If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.
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@danvolchek @cwebber @spritely I found out about a reverse-engineered open-source clone of Discord just yesterday on a discussion about this on Lemmy. Fluxer. The screenshots make it look exactly like Discord, but I haven’t used it. It appears to be in beta: https://fluxer.app
Edit to add that as a Discord clone it’s probably not federated or end to end encrypted, so my post was more a reply to Dan instead of to Christine.
Edit 2: https://spacebar.chat is the reverse engineered one!
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@cwebber @spritely if it can be made as simple to install and run as Mastodon, then I could see it being a great opportunity. I’m advocating for hyper local installs as a way around age verification. https://www.empathyforward.org/2025/12/community-based-fediverse-instances/
My own FOSS efforts are focused on making this easier to manage.
@luggage Is that a real piece of graffiti art? If so, it's amazing.
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@dthompson @polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely That’s because Stoat doesn’t have decentralized federated features. In fact, if you want to connect to another server, you have to compile the client and distribute it.
Saying this, Federation of chat channels might be unnecessary tech. What you need is a client that easily connects to multiple servers (“communities”) simultaneously with a single login, of which that login server can be federated.
@shanie
Is there an audio-focused version of Loops that could do... something with ... Fedi...?
Long Covid eviscerated my brain. IDEK if this makes sense. (Also, depending whenever the UK strips VPNs, I may or may not be able to reply in mid-future.) @dthompson @polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely -
@polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely can you name one that is any good? I can't. matrix probably comes the closest but it has fundamental issues that would be hard to fix retroactively.
@dthompson However bad they are, all of them are literally better than one that doesn't exist at all. With the time left, which option makes more sense, from the standpoint of gaining a viable alternative in the shortest time? I say, pick the most promising or least-bad extant project, and warp-drive that into viailibity, however ugly it is coming out of the gate. You're either going to have to A-Team this, or accept using the thing you want to drop until you have the pretty thing you want.
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If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.
We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.
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@polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely can you name one that is any good? I can't. matrix probably comes the closest but it has fundamental issues that would be hard to fix retroactively.
@dthompson @polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely
I'm curious what the fundamental issues are with Matrix that can't be fixed, and what should've been done differently. It seems like a generally pretty solid project.I like the concept and general idea of "open source Discord" very much, but I'm just not sure why building something from scratch would be better than trying to improve one of the existing Discord-replacements, especially since part of the appeal of Discord was the network-effect driven feeling that "everyone is on it". One mediocre platform that can be improved might actually be better than five great ones.
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@ekaitz_zarraga yeah its bigger than discord, nationalists are trying to clamp down on comms again
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@luggage Is that a real piece of graffiti art? If so, it's amazing.
@wesdym I believe it is. I try to avoid AI generated images if I can. It’s from Unsplash.
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@shanie
Is there an audio-focused version of Loops that could do... something with ... Fedi...?
Long Covid eviscerated my brain. IDEK if this makes sense. (Also, depending whenever the UK strips VPNs, I may or may not be able to reply in mid-future.) @dthompson @polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely@MxVerda …that’s a good question, I don’t know the answer to that. So like an audio version of browsing “TikTok’s” (like spontaneously rolling up on music or podcasts)?
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@ekaitz_zarraga @cwebber @spritely I have to use it for work. Before I used it for a while for fansubbing. I never liked it, but, I have to admit people at work managed to make the company server quite organised. But back in the fansubbing days, it was a mess and people loved the NSFW area.
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@dthompson However bad they are, all of them are literally better than one that doesn't exist at all. With the time left, which option makes more sense, from the standpoint of gaining a viable alternative in the shortest time? I say, pick the most promising or least-bad extant project, and warp-drive that into viailibity, however ugly it is coming out of the gate. You're either going to have to A-Team this, or accept using the thing you want to drop until you have the pretty thing you want.
@wesdym sure, I'm not saying people shouldn't find something that works well enough right now. but I also don't want to build on anything that's out there. it will be too difficult/impossible to retrofit them.
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If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.
We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.
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If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.
We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.
What about https://github.com/TryQuiet/quiet/
Seems quite nice (though I haven't tried it). Other than that, I'd suggest XMPP and not Matrix.
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@polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely can you name one that is any good? I can't. matrix probably comes the closest but it has fundamental issues that would be hard to fix retroactively.
@polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely @dthompson there are no issues which cannot be fixed, it's software
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@polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely @dthompson there are no issues which cannot be fixed, it's software
@kitkat @polyfloyd @cwebber @spritely from a thereotical standpoint, yes. from a practical standpoint, no.
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@MxVerda …that’s a good question, I don’t know the answer to that. So like an audio version of browsing “TikTok’s” (like spontaneously rolling up on music or podcasts)?
@shanie ye! A bit like soundcloud and teamspeak, with a hint of twitch.
Has to be predicated on this model of distinct servers mutually agreeing to share info, though. -
@polyfloyd wow I hadn't seen https://commet.chat before this, thanks, this is a super nice Matrix client. cc @douginamug
@liaizon @polyfloyd thanks! Movement in this space is strong... To add to the list in this thread:
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If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.
We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.
https://zulip.com is a good open source alternative
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If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.
We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.
@cwebber this is going to be way too negative but...
are you really planning on making a "discord replacement" or are you making a spritely demo in the shape of a chat platform? the two are different.
matrix is a demo of their federated state synchronization platform in the shape of a chat platform, not an actual chat platform. you can tell from where their priorities are (e.g. the horrendous state of their moderation tooling. access control that's just Big Number Do More)
discord-style mostly-public communities don't need e2e. they barely need federation to begin with (centralize per community, leave the identity decentralized). this is not something that needs currently unproven technology. sure i have nothing against the tech (after all, you need to actually build it and use it for it to be "proven"), but hyping up what you're building as a "discord replacement", if you're not actually committed to that[1] is disingenuous IMO. there's way too much disappointment in the chat space already and people do not need more.
as i said to someone from roomy.chat a few days before: i would love to be proven wrong (but i doubt it's gonna happen, sorry)
[1]: aren't you also replacing "fedi" as well? sounds like a lot of work for a single org, i'm not convinced y'all can handle the workload of all that combined -
@strypey @maj @ekaitz_zarraga @cwebber @spritely yeah but replying to a post that was in large part about how good discord UX is, recommending matrix is not the idea i would have gone with
