Discord is banned in Turkiye. The reason is some data theft, blackmail, AI montage photos, etc. As usual, our government made the easiest and most illogical move :)
I am looking for an alternative platform to talk and chat with my friends. Which platforms do you recommend?
The ones I tried:
- Revolt: Voice chat is not stable. They do not accept new registrations.
- Matrix: Unstable overall.
- TeamSpeak: ancient interface. We can still try it.
- XMPP: It has an old interface like TS. Not sure if it has voice channels.
- Your recommendations?
waits for matrix fanboys to still chime in
My client shouldn’t be bugged when I enter a room with a long history, right? Right?
Couldn’t decrypt message
Hey, they’re fixing that. Soon. Really. Any day now. For reals!
(That’s the #1 thing that makes Matrix utterly unusable for me: if there’s more than like, 10 messages, it’s a game of is-it-broken-or-is-it-just-crap.)
I’ve found that Conduit handles it a lot better than Synapse does.
Tbf, they actually are. Element X and the sliding sync are ready I think. If the server and client both use it, I think you can use it today. Or maybe the whole matrix 2.0 where that’s all integrated isn’t pushed into main/master yet. Im any case, I read it was ready maybe a few weeks ago.
Element X is still missing a lot of features, “ready” is an exaggeration I feel
No Spaces support in particular is a dealbreaker for me
Ahh, good point. I have only been “testing” matrix for a year and haven’t enabled sliding sync so haven’t bothered using element x yet.
Well then theyre right- one day it might get done. 😄
It will be done the same year when it’s finally “year of linux”… Sad, but seems to be the case.
Agreed. Element X and sliding sync don’t support sso yet, so I’ve been unable to try them :/
Once those are added I’ll be excited to give them a shot.
I currently use matrix and element with many bridges as my sole chat interface and it’s very slow. So I look forward to speed improvements.
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The lack of interest in it even amongst tech communities and bridges (they can link Matrix servers and Discord servers) constantly being down has kept me from giving Matrix a second chance.
I think it was a Linux gaming community last time that got flooded with hate content after the bridge went down and the Matrix side was left to itself.
Matrix is the only discord clone I know about. Does it have massive problems?
Yes. Without a question of a doubt.
Eh, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There is a lot of room for improvement, but it works pretty well today, especially if your rooms are relatively small (e.g. a few dozen people) and you don’t use an overcrowded instance (e.g. not the main Matrix.org one).
If you can host your own, you can adjust the resources so it works well for you. If you can’t, just avoid the main instance.
Matrix is probably the closest to Discord overall. If Element is bugging out on you, it might be worth trying other clients. Nheko worked well when I tried it, for example. Do note that the matrix.org homeserver is sometimes overloaded, so if you’re having responsiveness issues, choosing or running a different homeserver will probably clear them right up.
Mumble.info is great for voice. If your text chat needs are pretty basic, it might be a good fit. I don’t think it saves message history.
XMPP is a protocol, not an app. If you you saw an interface you didn’t like, you could always just use a different client. I don’t usually recommend it, since setting it up with all the features people usually expect is a bit complicated and error-prone, but it would probably be fine among a small group of friends if one of them has tech skills. I don’t think it offers voice, at least not in any widely-supported way.
Our group uses mumble for voice and discord for text and backup voice or external voice. The voice quality is better, free, faster on mumble. Extremely low server requirements. It technically saves chat history but as server logs, not for the client.
What do you do when you want to share your screen?
For that kind of thing I use jitsi, works great and I have access to a sort of private instance that I use occasionally. Works for just voice too but it can be a little unreliable (the last two times I had a weird issue where the others suddenly couldn’t hear me and vice versa but reloading fixed it) so something else might be better for that…
I use Steam Chat for playing games with family and friends. It has better audio quality than discord in my opinion, and you can make groups (something like Discord servers) too. It doesn’t have all the functionality of servers, but the basic idea is there.
I am actually surprised nobody mentioned it yet Why use some third party application, when you can use the Steam’s one.
It’s not like the OP is concerned about privacy. They were using discord. They didn’t say it has to be open source.
For talking outside of gaming or away from PC, I use signal.
IRC.
irssi for cli, hexchat for gui
I setup a Mattermost server for me and the boys. It’s more slack than discord. But chat, rooms and voice all worked. Push notifications worked on android and Apple. But, I had to admit defeat. No one wants to leave discord because they all have at least 1 friend who won’t leave it.
I tried to self hosted matrix, but it suffered the same feigned interest.
Discord is banned in Turkiye.
Considering the nature of these programs, I think the most important thing to hone in on is: what’s popular in Turkiye? Features and functionality don’t mean squat if no one’s around to enjoy them.
…tad off topic, but this thread is making me miss xFire. That shit was better 10 years ago (maybe more like 15? idk, I’m old) than Discord was at its peak. …litigated out of existence by Yahoo’s frivolous weaponization of our legal system. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Edit - Fuck you, Yahoo.
Ohhh, xFire, that takes me back. To a time of dedicated servers and not that bullshit service game fuckery.
xFire was great, didn’t know the whole yahoo thing
Kinda liked the separate applications for voice and chat, we used ventrilo over teamspeak for reasons I don’t recall but all of that is just ancient history at this point (was using that like literally 20 years ago)
Eh, I’m honestly trying to give Yahoo another shake now that Google is so terrible. That said, Yahoo still sucks to use, and it lost most of the charm that it had in the 90s. And BTW, the xFire suit was around 20 years ago, so you may be older than you want to admit.
the xFire suit was around 20 years ago, so you may be older than you want to admit.
There comes a point where it kinda just blurs together. I’m old enough that when people ask how old I am, I have to stop and think what year it is, and do some quick head math to figure out the answer.
Dang, that hits too close to home for me too. I have kids, and sometimes I forget how old I am because I care far more about how old they are that it just isn’t as important to me.
Teamspeak 3 is ancient, but works.
However there is a new version of Teamspeak (TS5) which is much closer to Discord and looks much nicer. You could give that a try
There was a TS4?
There’s guilded, have an old guild leader in tech that always tries to get us to be guinea pigs for different voips, and that one isn’t terrible if discord isn’t available.
Ventrilo, is that even around anymore?
Mumble wasn’t too bad,Alternatively mumble and murmur, but the setup is more elaborate.
Jitsi meet is what I use for calls with my friends. You can continue using revolt or matrix or something for the text channels.
Calyx Jitsi instance has been down for months though. 🤔
Ah ok. I didn’t check but that’s the one I’ve used in the past. meet.jit.si I believe still works but you might need to make an account.
There isn’t a full replacement for Discord out there, it’ll have to be old school with multiple things together.
Teamspeak is great for voice comms (or Mumble). And you could use Matrix or XMPP for text chat. Matrix should be a lot better if you either self-host or join a smaller server that isn’t so overloaded all the time.
For game streaming Broadcast Box paired with OBS Studio seems like a good option for low latency streaming.
You could self host revolt.
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Signal should still have a desktop app, I believe
If only it synced messages with the mobile app properly
I use it on mobile and desktop regularly without sync issues. Has it always had that problem for you? I generally always get messages at the exact same time without fail.
I get them on desktop before my phone gives me a notification lol.
I don’t have it on desktop anymore, but if I install it now, the desktop app won’t have any conversations that I have on my phone. I use a Matrix bridge instead that doesn’t forget messages.
Correct, it will only have all future messages. Nothing historic. But it should sync literally everything going forward.
Well, I don’t like this. The idea of sacrificing messaging history in favour of illusory security gains doesn’t sit well with me. Same goes for Signal backups.
Req if not using mobile tho?
It does
matrix: unstable overall
“Unstable” is an understatement, and this comes from a girl who uses it all day every day.
Isn’t it generally better if you use a smaller instance/host your own? Most of the complaints I’ve heard have been on the busier instances.
That said, I only use it occasionally to catch up on dev updates.
My current instance has ~160 users, and it’s okay. I once used a friend’s instance, where I was the 2nd user. It was very bad. That might in part be the fact that it was running Conduwuit though.
XMPP/Jabber has whatever interface you choose (determined by the client you use), and does voice pretty darn well.
I’m currently using Jmp.chat as a SIM/data provider, and they provide an XMPP account via Snikket. I can connect to that account with pretty much any XMPP/Jabber client.
To me, XMPP/Jabber is the most flexible, because it’s a protocol, and you choose which parts you want. And you can choose which clients you use. I have 2 clients on my phone and one on my laptop. They all work fine with the same account, with messages showing up at all simultaneously. One client (Snikket) has multiple accounts in it. The thing is XMPP/Jabber as a protocol is like SMTP - it’s a standard, so all clients can communicate with each other, if they support the same features (eg OMEMO encryption, which is popular now).
Alternatively check out:
Teleguard, it’s from the folks at SwissCows. They claim E2E, and from the way you connect devices, and that you can’t recover an account from them, I tend to believe it. Though I haven’t seen a third party evaluation (I belive they’re closed source, unfortunately). So do with that what you will.
Simplex Chat, self hostable, they claim it’s very secure. I’ve used it some, the phone app is a bit heavy on ram use.
There are numerous others out there.
xmpp is a protocol, it doesn’t have interface. you may be thinking about some specific software using xmpp, in that case you have to say what software you are talking about.
Which is exactly what I said. You get the interface you choose.
If you or one of your friends can self-host, my group used mumble before discord. I still don’t really know why we switched.
When it got banned? My Friend is from Turkiye. He still used it.
Todays news
https://www.turkiyetoday.com/turkiye/turkiye-bans-discord-amid-concerns-over-platform-safety-62896/
For now, Discord users in Türkiye face limited access to the platform, though it remains unclear whether a full ban will be implemented in the coming days.
Still working for me on hotel wifi.
Edit: it won’t launch on my laptop now. Stuck trying to update. Still works on my phone.
Some groups have allegedly used the “901” tag in their usernames to identify themselves, raising alarms among officials and parents alike
What does this mean? I can’t seem to find info on what a 901 tag even is.
Looks like a gang, similar to the 764 gang in the US.
Oh Thanks for info
To those suggesting mumble, are there any good guides out there? The website is shockingly bad for introductory information.
https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble-docker
myself, I run a docker container of mumble in casaOS
its very easy to install via docker as mentioned above. Mumble is very lightweight. You could run the server on your desktop in the background easily or even on your router, there is a package for openwrt. The sound quality is awesome, voice is e2e encrypted and bandwidth should not be a problem either for a couple of people in the chat while you are playing.
