Man I hope so! The beta is out for element support https://call.element.io

Oh hey I remember you from my reddit post :D

To be fair, Matrix is not exactly trying to be a "discord alternative" so much as an "all messaging platforms alternative", but it's still embarrassing that this feature is not present yet. It's been heavily requested by the discord crowd for years, and should have been a higher priority.

As for friends switching, at least Matrix has bridges and puppeting/double-puppeting support. Unfortunately, I don't think discord voice channel bridging/puppeting will ever work, so it's really not that useful in this instance. I know ripcord has voice channel interop so it is technically possible, but it's probably too hacky/abusive to put in officially, and it would probably only work with puppeting.

I feel your pain. I once wanted to guide my buddies away from WA and had them in a Telegram group. And you know what the comment was? 'Boring, nothing happening here.' That's like complaining that nothing happens in a phone booth.... everyone, except for me, went back to WA. 🤷

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TURN is only used as a relay. It's just a low(er)level transport layer, not specific to VoIP. Typically it is used as fallback when P2P communication between the attendees is not possible (for example due to a restrictive firewall).

I haven't had Element crash on me in a while, but that was a big annoyance for me too for a long time.

To clarify, that's for them hosting the service for you, and is intended for enterprises mainly. You can self host element, since it's open source, while only paying your own server costs, or just use an existing instance like on https://app.element.io

Self hosting might make sense on that small of a scale.

If you have Flatpak setup on Debian, Element can be found on and installed from Flathub!

I use web app & it's good enough.

Awesome thanks so much!

fediverse but not selfhosted? i'm not sure. that might almost be opposing requirements.