this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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I mostly lurk here, and I know we've had this discussion come up a number of times since Discord's age verification changes were announced, but I figured this video offers value for the walkthrough and comparative analysis. Like me, the video authors aren't seasoned self-hosters, and I've still got a lot to learn. Stoat and Fluxer both look appealing to me for my needs, but Stoat seemingly needs self-hosted servers to route through their master server (unless I'm missing something stupid) and I replicated the 404 for Fluxer's self-hosting documentation seen in the video, so it's looking like I'm leaning toward a Matrix server of some kind. Hopefully everyone looking for the Discord exit ramp is closer to finding it after this video.

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[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

For those who are still getting their arrangements together to leave discord but are uncomfortable about running the client in the interim check out vesktop, an open source privacy-focused discord client that looks and feels like the official client without the same uncomfortable level of access to your user space.

[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

Hey on this note, I was looking to do discourse with the mumble plugin but I wanted to do this via docker compose. Has anyone gotten that to work or have a good source they can point me to since at least on the discorse mumble plugin I noticed that it stated that their install instructions were for the stock non-docker solution only.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Got a link that's not YouTube?

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I don't. And I don't know if they put their videos elsewhere.

[–] msokiovt@feddit.online 2 points 15 hours ago

You can use an Invidious link, actually. I do this a lot.

For @quick_snail@feddit.nl as follows: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=kpjcmXbmMVM

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
IP Internet Protocol
NAS Network-Attached Storage
SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
VPN Virtual Private Network
VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ('Jabber') for open instant messaging

[Thread #178 for this comm, first seen 17th Mar 2026, 08:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] Laggindragon@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago

I've been getting by just fine with a combination of Telegram and Element.

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 25 points 1 day ago (5 children)

What I'm upset about is the absolute wealth of information that will be forever trapped behind Discord. What ever happened to good old fashioned forums? Hell, even a subreddit would at least have been scrapable. If there's a mass migration away from Discord then all that information just gets lost. Example that Lemmings might care about - CachyOS has a forum, but I've seen the vast majority of troubleshooting and user input made on their Discord channel.

[–] other_cat@piefed.zip 2 points 13 hours ago

Maybe some people will migrate things back out. I wound up moving a bunch of stuff to a self hosted wiki.

[–] aquovie@lemmy.cafe 8 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Old fashioned forums are old fashioned. Circular logic but there's a lot holding them back.

  • Create a new account for every single niche forum? No thanks. We need a federated solution.
    • Lemmy/Piefed/etc is almost there
  • Antiquated restrictions (e.g. Log in to view images)
  • Antiquated UI - People want emojis, reactions, rich media, etc
  • PHP paid the bills once upon a time but now it's hard to get anyone excited to make big new features for forum software
[–] gdog05@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

You've got some points but I would argue that antiquated UI will be what saves the Internet. Keeping out bots and AI scrapers with good old fashioned phpBBS systems that have been around for twenty years will be our clean data as we build systems outside of AI and the techbro properties.

[–] other_cat@piefed.zip 5 points 13 hours ago

I've also always liked how old school forums are structured. Nice, neat categories and most active/recent stuff on top.

[–] aquovie@lemmy.cafe 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I don't see how web 1.0 style sites are resistant to AI or bots. It's kind of the opposite. Bots/AI are really good at pure text stuff.

[–] gdog05@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Because they block access without signing up.

[–] cdf12345@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

How hard would it be to create an open source identity token that would allow user authentication on any forum or site that will accept it?

Something with a public/private encryption system to authenticate users without the content needing to be federated.

[–] aquovie@lemmy.cafe 1 points 11 hours ago

You might be thinking of the original OpenID system. Instead of the OAuth2 thing we have now with OIDC (e.g. "Login with Google"), OpenID Connect didn't require the site to be configured in advance with the auth provider. You just gave it your email address and off you went.

OIDC is generally superior security-wise but it's held back by each site to establish a relationship with the upstream site.

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

What I’m upset about is the absolute wealth of information that will be forever trapped behind Discord. What ever happened to good old fashioned forums?

Rather than paying for hosting and operational costs that goes with a forum, social media and the desire for immediacy happened as Yahoo created Groups, then Facebook followed suit with their own.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What I'm upset about is the absolute wealth of information that will be forever trapped behind Discord.

omg, you guys are almost there. you're so close, I can feel it.

so....why is the information locked behind a corporate entity?

almost got it

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Because people prefer convenience to privacy and accessibility, I guess? If there was an easy way to scrape/crawl discord data I would be hoarding everything I could to repost on lemmy or something but AFAIK there are no easily automated ways to access it.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

and that's no accident. it's by design.

creating a community is neat, but many are started irresponsibly. they don't take into consideration how to move if things "change".

people just willingly and blindly trust corporate suppliers because they do "so much stuff". not a care in the world as day by day their dependency grows.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

As a Giant Bomb fan, it's somewhat renewed interest in forums over there from the operators and users. Discord was always a bad forum anyway, but it was great for immediately being able to have a conversation with people to find answers to problems.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 101 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Seeing Teamspeak outlive Discord just keeps making me laugh.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"outlive" Discord is quite the exaggeration. Let's not pretend that we're not a vocal minority here, and that Discord will keep trucking just fine.

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[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 50 points 1 day ago

Teamspeak lived long enough to see an exodus from Discord, but that doesn't mean Discord is dying.

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[–] Svinhufvud@sopuli.xyz 27 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I have tried XMPP, Matrix and now I've settled on Mumble.

Me and my fellows mostly just need a voice room or a couple to sit in, and Mumble does that best out of these three, in my opinion.

I recommend giving Mumble a try as it is super easy to set up and use. Users don't need to even create accounts to join servers.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 2 points 9 hours ago

Mumble is fantastic.
I designed and implemented a very complex voice system for an old guild. Like 100 people, 8 groups of 15, group leader's private chat, priority speech all that. It worked so well, and never failed.
This was many many years ago, to be fair.
I wish it's positional audio was more supported.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 22 hours ago

Mumble was the primary choice for EVE Online groups.

You can literally have thousands of users on the same server.

In EVE, during big fleet fights (like 1000+ people on the same "team"), you can have a hierarchy of fleet commanders/wing commanders/squad leaders where voice travels down the chain of command, but not up.

Also the certificate based security with ACLs is just unmatched. You can set it up exactly how you want.

Also easy to integrate with, which is important for something like EVE.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I second this. My gaming group probably won't leave discord for the foreseeable future but Mumble is probably where we'd go if we did. IMO all these Discord alternatives are trying to do everything Discord does, when even Discord can't pull it off sustainably at their scale.

I don't want federation. I don't want it to scale to infinite concurrent users. What I want is something simple I can plonk on a crusty old laptop running Proxmox or a Raspberry pi for a few friends.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Even on a crusty old laptop you can easily serve hundreds of users with Mumble

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

IDK, said laptop is from 2010.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 21 hours ago

Limiting factor will probably be network - if you hook it up with cable, it should be fine

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[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Fluxer is of particular interest to the folks here at AN. We've talked a bit about exploring it once they finish work on federation.

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 1 points 12 hours ago

hey that looks really interesting, thanks for sharing. will keep an eye on development for sure!

[–] ZealotOfLuna@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

That’s a primary focus of the app after stability. The dev was able to hire on a co-developer, so hoping to see the project accelerate

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (10 children)

It comes down to Fluxer and Stoat. Or just Stoat if you dislike Fluxer's AI-assisted development.

One thing is clear, both are currently working great and are the closest thing to Discord's core features.

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[–] MrTolkinghoen@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

Pretty surprised to not see mumble mentioned. It's mostly a voice chat replacement. But the low latency chat works so damn well and easy to self host.

[–] dudesss@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I like the alternatives, but they mean nothing without being federated.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For me it's federation and encryption. Yeah obviously, if I'm in a public space then encryption means fuck all, but for messages between me and close friends I want encryption.

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[–] zoe@piefed.social 9 points 1 day ago

I hope we get encrypted hosting sites that can help people do easy automated setups. A bunch of people want something that is just create a server and go. I know several discord admins that aren't really hardware and self hosting literate.

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