is a dealbreaker. they also do not have enough mass on their own to fake nomadic identity like discord has done.
@ariadne @soatok As of now my go-to is Signal for DMs and closed groups, and IRC for large public groups.
The rationale is, TLS to the server is sufficient to protect trivial tampering/spoofing (e.g. ISPs injecting ads into your traffic). If the group is open to public membership, a compromised server snooping your traffic is simply not a realistic threat - anyone who wants to spy on the channel can simply join it.
The problems with IRC are:
* Need to make one account per network hosting groups
* Can't seamlessly transition between public unencrypted chat and E2EE private chat (e.g. IRC channel that switches to Signal DM when you message a single user, with some sort of strong identity binding between the two)
* Lack of image support unless you upload files to a third party/self hosted web server and paste the URL
* Poor mobile support (requires an always-on connection for good UXIf you solve those plus link user accounts to a Signal identity and make the DM feature Signal-message that user, you'll cover the 90% use case.
It doesn't handle the "forum thread" scenario but discord trying to be a forum and chat at once is just a bad idea IMO, these should be separate tools/platforms.
And I don't use group voice chat features either, so that's not a consideration for me (I keep my discord client in a VM with no sound card anyway because I don't trust it lol)
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@soatok indeed, all of the options right now do not meet the moment.
i think it is fine to have a low-assurance (read: unencrypted, insecure) group chat solution, but even there nothing delivers in terms of reliability, UX and nomadic identity.
and as you allude to, the last part is very important: people don't want to sign up for accounts anymore to join random communities. discord with it's "server" system provides the illusion of nomadic identity, which users have gotten used to.
i have ideas involving the stuff i've already built, but i certainly don't have the time to pursue them.
so i have begrudgingly installed a matrix server with an FAQ that lists workarounds for all of the known issues and advises people to not waste their time on Matrix's E2EE features (which aren't anywhere good enough).
fluxer and stoat look nice from a UX point of view, but the lack of nomadic identity is a dealbreaker. they also do not have enough mass on their own to fake nomadic identity like discord has done.
@ariadne I feel like Matrix is OK for some use cases. I won't rely on anything besides Signal (for chat purposes) if it's truly private, but I think Matrix would work as an alternative with rooms and the ability to upload documents.
