this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Good. Discord is the cancer of the free searchable internet.

If you really need communication, use XMPP or Matrix.

And for everything else use stuff like forums and Lemmy and mastodon reddit Twitter whatever. But not closed walled gardens that are not searchable on the net. It's astonishing that so many people gatekeep content behind this Discord crap.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It sucks that Discord is being used for a bunch of large communities that would be better served by a forum for future access, but for just groups of friends, it's way easier to use than anything fediverse. And if I'm chatting with my friends, I don't NEED my shitposting to be easily searchable on Google.

I'm not against using Matrix, but I could only get select people to join me. Discord is where all the more tech-illiterate gamers live and sometimes I wanna hang out with them too. It's not the same as Lemmy, where I want to talk to complete strangers, so it doesn't matter too much if more than half a community is lost by migrating from reddit to lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Yes, that's my reason for still having it too. All my friends are on there. And getting them to change platform is almost as hard as getting a woman to like you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Seriously. The worst is when developers distribute their software on Discord. WHY.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

lol, that, or when they insist discord is the best place to store documentation.....

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

yeah, I particularly hate when mods and romhacks require you to join a discord server to download them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Not all discussions should be public.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

use XMPP or Matrix.

XMPP is mostly dead these days. The protocol is very inefficient (it's all XML) which isn't ideal on mobile devices since it uses more bandwidth to transfer and more processing power to parse.

I work at a big tech company, and at work we use Mattermost hosted outside our data center for cases where our internal stuff doesn't work. It seems fine and I think it's open-source, but I don't know a lot about it.

I've heard about Matrix but haven't tried it yet! Is it good?

What about IRC?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This couldn't be more wrong actually.

Xmpp is far from death. Just because many started to use matrix instead doesn't mean it's dead. Even though matrix is a Ressource and performance nightmare much more so than xmpp will ever be.

I'm an IT specialist and work in IT too. I also selfhosted a lot of stuff publicly.

XMPP is used by many companies like Facebook , Google, Nintendo, GitHub, zoom, WhatsApp, Apple etc.

Xmpp is a an official Standard.unlikr things like matrix.

And if you think that xmpp has battery issues.oeadays then that tells me you used any xmpp app like conversation/snikket etc. like many years ago.

My xmpp Apps use way less battery than any matrix app ever could.

XMPP is fast, reliable and just works. Matrix is a nightmare to selfhost, too.

IRC? Irc has no E2EE whatsoever. Therfore isn't even comparable to xmpp with omemo or matrix.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

XMPP is used by many companies like Facebook , Google, Nintendo, GitHub, zoom, WhatsApp, Apple etc.

Facebook doesn't use XMPP; they use a custom protocol built on top of MQTT. WhatsApp was using a binary equivalent to XMPP (keeping the same stanzas but removing the XML), but I'm not sure if they still are. Do you have a source stating that the other companies use XMPP?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Xmpp is far from death. Just because many started to use matrix instead doesn’t mean it’s dead. Even though matrix is a Ressource and performance nightmare much more so than xmpp will ever be.

How is matrix a performance nightmare? been running a matrix server for years with almost no issues. I guess the only exception was the few times I ran out of hdd space, but that's it.

Xmpp is a an official Standard.unlikr things like matrix.

What's an official standard? Matrix is a protocol just like xmpp and the specs are public, just like with xmpp.

Matrix is a nightmare to selfhost, too.

It's literally as easy as running a docker container and editing a yaml file, at least for synapse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It is very well known that Synapse is a ressource hog. Heck, you can't even enable presence because it would kill your server ressources. Why do you think almost all instances have it disabled? Cmpared to an XMPP server ressource usage, Snypase is a nightmare to host. I also hosted a public server for a long time.

XMPP standards: https://wikiless.ftw.lol/wiki/XMPP https://xmpp.org/extensions/ https://xmpp.org/about/technology-overview/

It’s literally as easy as running a docker container and editing a yaml file, at least for synapse.

just like xmmp is, difference is, matrix snypse uses like 20x the amount of ressources. Just try to host a public server for more than 100 people and you will know.

There is a reason why people make stuff like Conduit or the matrix team works on Dendrite as a new server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, Cinny does look like Discord anyways but it's lack of voice chat is a bummer

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I really disliked my cinny experience, element was much superior

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Totally, I too think that one should prefer Element for multiple reasons (feature richness, app availability, ... I mean, the web widgets absolutely rule imo), after all, it's UI is similar to Discord/Slack but it also feels somewhat different here and there. For the first 1-2 hours it can be a bit overwhelming for newbies. Cinny's UI is much closer to Discord's UI, and it seems fine for chatting as far as I have tried it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

the encryption broke first just for the desktop app, later also for web browser several times, people couldn't see what I was writing to them, all while it worked in element. I was able to create nested rooms but nobody could see them for joining.. the overall experience was painful and it probably cost me my one chance to convince people to get away from discord after their policy change to record audio from calls

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Oh shoot nvm then. I only used it for like two weeks before I went back to Element because of it's feature richness. And even during the time I used it I rarely chatted.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Weird, when was that ? In onboarded 6 non-tech people recently on element and it went fine and easy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yes element works, I use it still. I had issues with cinny as a discord replacement. This was in the time from march-april.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Why does everything need to be free searchable on the internet?

Call me crazy but I don't want my group chats publicly available on the internet. Discord feels... private. I know they have access to all the data, but it's not like a public website, forum, or even an open irc chatroom. It's my walled garden to chat with friends, stream games, game chat, post dumb memes, etc.

That's like saying signal is cancer to free and open internet. Or hell, email because it's not indexed and searchable?

I don't get the sentiment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

people don't just use discord for private communication, and that's what should be searchable. also, you do realize that discord doesn't feature any encryption and some people can read your "private" messages, right?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

undefined> Why does everything need to be free searchable on the internet?

imagine everything is behind a gateway of account + phone number. you wouldn't be here on Lemmy because you would've never heard about it and couldn't search about it, or reddit etc.

It's not hard to get your head around why searching the internet is the most important part to get things going. You wouldn't get ANY information if you need to get your phone number out for every single site/forum/whatever.

And if you have no experience with Discord and how it evolved over the last years, I can't help you. Discord already replaces many sites and forums, or give support via Discord only... now these things are no longer searchable because people somehow like to idle in Discord servers and search for things in there.

If you can't see the issue with this, even right now already and especially in the future if it continous like that, then I can't help you, sorry.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

You cherry picked one line of my post and didn't address the entire context or intent of it. Im not defending companies or businesses using discord as a drop in replacement for forums or support pages. Imo that's a mis use of the tech.

I think that's stupid.

But discord isn't designed for that. It's a chat app (voice and text). I don't want my chats with friends publicly searchable on the internet. That's dumb. Having my emails publically searchable on the internet is dumb too.

If a company started using Signal or Whatsapp for support, would you be clamoring for all signal and Whatsapp messages to be searchable on the internet?

That doesn't make any sense. You seem more upset that companies are misusing Discord than mad at Discord.