Discord

Discord is super prevalent these days, as i'm sure you're all aware it's also incredibly bad from a /sec/ and privacy standpoint. Finding solutions for the text based parts of discord is pretty easy, but what about voice chat? As for discord alternatives i know there's tavrn which is still pretty buggy and early stages, also doesn't have voice call, tox has voice call and chat but again it's not super reliable, messages don't send half the time, voice is laggy etc. Telegram group chats aren't secure. Signal seems pretty good but it's not really designed for the same usecase as discord. What about teamspeak and mumble, I don't know how good those are from a sec standpoint, I would be interested in information on them. XMPP could work too? Any other ideas?

>Finding solutions for the text based parts of discord is pretty easy Spoonfeed me, is there some open-source client? I can't find anything.

>>10515 Well, irc for starters.

There's Riot/Matrix. There were some sec problems at some point, but that was a while before the 1.0 release. If there've been any problems since then, I haven't heard of them.

this thread: comfort is not secure people looking for secure comfort

>>10518 That depends on who you're talking to. For many, lack of security causes discomfort, and the things that you're referring to as comfortable don't make a difference. The problem when it comes to communication methods is that the people communicating have to agree on what to use. If there is a disagreement about what is the most comfortable, then at least one person will have to sacrifice that comfort. Unfortunately, the majority often does not take security into account when deciding what is comfortable, so someone who derives comfort from security will usually be outvoted.

>>10513 Check out right. Its open source. Federated (Decentralized) , supports E2E encryption, end to end encrypted calls and video and file sharing. There is a web client, ios, andriod and linux. Checkout the privacytools.io instance and channels.

>>10522 RIOT

>>10516 Sure, but I thought OP was referring to 'solutions' for discord itself.

>>10513 Teamspeak/Mumble allow you to run your own server. Immediate more potential than disc. I don't know however if they changed and do some data gathering themselves now too. Only used both in the distant past and back then they were clean. TS from what i remember allows you to view other peoples connection however so you have to either trust all members are clean or plan accordingly and hide your ass connecting to it. As for your original question you could use text2speech if you really cared about staying anon on disc. Theres convincing software that sounds real without a hint of robot.

>>10513 I'd recommend XMPP/Matrix.

GNU Jami is very promising. It uses end-to-end encryption. Last time I used it it was still called Ring and was very unstable but that was almost a year ago.

The main problem youre going to face with any of these is getting people to switch over to a different platform. I grudgingly use discord because that's where the people are who are talking about things I want to talk about. Many such cases.

>>10530 I let myself being fiddled in the ass because that's what other people let do with their asses.

Seems like riot is the common suggestion here, i'll look into it and report back if it fits my usecase. >>10518 >comfort being able to communicate with people is kind of the point of the internet? It's not some luxury, I want to talk to friends and peers without having my soykaf fuarrrked. Is that unreasonable? >>10524 i meant sollutions for secure-enough text comunication, nbot discord specifically sorry if i phrased it wierdly. >>10530 yeah this is kind of the problem I have too, except i can probably get my friends to move somewhere else it just has to work well enough for them to into.

Use xmpp with OMEMO.

>>10531 It's not about bandwagoning, it's about being able to talk to the people you want to talk to. If you needed to get your ass fiddled in order to communicate with other people who get their asses fiddled, then maybe you'd have a relevant point. As it stands, that's not the case, so you're just spouting irrelevant nonsense.

xmpp and mumble for me. Neither as good as the mainstream choices of course, but they can do the job.

>>10530 I've also had this problem. I have explored a variety of other options, but the thing is that most people, beside a few that really want to talk to me, would be willing to move. So, I've been exploring alternative clients for the Discord server, as a middle ground. CLI/TUI clients sounded appealing in theory but were soykaf in practice. For the time being I've found Ripcord, it's GUI but very lightweight as opposed to running Electron. Using an alternative client and fiddling with settings neuters to some extent Discord's ability to read from you. The only really lacking features I can see is not changing username/pfp, video call support, and notification sounds. I'm still very much interested in finding a privacy-respecting solution (the idea of a self-hosted Mumble server seems appealing these days), but in the mean time this is what I'm doing, as I've run a server with a tight-knit small group for a few years now.

I wonder how Skype managed to do peer-to-peer video conference calls in 2005, yet no free software has come close in replicating it up to this day.

>>10529 >GNU Jami is very promising. It uses end-to-end encryption. Last time I used it it was still called Ring and was very unstable but that was almost a year ago. They changed many things since then, group chat feature will be added soon.

I may as well mention this, even though it's proprietary: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ I refuse to use Discord in any way, but if I had to or die I'd probably use this. >>10513 The main issue with Discord is how it consumes groups. I'm excluded from some people I'd like to interact with more regularly, because they have a Discord "server". Lainchan has an IRC and a Mumble, so those are probably pretty good options. A major issue for any of these is being able to use them from Tor or other proxies, which I know Discord doesn't like, from what I've read. >>10532 >It's not some luxury, I want to talk to friends and peers without having my soykaf fuarrrked. Is that unreasonable? There are corporations actively trying their damnedest to make it unreasonable, but I agree with you, it's not unreasonable to want this. If I let Discord sink its fangs into me, I could be less resistant to the next social soykaf spiller that comes along, and I won't fall down that hole just to discuss things with others. I'm able to communicate with the people I want to through email, so I'm mostly left out, but not entirely, which is about as good as it's going to get for now. I'm going to try to convince them to move to something better or even offer to set it up for them, once Discord inevitably implodes.

Discord is Slack for gamers raised in popularity on paid "testimonials" from Twitch streamers how it helped them avoid DDoS attacks unlike Skype or self-hosted Teamspeak servers were vulnerable to. It's premise is identical to Cloudflare's DDoS racket: sow fear and consolidate power. It was just around time when Skype was turned into turd by Microsoft, and Teamspeak/Raidcall/Mumble conference infrastructure "for gamers" started looking stale itself heavily lacking in features not dedicated to voice chat only for concurrent era (2014). I still remember their fairly good performance on WoW/EvE raids managing hundreds of participants in one virtual server all speaking in sub-channels, whereas Discord is repeatedly reported as being unusable for calls during weekends and evenings, that's the price to be paid for lack of decentralized self-organizing hubs Skype used to have in it's peer-to-peer era and putting eggs of all gamers and insider trades into one basket of one company which owns a limited number of server racks in few datacenters. There are two free Slack-for-developers softwares: Rocket Chat and Mattermost, both of which care about prioritizing groupware features of Slack and integration with repositories/ticketing systems, without native voice chat or screen sharing. Rocket Chat has some sort of federation function currently in development according to their documentation, but still lacks in basic features such as encrypted chatrooms behind XMPP or Matrix, I have no idea why they try to reinvent the wheel once again. Speaking of Matrix, it actually tried to bring Slack+Discord graphical interface and functionality together with XMPP/Email-style federation, and probably is the most successful at the moment. Their main client is webshit memory sinkhole with spyware, but this goes as the price since "native" OS widgets are abhorrent on any platform and other clients are either TUI LARP or gnomeshit.

>>10530 Be an influencer. Just say no to bot net and slowly migrate your circle. Can we get an official lain matrix room ?

>>10542 If you want dirt on discord, their company leader is a guy known to scam in ff14. A bit obscure but shows the character type.

>>10543 There is a #lain room on matrix.org, but so far its only used to display images of lain. You can use it as a chat if you want, or make a new one if its really for lainchan. I also have a friends who runs his own homeserver, im sure he wouldnt mind hosting in case someone minds matrix.org.

I hosted a matrix server and explored Riot. You can tell they've invested a lot into the UI. There's some 'dark pattern design' going on too, like their "data collection dialog." They want you to consent. Encryption isn't on by default, and when you do turn it on the program prompts you to 'backup' your keys where "we'll store an encrypted copy of your keys on our server." There is so much push to harvet data from you in some way or another. For an apparently "open source," "private," and "federated" program there seems to be an insidious push to be the polar opposite. The project wants to eventually move away from matrix usernames to phone numbers or e-mail addresses to identify users. I couldn't get stickers (I'm not even sure what stickers are to be honest, but I assume they're like emojis) to work because the program wanted me to enable "manage interactions," and this is the description for that function: "use an integration manager (scalar.vector.im) to manage bots, widgets, and sticker packs. Integration Managers receive configuration data, and can modify widgets, send room invites, and set power levels on your behalf." In the client GUI there is no option to select another integration manager besides scalar.vector.im. Apparently you can self-host this integration manager though I have not experimented with this, and if I did self host how to I tell me client to use it given there's no field to specify this in the client GUI? Maybe it has to be configured on the server's end. Why do you even need this middle-ware just to use whatever stickers are? Apparently Riot was rebranded from Vector after consultation from a brand consultancy firm. What foss group has money to spend on a brand consultancy firm? There seems to be too much money behind matrix and Riot for me to not see it as suspicious. The program looks pretty cool, and I imagine this is the closest you'll get to something like Discord. (Disclaimer: I have never used discord, but I've seen images, so I might be completely off on this point.) I would want to use this program, but something just doesn't seem right. It's as if this project was created to discredit critics. It's open source. It has encryption. You can run your own instances. Yet it uses Google services. The company wants you to upload your encryption keys to their servers. The company wants you to enable an integration manager which can invite "users" to your encrypted room chats, which would then render your encryption absolutely void if they silently and invisibly added a spook. (Not sure if this is actually possible mind you.) If anyone actually knows something about the company behind Riot perhaps they could shed some light on their situation? Or a more tech-literate person on the ability to actually self-host this program without it leaking data to some master server.

>>10548 Why when we already have an irc server with more than one room/channel?

>>10557 E2E encryption isnt on by default because they have to implement managment and cross signing of keys between devices in a user friendly format. They are actively working to make a robust system before enabling it. How the hell do you think you are supposed to verify keys between devices if they arent stored in an all accesible server? Do you think normal people are going to want to physicially move keys between 6 devices every time they get a new phone? They have money and can spend it on consulting because unlike most projects they are actually trying to go beyond the Dwarf Fortress experience.

it kind of depends on how you use discord. riot is probably the closest feature-for-feature replacement. jitsi is also similar but the focus is more on small group video calls like google hangouts. there's mumble if you just want it for video games. if you use discord as an sms/whatsapp replacement than signal will do what you're looking for, but it is really aimed at talking to people who have your phone number already rather than public multimedia chat rooms. jami and tox work best for 1:1 calls but do have some multi party chat features, and both are peer to peer so you wouldn't have to self host or find an instance you trust. of course there's also xmpp and irc but getting either to be properly multimedia is complicated and not widely supported by clients. >>10529 i wish jami had more options for clients. for now its just this awful electron app. that's the only aspect i can think of where the tox ecosystem is better.

>>10557 i agree with a lot of what you said here and honestly i get a similar feeling from signal, with their often iron-fisted control over the entire ecosystem and refusal to budge on issues like phone numbers as ID. it's always weird to see ostensibly non-profit FOSS dev organizations prioritize mass appeal over support for niche privacy/security features. it makes you wonder what they stand to gain from mass adoption. the most charitable interpretation is they're crunching some "greater good" utility metric and think the benefit of getting people off whatsapp or whatever outweighs the cost of centralization and other anti-features. a more pragmatic interpretation is it's an ego thing, or a personal power thing, or they just measure "success" of the project by how many people use it. the most pessimistic interpretation is that they're hoping to pivot the whole thing into a startup pitch once the user base is established. All that being said, I'll still use them where appropriate. I'm just apprehensive about it.

>>10561 >How the hell do you think you are supposed to verify keys between devices if they arent stored in an all accesible server Usually some kind of transitive trust is used for this. For example, each device could have its own key which is independent of your actual identity/message key. You sign these keys with your identity key and post the signature to the server for message routing purposes and public key discovery. Then you use device keys to establish an encrypted channel and copy the identity key between devices. Another option is to essentially treat each "identity" as a group chat session, using a scheme similar to PGP's multiple recipients option. This basically does the same thing as the last example, except the "identity key" is symmetric and generated dynamically for each session. You just send each device attached to an identity it's own encrypted copy of the "session key" and then use that to encrypt the actual messages instead of the device keys. This tends to be the better option from a security standpoint but the tradeoff is that the sender has to obtain keys for every recipient device instead of just using a single public key, so discovery is more complicated. In both cases, from the user's perspective, all they'd have to do is click "add a new device" and scan a QR code or something. GNU Jami actually has a really clever way of doing multiple devices without even involving a server. it involves committing what essentially amounts to TOTP token to a distributed ledger. I agree that having some kind of server infrastructure makes a lot of problems easier.. like not needing to implement a blockchain to do peer discovery.. but the actual key management aspect can definitely been done largely peer to peer.

I think Rocket Chat is a pretty good alternative.

It's also bloatware and a ring where you have to be perfectly behaved to not be derezzed by overmoderation. fuarrrk discord.

>>10518 The main reason is that only >conspiracy theorists >programmers >degenerates >people who chose internet privacy as their hobby ever choose a platform that isn't the #1 most used platform on the basis of E2E encryption or "they don't spy on me". It's a bit like going on imageboards, you don't get to see the full range of people. There is a demographic to it. If you want to see people outside the demographic for whatever reason, you have to switch. And no matter how lousy people are, it's not like the grass on the other side is that much greener. I even wonder how many people who use soykaf like Tox have actually had a conversation with it outside of hello let's test Tox with another privacy hobbyist. Don't shoot the messenger, it's just how it is.

>>10568 >GNU Jami actually has a really clever way of doing multiple devices without even involving a server. Yes, but tell me honestly how many people you talk to on Jami. Nobody uses it.

telegram has voip

>>10682 Telegram's server side is proprietary. I'm amazed how they were able to swindle people into downloading their trash application under the premise of encrypted open source messaging app and yet they require you to share your phone number with them.

>>10683 you can easily buy a prepaid phone/sim card for that once you got your account you can literally do anything also even though their server side is unclear, i kinda believe them when they say that they wont give data even to governments

>>10684 >you can easily buy a prepaid phone/sim card for that Have you ever done this? They're rather expensive for a secondary number if you want to retain it and a pain in the ass to acquire and use anonymously. > i kinda believe them when they say that they wont give data even to governments Why do you trust them? Why do you even put yourself in a position where you have to trust them? Even signal, for all its faults, doesn't require you to trust open whisper systems with more than metadata since its e2e encrypted. Telegram isn't. They can read your messages whenever they want. It uses the exact same encryption as discord.. i.e. TLS. Let me emphasize this: telegram's encryption scheme is no more secure or private than discord's (and at least o. Discord you don't need a phone line). You would 100% be better off using whatsapp than telegram. Look into it, it's that bad. Telegram is entirely marketing hype. Their privacy claims are either demonstrably bullshit or impossible to verify because they don't release source. Why do you trust them again?

>>10685 telegram is e2e too

>>10686 it's really not, it is for example impossible for me to have an e2e chat with you if you use a phone while I use any other platform. Group chats are exempt too. Literally the only scenario in which e2e applies is when two users are in a 1:1 chat on the same platform and activate an e2e conversation by some setting. But that new e2e conversation can only be used on the device it was initiated on. All chats are by default unencrypted. Ironically, your comment pretty much only reinforces >>10683 point. This makes you have to trust their server side, real crypto would not require you to trust their server side.

>>10687 >that new e2e conversation can only be used on the device it was initiated on isn't that literally the whole point of e2e???

>>10686 If you you consider first "e" to be your phone, and second - FSB and bunch of affiliated advertisers, then yes.

>>10688 not exactly. there are ways to get the double ratchet to play nice with multiple devices without compromising e2e properties. it just means the server can't read your messages. you can even do e2e group chat. telegram can't but signal, xmpp+omemo, and (i think) matrix can.

>>10513 If you want to use Discord with minimal privacy then run it on your browser with a proxy. There's not much you can do about them reading your messages though. You could use some pgp encryption but then the recipient would have to do the same so it's pretty convoluted.

>>10622 There's an active tox groupchat that originated here that's been around for years. Add lainbot: 2167ED20D40E1A5557A7AEFE16D0E110920382A9F3AA6C6597EA71DF4E499C5942CD0768F260

>>12995 Cyberia ? The "Club" is full of neckbeard autists whose inanity is interrupted only by their vulgarity. Its just /g/. It seems so much of the internet is just search for "Deeper" places to talk, seeking something unsaid, that never comes. The 'deeper' you go the more inane. Lainchan building a webring, lainzine, n-o-d-e zine, BUIDL are our best hope. The mystery cults mysteries are false. I am a deepnet hopeful, but I think we have to build it, not find it.

>>13006 >It seems so much of the internet is just search for "Deeper" places to talk, seeking something unsaid, that never comes. The 'deeper' you go the more inane. You put it perfectly into words. But funny enough, I arrived here looking for that, and its satisfying that need in some sorta way.

mumble is great in alternative to discord, there is a lainchan server

If you're looking for a protocol which is somewhat similar to Discord which is also secure and private, I would recommend the Matrix protocol. Its reference client's user interface looks similar to Discord's and it supports voice chat along with video. However, the protocol is not without its drawbacks, with its most used server implementation being very inefficient (though a new, more efficient replacement is being developed) and its userbase being largely homogenous with the Element client and "matrix.org" homeserver. If you intend on using it, I would recommend avoiding said client and homeserver for the sake of decentralization, although avoiding the "matrix.org" homeserver is a good idea regardless due to how slow it is (do know that alternative clients don't yet support calling, but you can just use an application like Jiti Meets Electron along with it and be fine.)

Mumble, IRC, XMPP etc are all fine on their own but the only one capable of mass adoption is Matrix.

>>13006 I remember when I was 15

>>10557 the matrix protocol is decentralized, pal. you're complaining about one client when there are a dozen to choose from.

Matrix is like kicking dead whales down the beach (electron client, and all the others is like kicking dead whales down the beach), not to mention their privacy issues: https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-matrix.org XMPP is very easy to setup, but all the clients is like kicking dead whales down the beach (dino and conversations are the one that is like kicking dead whales down the beach less, and just werks, but if you want the TRUE least bad xmpp client, try mcabber (doesn't support omeme) For voice chat, just use mumble, works and it's easy to setup.

>>13130 This looks to simply be an issue of the matrix and vector instances, anybody can setup their own instance.

I don't know about discord but in the past I heard there was a plugin for Skype where you could use a connection meant for test signals or just checking peoples activity status as an alternative connection for the voice and video calls as an attempt to increase security. I can't see why someone couldnt do something similar with Discord just altering how it functions to make it more secure.

>>10686 NO. E2EE is end-to-end encryption where the "ends" are users not computers. This means that Telegram by default is not E2EE. Only if enabled with "secret chat" it will have such feature, otherwise it's all in Telegram's servers as it's also synced across devices you logged in.

>>10685 discord asks for a phone number after you use it for a few days or so. and for telegram, i don't know anybody who uses it for privacy. most of my friends said that they downloaded it because of the porn groups. same applies for me but i use it for nazi groups. i have to admit it's really comfy. they still use whatsapp for messaging and facebook/instagram/twitter/reddit for memes.

>>13151 Telegram's E2EE has been proven completely insecure anyways

>>13110 don't pretend you weren't just as jaded at 15 as you are now

>>13170 When I was 15, girls used IRC and Jabber.

>>13170 Not jaded, anon. Self-unaware. Thinking you're better and smarter than everyone else when in reality the thoughts that you think are interesting and insightful are disregarded as mundane and juvenile by wiser and people who have heard and seen a lot more than you, which is why they aren't any more interested in talking to you than you are to them.

Matrix is the only answer. The devs say that a Discord-like community system should be rolled out by the end of the year. Voice chat is good for person to person, but group chats use Jitsi. Off topic: Teamspeak 5 will supposedly use the Synapse Matrix server with extensions. >>10516 Completely obsolete. >>10517 Pretty exciting given the new developments in the ecosystem. Can't wait to self host Dendrite 1.0!

>>13006 > I am a deepnet hopeful, but I think we have to build it, not find it. When people talk like this I am convinced none of you go outside. At DEFCON and BlackHat there are thousands of people who network with each other and give rise to their own "deepnet" crews and communities. Lain is a public site and most of us came from /g/. I don't know what you were expecting. Venture into meatspace and the people who vibe with you will invite you into their worlds.

>>10557 Nearly a year later, E2E is on by default in DMs, and rooms have the option selected in the config box when you are first creating it. The Matrix guys are pretty great people, no idea why you made this smear post.

>>13291 >but group chats use Jitsi Wait are you saying matrix group chats use jitsi? >Can't wait to self host Dendrite 1.0! Same here. I've been using XMPP because synapse is soykafty and prosody is so easy to set up but I feel like matrix has more potential in the long run.

>>10513 matrix is the closest because the modularity allows you to do like jitsi for voice calls and have bots and everything but the services are not knit together well and the element/riot GUI is trash compared to discords. normal people like discord cuz everyone knows about it and all the services are knit together well. face it: irc, xmpp, matrix don't even come close to the zero fuss justwerx of discord. That means you waste time wrangling the interface and setup in order to get a bit of extra data privacy -- which is something normal people cant see immediately and is therefore hard for them to understand the importance of.

>>10538 It's probably the lack of high-performing , dedicated, infrastructure. And the desire to decentralise most open source chat projects (Which isn't really a bad thing, in reality).

I am tired of being completely isolated just because I refuse to use Discord. What's the best way to run this spyware cancer on a Linux system? Firejail? Dedicated browser? It's pointless for me to use any other protocol because I will meet literally nobody I want to meet on it.

>>15009 the default firejail profile for discord is pretty restrictive especially if you use AppArmor. If you don't have close friends who primarily use discord, it's not worth installing.

>>15009 I have a dedicated lightweight VM for Discord client. The VM uses a different VPN node (needed to phone verify with a $0.50 nordic SMS verification service, since free ones will most likely get invalidated after a few hours when another person tries it). Overkill? Maybe.

>>15012 >needed to phone verify I hate this so much, but I'm going to go insane if I don't start socializing again and all the people with my interests simply don't care about Discord's privacy crap. Why are people so goddamn compliant? >>15010 So I just install the .deb and run it in firejail?

>>10525 >Theres convincing software that sounds real without a hint of robot. Any examples? I wasn't able to find any open source programs that actually are on this level. The closest I could find is flite, and it's still very poor.

>>15014 He's lying. No TTS program sounds natural, let alone open source ones. The best I've found that is open source is Festival.

I've never really looked that much into it, but why did nobody bother making a better front end to Groomcord? Is it because of the login requirement? I imagine their server would ban you when trying to connect through Tor anyway, so maybe there's just not much of a point?

>>15104 Honestly, a good question. From what I've seen you can use your security token to both view, and send messages.

>>10516 there is a problem though, if the people you talk to dont use irc and only use discord, you will either have to leave them or convince them to leave their other friends somehow. alternative social platforms are fairly unfeasable because they rely on a user base and its not easy to get one out of nothing without any advertising

>>15104 I think its cause even ricing plugins like BetterDiscord get people derezzed off of Discord Even something like this https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless has people getting derezzed, they're total nazis when it comes to using anything but the app. Hell even using discord on a browser is a limited experience where they try their damnedest to force you to use the app. As for pre-existing ones like Ripcord I am not sure! They are so few and far between that I only hear about their existence and not their value.

>>15224 >they're total nazis when it comes to using anything but the app. Hell even using discord on a browser is a limited experience where they try their damnedest to force you to use the app I suppose they want to squeeze every bit of data they can get out of you. If you try to register (or maybe even login) to groomcord using Tor Browser, even without using Tor it will ask you for your phone number. Meanwhile I have used a different browser (ungoogled chromium) with Tor, but default settings and it went through fine. That makes me think that they will ask you for more personal information the more means of tracking/identifying you block, which makes sense to me. I don't know what they're planning, maybe they just see data that they can not reliably tie to a persona (outside groomcord) useless?

>>14005 I'm not >>13291, but yep - they use jitsi in a slightly annoying web wrapper. If element get there own voice chat rolled out I'll be very happy

>>10513 For cyberspace and internet friends I use * IRC * Jabber * Mumble * Element And then for IRL friends and family I use Signal.

>>10513 Oh soykaf, I use Tox as well. I only remembered it when someone mentioned Jami.

GUESS WHO'S TRYING TO ACQUIRE DISCORD? https://nitter.snopyta.org/business/status/1374193210126331905

>>15235 If it's real, I hope it happens.

>>15237 It isn't real, 100% clickbait

Need some help. I use discord for college and a few friends. My school is dumb enough to use it for some of their clubs and classes, and it's nonnegotiable. They won't set up a bridge either. I got locked out of my account and discord is demanding my phone number to regain access for verification, and won't let me make a new account either. I also have some important files/information I need to get from some of my DMs. Even contacted support about it and they refused to unlock my account unless I verify with a phone number. It's also noted on their support site that illegitimate online burner services will not work, and I'm trying to avoid a ban. Does anyone know what's the best option for a cheap sim card just for the sake of activating the account? Is it even possible to purchase one legally from a brick and mortar with cash without giving them my information with a signup online, or is it just dark web stuff? I might want to buy another one after for signal/telegram. Just don't want them to be linked. I hate this bullshit. Especially the fact that it makes me look/sound sketchy, but I just don't want to give those fuarrrkers my phone number. US by the way.

Also I know there are burner apps or whatever but I use a dumbphone. fuarrrk your googleshit. .....actually maybe I'll just ask someone else to download one of them and give them the money for it.

>>15464 Can you not write to your school in a humbly written letter that explains your situation? This is getting really insane. If your teacher won't listen, perhaps try their higher-ups? I know they're likely to not give a fuarrrk, but try to appeal to their reason and maybe hope that they will actually wake up and try and excuse you for not being able to use discord? (because in any case, they're not going to switch to something like matrix)

>>15466 Nothing will come from it. Zoom is already a requirement.

>>15466 Also- there are still things on that account I need to obtain regardless, even if I were to stop using the account afterwards.

>>13291 >Completely obsolete. are you sure https://youtu.be/0R--_ATzE6o http://www.kvirc.net/doc/cmd_dcc.voice.html

https://jami.net/Jami seems like the most promising alternative to discord. >inb4 nobody uses it Yeah well nobody uses any of the other alternatives either so maybe get your community on it. https://jami.net/

>>15520 >P2P what about NAT

>>15526 ICE. Tor effectively has an analogue to TURN built-in. Other overlay networks can be used to achieve a similar effect, including some meshnets that don't have anonimity as a design goal but simply intend to mess around with IPv6 and different routing models.

>>15534 uncertain IM it's useless IM. Isn't good choice for normal people, unfortunately when normal people don't want XMPP/IRC/SIP/Matrix, i prefer skype.

>>15520 A Mumble + Matrix client would kill Discord.

>>15535 How is it uncertain? An example of a pre-configured, works out-of-the-box TURN-enabled chat program, Jami, was mentioned earlier in this thread.

>>15566 >>15568 hi same user

>>15569 Considering I didn't check in until just now, I have no idea what that post was. But it wasn't mine.

>>15520 Nope. It is like kicking dead whales down the beach ass.

>>10541 It has been over a year and little has changed. One of my close contacts hasn't responded to me in months now. This is like kicking dead whales down the beach. I'm lately wondering about methods of scraping a Discord server for the conversations and submitted files, without making an account. Would anyone here know anything about this or have any experience with it?

>>16680 Discord Chat Exporter, a good CLI tool. You can scrape whatever you want in any way you want it.

>>13006 What do you expect? 90% of lainons are /g/ immigrants, and the only reason lainchan isn't like /g/ is because of heavy moderation. So an unmoderated lainchan groupchat is, surprise surprise, like /g/.

discord is honestly the best thing on the market right now for its particular use case. Matrix has some really shoddy Mozilla-like engineering foibles going on, the backend is a mess making it de facto centralized. making XMPP discord-like involves tacking on a bunch of stuff to a protocol that's already filled with tacked-on stuff. Mumble was never that great. Maybe one day there will be a discord killer but until then it's like the situation for video games was back in around 2015. Just isolate it the best you can if you have friends to talk to there.

>>16797 Matrix is not centralized at all. The whole identity server thing is entirely optional for those who wish to link phone numbers/emails to their accounts to be publicly searchable on purpose, for whatever insane reason they would want to do that.

>>16797 >Matrix has some really shoddy Mozilla-like engineering foibles going on, Could you be more specific? >the backend is a mess making it de facto centralized. The specification if a bit meh, but it's certainly not centralized. >making XMPP discord-like involves tacking on a bunch of stuff to a protocol that's already filled with tacked-on stuff. Could you be more specific? >Mumble was never that great. It has great audio quality, you can customize it a ton, and self hosting it is very easy. Could you be more specific? >Maybe one day there will be a discord killer but until then it's like the situation for video games was back in around 2015. Just isolate it the best you can if you have friends to talk to there. I personally use Matrix in conjunction with Jitsi (rather than Mumble as Mumble doesn't support screen share unfortunately) and it has been fine.

>>10517 >>13291 (let me preface this by saying I was an early adopter of Matrix back in 2016 and have ran my own Synapse servers since then) I'm sorry anons, but Matrix is honestly a pile of trash. I like it in concept, I think they have some pretty cool ideas that they're trying to implement (P2P Matrix for instance is a cool idea), but at this point I'm convinced that the people behind the project have zero idea what the fuarrrk they're doing. The only feature-complete client for Matrix is Element, and the only feature-complete server is Synapse; both are official reference implementations. That alone should be a huge red flag. If a protocol is supposedly open but so difficult to implement that only the official implementations are up to spec, that's a big problem. There's no point in having an open spec if other implementations can't compete with the official ones. Hell, Synapse is basically the only homeserver implementation other than Dendrite, another official Matrix project. Not only that, but Synapse is pretty resource-hungry and can be painful to admin (I've been doing it for years like I said), which is why most of the traffic on Matrix is from the official server. So not only the client/server implementations, but even the network itself are heavily centralized onto the people developing Matrix. And I don't have to go into why Element is bad (webshit). I have 8GB of RAM on my laptop and already have to deal with resource-hogging web technologies from other stuff (browsers alone for instance); I don't need another electron program on my computer and refuse to use it, sorry. If you're giving the Matrix team the benefit of the doubt, you could say this is the result of some very poor technical decisions and bad planning -- adopting trendy technologies to create a proof-of-concept implementations that scale poorly -- that result in the official team being bogged down with maintaining their infrastructure and their soykafty implementations instead of focusing on the Matrix spec itself (such as making the server-server spec better documented and easier to implement). If you're being less charitable, you could say that the Matrix team's trustworthiness is questionable, especially given their various ties to governments and intelligence orgs. The protocol itself has some major issues as well. For one thing, just speaking from the point of view of recently dabbling in client development, it's far too dependent on web technologies. If you want to be up to spec, you need to implement WebRTC for VOIP, which means you either need to implement WebRTC yourself (good fuarrrking luck lol) or hope it's been implemented in the language you're using or that you can FFI to it. Either way, dependency on technologies that are too huge and overspecced to keep in your head are hardcoded into Matrix's monolithic standard. On the subject of being monolithic, Matrix also isn't like XMPP where you have a sane core spec that is extensible; every extension to the spec has to be added to the core spec and has to be approved by the Matrix foundation, which has resulted in soykaf like pic related. It's totally unsustainable, overly reliant on the Matrix foundation itself, and also is introducing tech debt into the core of the Matrix spec itself by-design by chasing after trends and putting them in the core. XMPP doesn't have the issues Matrix has of being recentralized onto a single implementor team or infrastructure and doesn't, by-design, date itself or rely on unwieldy web technologies in its core spec. It's a solid, proven protocol to build software on top of that can be extended and change with time and gives you choices in what features to implement. I know XMPP isn't trendy or hip anymore, but to me it's far more worth investing my time into learning how to develop on it than Matrix -- which by the way doesn't really solve anything that XMPP doesn't solve as far as the protocol itself goes. What someone needs to do is just make a nice modern-looking XMPP client and add some features that people expect (e.g. something like Slack workspaces or Discord servers to group together MUCs and inherit permissions), and you'd have the same thing Matrix is trying to do, but better. I appreciate what Matrix is trying to do but I think it's a project run by incompetent morons and that is also kind of unnecessary. Oh, XMPP also has ejabberd, which unlike Synapse is written in a real language designed to scale for serious highly-available communications systems. anyways /rant

>>16813 Guilded is catching up (totally not sure about privacy) but still sus in the privacy department and absolutely janky.

im building a decentralized optionally-encrypted chat protocol with the lads since michaelsoft bought soykafcord. maybe a few terminal clients too. might be cool but i'm hesitant to release it because it'll probably be soykaf. also i'd want to keep the code proprietary so alphabet boys can't see it and possibly poke holes in my garbage bag of a chat protocol

>>16797 I am also interested in hearing some of the arguments AGAINST Matrix. I'm about to put up a large Matrix server as an anti-discord measure. I'm real fuarrrking tired of Discord and want to know any arguments against it. Or, if there is a better alternative for 3rd gen conversational chat/boards.

>>17000 please enjoy my screed against Matrix here >>16994

>>17001 thank you. I'm not sure if this is enough to get me to not do it. I understand the issues though, and they are significant. I will have to ask the usergroup. the users that want me to host the server since I have the means to do so are mostly concerned with: botnet/logging, security, multi-platform, no IP leaking (that means no Tox) and image posting in the feed. So technically, XMPP meets the bill. VOIP isn't an issue since we already have a mumble server, so it is just a matter of a 1:1 replacement for steam/discord. Censorship is a current issue as well. We have multiple users around the world and need everything encrypted. I am also hoping to then host others in the future who would need general chats or things like that.

>>16994 I mostly agree with you, but the problem with XMPP is that almost nobody uses it (if you don't count proprietary messengers that are build on top of it). Matrix at least has a growing userbase. I would like to use XMPP but I just don't know anyone who uses it.

>>17005 >botnet/logging >no IP leaking Both leak metadata when sending messages between servers, though Matrix is worse because its model is synchronizing state vs passing individual messages. Matrix might actually be malicious (https://www.hackea.org/notas/matrix.html), though that can't be objectively proven at the moment, but many people have a bad feeling about them. XMPP servers had some bad behavior about not encrypting passwords at rest. This may have been corrected. >>17007 At this point, anyone who uses Matrix is still probably enough of a nerd to not have a problem trying XMPP.

>>17012 >At this point, anyone who uses Matrix is still probably enough of a nerd to not have a problem trying XMPP. You would be surprised. Mentioning XMPP seems to make a lot of Matrix fans seethe. They almost never have any good reasons for hating it >XMPP is bad because... it just is, okay

>>17005 I will say this, XMPP doesn't have a great UX at the moment. I've never seen an XMPP client that didn't just feel like, very not modern (in a bad way). so it depends on your audience of users. like I said I'm coming at this from both an admin and a developer point of view, and in the former case, the cool thing about XMPP compared to Matrix is that there not only is a good selection of spec-compliant servers to choose from, but one of the most feature-complete and supported ones is ejabberd, which is written in erlang. I really wish the Matrix devs had been smarter about writing a reference homeserver and went with a BEAM language, because erlang is an ideal language to write a chat server in; it's literally designed for fault-tolerant and scalable communication systems out of the box without any microservices bullshit to fuarrrk around with. so to me that's a big point in favor of XMPP from an admin point of view and seems like something that might appeal to your use-case for hosting chats for other people. >>17007 >almost nobody uses it yes, and so? pic related in all seriousness though this is why I think adding an XEP for something like slack workspaces/discord servers and writing a nice client that feels like something users expect from a modern chat client these days is important. the thing about XMPP though compared to Matrix or other chat stuff is that XMPP isn't a platform, it's a protocol, meant to be used to build things with. you could argue that Matrix technically is trying to do the same thing, but in practice for the reasons I mentioned above, it's closer to being just another chat platform like slack or discord than a truly open and extensible protocol to build things with. so while I agree that XMPP has UX problems that probably hold it back from having more of a userbase, I don't think it's an insurmountable problem. the hard stuff (the protocol itself and spec-compliant servers) has already been done. might be cool in fact to make a lainchan XMPP server >>17013 >They almost never have any good reasons for hating it this is the thing with Matrix, it doesn't really solve any problems that XMPP doesn't solve. it feels like it was made just because XMPP isn't trendy anymore when that development labor could have gone into XMPP. I think the main argument I've heard that makes sense is that XMPP has a fragmentation problem because different clients will support different XEPs and whatnot, but I wouldn't call that a problem so much as just having choices as opposed to being forced as a user and a developer to have the baggage of the entire monolithic Matrix protocol in everything.

>>17013 >They almost never have any good reasons for hating it >>17014 >but I wouldn't call that a problem so much as just having choices imagine we are talking in a private e2ee chat using OMEMO. you want to send me a file. can you tell me how/if the file will be encrypted? i'll spoil the answer for you: maybe, it depends on which XEPs the clients implement and how they choose to implement them. seriously, iirc the OMEMO one doesn't actually say how this is supposed to be handled... i think direct file transfers (media sharing/jingle) are almost always e2ee but the one where it just uploads it to the server and sends a link usually aren't. this can and will burn you unless you read the highly technical documentation for the relevant XEPs, which needless to say is not a great user experience. this is an actual problem that XMPP has and matrix does not, and the preponderance of such problems is actually a compelling reason to you matrix. at this point i still do prefer XMPP, but i am willing to admit that there are ways that matrix is currently better. >the thing about XMPP though compared to Matrix or other chat stuff is that XMPP isn't a platform, it's a protocol, meant to be used to build things with. this is the other side of the coin, and one thing i really like about xmpp. it's kind of amazing that it can (in theory... with proper client support) do literally everything discord or skype or whatever can do, despite how old it is. it's a testament to how extensible it actually is. i just wish someone had a good idea to deal with the client feature fragmentation.

>>17014 >>almost nobody uses it >yes, and so? pic related Well yeah lol, it's just that I can't use it with anyone even if I wanted to. I don't know anyone who uses it and I also don't know any good public rooms. >this is the thing with Matrix, it doesn't really solve any problems that XMPP doesn't solve. it feels like it was made just because XMPP isn't trendy anymore when that development labor could have gone into XMPP. Yeah it's funny how much seething even just mentioning XMPP seems to cause in the Matrix community >I think the main argument I've heard that makes sense is that XMPP has a fragmentation problem because different clients will support different XEPs and whatnot, but I wouldn't call that a problem so much as just having choices as opposed to being forced as a user and a developer to have the baggage of the entire monolithic Matrix protocol in everything. >imagine we are talking in a private e2ee chat using OMEMO. you want to send me a file. can you tell me how/if the file will be encrypted? i'll spoil the answer for you: maybe, it depends on which XEPs the clients implement and how they choose to implement them. seriously, iirc the OMEMO one doesn't actually say how this is supposed to be handled... i think direct file transfers (media sharing/jingle) are almost always e2ee but the one where it just uploads it to the server and sends a link usually aren't. this can and will burn you unless you read the highly technical documentation for the relevant XEPs, which needless to say is not a great user experience. this is an actual problem that XMPP has and matrix does not, and the preponderance of such problems is actually a compelling reason to you matrix. at this point i still do prefer XMPP, but i am willing to admit that there are ways that matrix is currently better. Now these are some actual problems that xmpp has. I don't know if there is any way to fix it besides just telling people to use "good" clients and servers. Also, one thing that is often seen as an advantage of Matrix is that the rooms are more decentralized. In Matrix, a room lives on every participating server and thus one server going down doesn't take the entire room down. While in xmpp, a room is hosted on just one server and if said server goes down then the room also does. But on the other hand, the Matrix model causes a pretty significant load on all servers, especially in big rooms. One big advantage of xmpp is that hosting a server takes like an order of magnitude less resources than with Matrix. Because of that, I think it has the potential to be more decentralized. More people can afford to host a server. The current Matrix server implementation seems ridiculously bloated, I don't know if it's a problem with the protocol or if the implementation is just bad. I also don't really get why the Matrix team has to keep on bloating up the spec. At this point, it seems that they are just adding features that nobody really needs. It would probably be better to stop changing the spec all the time, maybe alternative implementations would also get a better chance then.

>>17014 >I will say this, XMPP doesn't have a great UX at the moment. I've never seen an XMPP client that didn't just feel like, very not modern (in a bad way). so it depends on your audience of users. Dino looks pretty modern. Matrix is still worse in this regard, since there's only one client that implements all things well, and it's built on Electron, slow and eats lots of RAM (and in my opinion looks like garbage and a sum of everything that's bad in modern UX). Personally, I'd take any old-looking-but-reliable XMPP software over using Element. >>17014 >>17007 >I would like to use XMPP but I just don't know anyone who uses it. Should we make a XMPP contact exchange thread? Or perhaps really just a lainchan MUC.

>>17020 >Should we make a XMPP contact exchange thread? Or perhaps really just a lainchan MUC. I would prefer a MUC, but either one goes

>>17016 >The current Matrix server implementation seems ridiculously bloated, I don't know if it's a problem with the protocol or if the implementation is just bad. It's written in Python. There is another implementation being worked on written in Go.

>>17012 That link is heavily outdated. No data need be sent to those companies anymore.

>>17012 Ok, this alone convinced me to toss Matrix and move to XMPP. Thanks guys.

There is no replacement for Discord. It's not just the text/voice chats, it's the ability to stream from a webcam or the desktop/a window directly, the bots with limitless functions, how easy it is to invite someone, the overlays for gaming, the custom emotes, the fact that every minor e-celeb, every software group and every niche interest has it's own servers (replacing old forums/IRC chats), etc. There are individual replacements for each of those features, a lot of which work better than Discord, but there is not a single platform that integrates all of that at the same time. Streaming is limited only to Windows (Mac and GNU streaming has no audio and it can't stream a single window, only the entire desktop) and even then Mac and GNU users work around those issues instead of looking for alternative software. That's how powerful Discord has become. Our best bet is to make a libre client for it. Discord knows this, which is why they block third party clients.

>>17050 >There are individual replacements for each of those features, a lot of which work better than Discord, but there is not a single platform that integrates all of that at the same time And that's the sad state of modern computing. The "single platform" could just be the computer. Open interoperable standards allowing different programs to communicate with one another. Instead everything is data-harvesting based and walled gardens. Because operating systems have no commonly accepted sandbox layer the browser has become the new operating system. There's literally a file system API in the browser now. Mumble could absolutely be fine if it had a lower barrier to starting chatting. But you have to go through a set up wizard, a username making step, and a server finding step.

If you want to maintain privacy standards, that is issue and enforce a security policy to your organization the conclusion I've come to is that you have to provide the devices preinstalled and configured to be user friendly. Why would you do this to your friends and consider them bound to some kind of secrecy is another question though...

>>17053 That's a ridiculous comparison, if you're trying to justify discord with that. As far as I know, no computer or phone comes preinstalled with discord.

>>17054 I like that all you took from what I said was the seeming implication that someone else is policing the information security of your friends... Just because nobody is forcing them to use Discord isn't really a justification to force them to use something else?

>>17020 >>17040 Well, I made a muc. Come if you want to bGFpbmNoYW5AbS54bXBwLnR1bmtraS54eXoK (base64)

>>17063 Are you not allowing sign-ups?

>>17066 I'm a bit worried about spammers signing up. There are some well known servers with open signups like https://404.city/

>>17053 >Why would you do this to your friends what the fuarrrk kind of argument is this? Anyone who isn't a wage slave or a complete fool has the desire to have some level of privacy. No one is doing ANYTHING to you other than INVADING your privacy. What the fuarrrk are you doing on this site?

>>17053 >Why would you do this to your friends and consider them bound to some kind of secrecy is another question though... Advocating for digital privacy and security isn't an ordinary subjective viewpoint for which different individuals can logically agree and disagree with it; it's a very important branch of advocacy for freedom and liberty.

>>17015 You're very right about different clients lacking support for OMEMO; that's something I overlooked in my original post. Though I will say that Matrix hasn't really solved this problem. Like I said above, a lot of Matrix clients (most, in fact) don't have support for E2EE, or if they do, it's not implemented in a nice user-friendly way. So everyone ends up having to use Element, whereas with XMPP, you at least have the option to either 1). Use one of the clients that supports OMEMO, or 2). Not implement OMEMO in your client implementation if for whatever reason having E2EE isn't something you need or care about. Point being that while this is a legitimate problem, I don't think there's really a solution for it (or at least there isn't one people have figured out yet) because implementing encryption is really hard and implementing it in a provably safe and secure way even more so without being a company that can pay to have the code be audited by security professionals and hire devs with cryptography experience. You can have a protocol that is open and decentralized and is designed to have different client and server implementations, or you can have an open but monolithic protocol like Signal or maybe Cwtch and Briar where there's only one client/server that everyone uses and if you want to implement your own you need to do a hard fork of the network, but that consequently has a higher guarantee of security since everyone is using the same code base that is hopefully developed by security professionals and audited by security professionals, but having something that is both totally open and decentralized but also reasonably secure is a problem that there isn't currently a good solution for because it's a really hard problem to solve. I think XMPP is the best that's currently out there because its answer is basically "fuarrrk it, do whatever you want, don't shoot your foot off but if you do we're not responsible for it"