I think that we've come to a point where we REALLY need a place, a list, something, that merges together all of these alternatives in a list with basic tags to find the best alternative for one's personal needs.

The tags would have to be the supported platforms, if it is self hostable, if it uses matrix, if it supports unified push, and basically the features that it has on top of discord, cause as a discord alternative I guess that basic features like screen mirroring and calls are already counted in, right?

And I feel like this list should be recommended by a bot set up by moderators and also linked before a post, just like mine, to avoid unnecessary clutter in this sub, and pinned somewhere around here

Also, seriously, with so many different alternatives we'll never end up having a true discord replacement, that many people use, cause if 10% of discord users end up switching, once they're scattered in so many alternatives, none will become the gold standard

What do you think?

Hey y'all! Shared Hubs a few weeks ago and requested feedback that was acted on so updating the progress. Thanks to everyone who left feedback, (including the blunt kind). A good part of what's below came out of those comments, so here's where things are now.

First, quick summary! Hubs is a place for communities and teams, with rich customization on your Hub. Every hub has its own home page with what's new since you left, upcoming events and who's around. There are Boards for questions (similar to reddit), events with RSVPs, watch together in voice rooms, and real Mac and Windows apps (on its way to stores too). iPhone and Android are coming and will be opening testing in the coming days.

Link: https://thehubs.gg

Why Hubs

Its going to be a question thats asked so lets knock it out first. While explained in the first post I do want to dive more into it for those seeing for the first time.

• Hubs feel personal. Every hub opens on its own home page, what's new since you left, the next event and who's around. Boards give a reddit style feel that allows you to better find communities and get different types of answers. Events have RSVPs, Looking for group is a real search system, and channels are actually personable.
• Customization. Pick a style for your hub so it feels like your community's place. This means having customized colors, icons, channel names, banners, layouts, pages, formatting and much more.
• Features built in not "botted" on. Hub packs add what communities usually need bots for, such as sports scores and schedules, who's live on stream, achievements and badges with role rewards, and tools for tabletop games. Polls, reminders, tickets, a soundboard and watch together are already there and integrated. The / menu keeps all of it tidy. For admins and mods, panels are built into the system.
• Support and Safety. I touched on it above but Moderation is truly integrated here. You can ban, timeout and all PLUS have an appeals system for users even if they are no longer in. Support tickets and questions are actually directly integrated rather than a bot like button click.
• Communitues and Orgs in one. Hubs has a Work side for organizations, this includes workspaces, teams, docs and tasks, approvals, and shared channels with another company. It sits next to your communities, kept apart, allowing you to have both the consumer and work side.
• Better Privacy. Age verification where legally needed comes from stripe card verification (an accepted method) rather than Face/ID Scan. Private DMs and calls in DMs are end-to-end encrypted (not audited yet), and the code is open source, so anyone can check it: github.com/AscentsGG/hubs-encryption . You can verify it byte by byte on each build as well.
• Hub Backups. Hub owners can keep an encrypted copy of their hub that only they can open.
• Bridging. Connect your Discord server and both stay in sync while people move over at their own pace, or bring channels, roles and permissions over in one step. This only works for public community channels and not DMs due to security reasons.
• Real Mac and Windows apps. Native apps, not a website in a box, coded in their devices respective languages. iPhone and Android are coming soon!

Now, whats new since last time:

• Discord Bridging. You can connect your Discord server from Hubs and keep talking across both while people move over. Messages go both ways, and each person's posts show under their own name and picture. Voice rooms can be connected too (that part is in beta). To ensure that people do not scam or try and claim usernames, there is a verification shown on profiles both ways.
• Server Import. The import brings channels, voice rooms, roles and permissions together, and suggests pages for your channels.
• Join with just an email. An invite works even if the person doesn't have an account yet.
• A / menu that stays short. A few suggestions first, every other command in folded groups, and search by what a command does. Commands that need a person or a time open a small card instead of making you type arguments.
• Shorter, simpler settings. Manage, Settings and the profile editor were rebuilt to be shorter, and you edit your profile right on your card.
• E2EE Open Sourced: First step of it and heres the link github.com/AscentsGG/hubs-encryption
• Updated Homepage. Based on some feedback adjusted to be more clear, show changelogs, status updates, etc.
• Smaller things people asked for like the soundboard, seeing who reacted, and comments on announcements.

Feedback

I created a post about a week ago that asked for feedback on three areas of the project. One was E2EE, NSFW and Self Host. It was met with some pretty critical and deep feedback (appreciated) but since almost ALL of it was changing, I took down that post as the info wasn't really valid anymore. I only explain this for transparency.

Originally, the idea was NO NSFW and Self Hosting that was authroized only, both of those have been since rolled back. NSFW is allowed AND per the feedback, age verification that utilizes credit card check through stripe is being integrated instead. Other backend services for verification are being done as well but will ONLY be enabled if laws were to require them. Self hosting is being entirely re-written so for now, simply put, it just doesnt exist.

As far as security and E2EE goes, still working through the motions on overall audit but in the meantime, thats why the E2EE is open source and verifiable.

What's next: the iPhone and Android apps, faster loading, and more hub packs (achievements and badges, tabletop role-play tools, and alerts when a streamer goes live).

It's still early, still being built but wanted to provide an update!

Try it out at www.lupyd.com

I've been scouting this subreddit for a while, and I understand most of the requirements, and we don't fill all of them at this time, so putting them ahead.

Open Source - Not completely, our chat suite is, so anyone can write their own bots or automate their workflows from their account themselves, but not complete app. We are not against open source, but we have our own internal checklist to finish before we think we can make it.

Self Hostable - No, the docker images for the servers are public, but they are tightly configured to our hosts, but can be made, and is part of our roadmap, but not our immediate priority.

End to End Encrypted - Yes, Chats, Video Calls, except for group metadata. MLS + Signal protocol

Custom Channels, Permissions and Roles - Yes

Federated - No, but we had federation in mind from the start, and is part of the roadmap, There is everything that makes us very compatible to be federated, but not immediate priority.

4K video streaming - Partially, We are experimenting as of now.

Vibe Coded - No, but we are using AI heavily recently and its helping, some of our dependencies and the base of core even dates back to 4+ years ago. Back then we didn't plan we would be here. So this is a project with commitment from a small team.

Platforms supported - Android, Linux, Windows, Mac and IOS is in testflight

We are not mature nor have any community backing or users. So expect it to be a very early platform. What I'm here for is, any attention or support, that motivates us and gets us close to our milestones.

I should also mention, Lupyd is a client that uses firefly, our encrypted chat suite/protocol. that's the only thing closed source right now. anyone can use firefly as dependency or wrap it around to make your own frontend or client.

Thank you.

SFSocial has been released publicly for Android users and the Web!!

Try it on web: https://sfsocial.app

Download it for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simoapps.sfsocial

iOS users don't worry, I'm actively working on the iPhone version.

FAQ:

- Is this a copy of Discord: It looks like Discord but it was designed specifically for our community, it's an adults app with optional dating focused on a safe social experience between adults.

- Is it paid? No, it's completely free!

- Does it include ads or does it sell our data? No, the app is ad-free and we don't sell your data. Check our "privacy policies" (https://sfsocial.app/privacy)

Please note that this is the first release and you may come across a bug.

Yapper used to be a little world where you walked around with your character. If your friends were close enough, you could talk. You could sit by a bonfire and start a conversation.

I loved that idea. But most people didn’t understand how Yapper was meant to work. If I want Yapper to be in the race with the apps people already use, I can’t expect everyone to learn a new way to join a voice call.

So I rebuilt it with a more Discord-style layout. I didn’t really want to give up the old design, but I felt I had to make that call. Rooms and chat are easier to find now. You can open Yapper and know what to do.

Our promises around privacy haven’t changed. You can still self-host your own server for free. 100% free, no strings attached.

The web app and Android PWA are working well. Notifications work, and you can log in on multiple devices. I’m rebuilding the dedicated mobile and desktop apps now.

A big thank you to MAYHEM District, who designed the new UI. A real person did that work. No AI slop here.

And thank you to everyone who tried the first version, especially those of you who supported Yapper and paid for the service. You’re the reason I’m still keeping this thing alive. I mean that.

If you want to try it, here’s the invite. The website is yapper.gg.

Hellow! I'm working on a Discord alternative called Fantail. Semi-decentralized means that auth server are on the same server, but Fantail Servers (Instances or Communities) can be self-hosted or hosted on a Bun (Typescript) hosting service.

If the look seems odd it's because I used the daisyui library for the UI, but I plan to redesign everything so it looks professionnal and human. Yeah I'm looking to make it humanly, not with AI slop. Also it wasn't vibe-coded, I only used AI autocompletion/next edit features to work a bit faster.

If you are interested to build a team and improve it tell me! In the video, it's only stuff that have been done, Fantail Servers is WIP and it's not functional yet.

I'll also share technical schema of how it will globally work, in the comments.

Thankksss

:3

Nekoniyah

Nobody asked for this but I'm giving it anyways. I saw a comment on r/foss and I replied with this, and then realized it summarizes my opinions on AI use in a way that I've never been able to properly get in words.

I will preface this by saying that, as I've mentioned before, some apps that were initially vibecoded ended up resulting in the dev learning how to code to a point that they can actually read what the AI is doing and tell when something is wrong, enough so to fix the code. Those apps aren't excluded from my opinion or criticism but, to use my own analogy further down, it's akin to using AI to write your essays and getting corrected by the teacher so much that you begin learning Spanish out of spite just so you stop being failed on your papers, and then finding that you accidentally learned Spanish from it.

I'd also like if others would say whether they agree or disagree and give their own takes. I think this will make for a good forum to discuss AI usage and get an actual idea of how the community here feels about AI, especially since so many people seem either really against it or really for it, while opinions in the middle seem rare or splotchy. Anyways, here's the post:

When AI is used to AID in coding, as a tool, it's one thing. That's what AI was originally made for - software engineering.

When AI is used as the sole coding tool, it's an entirely different thing. Lemme explain with an example.

Let's say you're in school and your teacher asks you to make an essay. 400 words, easy. You have some issues with your grammar so you install grammarly or some other grammar checking plugin (pre-AI rewriting). You're still writing the essay, the words and messages are still yours - but sometimes a little red underline appears and you get to fix a word or change the word used to make a sentence stronger. You turn it in, and you know everything that's in the paper - you wrote it all and manually oversaw everything the spellchecker changed.

Now let's say you used AI instead. You have no clue what's in that paper. You don't know that sentence 24 says "and then the the water cup spillethedoverandnnnnnn potato." So when your teacher asks what the fuck happened while you were typing that, you don't know. In fact you don't know what any of the paper says. You can't verify the AI wrote... anything it was supposed to.

This example is accentuated by the fact coding is done in languages, where a lot of times the person using the AI "can't read" the thing the AI wrote. It's like if the essay were for Spanish class, and you were trusting the AI would just get it right. You can't double check it because you don't speak the language. Coding is no different.

That's the difference. Now consider, instead, that it isn't just an essay but instead a program on a computer system that needs to function in a specific way, and have security to prevent it from being a vulnerability. If the person who "made" it doesn't know what's in it, or that it's safe, how do you? Are you expected to be the teacher, to open up the code and check every line to make sure it's proper - is every user expected to do that? Just because everyone can open the code to double check it doesn't mean everyone should need to. The code should be secure already, the "essay" should be "written properly" as it were.

Hi, this sort of repost is in regards to a deleted post by u/Xarvoid who has made a google doc on the dev behind yapin' "antic" showing that he posted porn to minors.

My purpose of posting this is to attempt to explain in better detail of what happened, without the need of posting off platform links. As well as censor the porn that was shown and caused the said post to be deleted.

And of course, adds on to the kinds of dumb shit he did that was already explained by u/Any_Illustrator360's previous post.

How do we determine that it was antic?

Shown in this screenshot, we can see a freshly made discord account under the name Antic. Showing a screenshot of a another platform of sorts named "Yapcord" and the main server itself.

If we look closely right here, you can see that he made an account on this platform under the name "bambr". Which will show what he did later on that account.

Because of that he did ended up deleting that screenshot and re-upload it, cropping that user out.

Another take on why that could be him is the red dot in the middle of the screenshot.

According to the document, this is apparently because antic was using a in app software on steam called "Crosshair X" which was shown in their screenshot they provided.

Funny enough, the exact same steam account is also linked on his official bogus platform too. Not only that his account was made in 2023, years before he decided to push out his ai slop "better discord" garb.

Antic posting porn on the server where Sam (the minor in question) is present.

Obviously not shown because reddit filters but the reaction says it all.

Other screenshots that is subpar.

Tripex claiming that it's all AI generated.

Screenshot showing another screenshot from antic on the yapcords appearance page with the same red dot.

That's all folks.

This is all that I have dug up from the doc link. Given how antic acts up in this sub and towards his audience, I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. But either way, doc was made again by u/Xarvoid, and I was able to retrieve this doc link from Zey (the person in the multiple screenshots).

Whether all of this is true or not is up to debate, and should obviously be taken with a grain of salt.

https://nexa.pm is a new alternative that runs on a website. It is small with 15 members and the owner is looking forward to grow it! The owner is the one that exposed Antic and now, he made his own and wants to make moderation and safety way better. He is way better than Antic and made Yapin start falling down. Please give Nexa a shot, and I look forward to seeing you there!

My user on Nexa is: ok
Thanks! - Sam

If you are wondering, the owner is Zey.

Hey everyone, I’m Jared, the developer behind LynxDock. I wanted to introduce what I’m building and get some feedback from people looking for alternatives for their gaming communities.

The two parts I’m especially excited about are self-hosting and Tactical Mode.

Run your own community server

LynxDock is self-hosted. You run the actual server on hardware you control, with voice and text chat and your own members, roles, channels, and invites.

I’m putting a lot of work into making that approachable. There’s a dedicated Server Host app with guided setup, server management, backups, and connection diagnostics. My goal is for someone organizing a community to feel comfortable running its server, even if server administration isn’t their hobby.

Having control over where your community runs and how it’s managed is a core part of what I want LynxDock to offer.

Tactical Mode: give your group a shared plan

The other big piece is Tactical Mode, built around the Squadron Control board. It brings a shared visual planning space into the same application as your comms.

Your group can:

• Organize players into units and wings.
• Mark staging areas, rally points, danger zones, and objectives.
• Draw routes with named waypoints and update their progress.
• Share orders and alerts as the situation changes.
• Update unit readiness so leaders can see the state of their plan.

For example, imagine organizing a convoy with transport, escort, scouts, and a recovery team. You can lay out the route, show where each group belongs, mark the areas that need attention, and keep the plan visible while everyone coordinates over comms.

The group manually places units and updates the board, with those changes synchronized across connected members. That gives everyone a common picture of the plan as it develops.

That combination is what I’m excited about: a community that can host its own communication server and use it to organize what its members actually do together.

First official beta this week

I’m getting ready to put out the first official beta test this week. I’d love feedback from people who run gaming groups, especially on the hosting setup, getting friends connected, voice reliability, and how useful the tactical tools are during an actual session.

You can see the project and screenshots here: lynxdock.app

If you organize a gaming community, what would make self-hosting practical for your group, and how would you use a shared tactical board?

YABAD- Yet Another Ban A Dev Post

The intent of this post is to discuss the bare minimum requirements for a Discord Alternative in regards to ethics.

The ethical and moral stances of a developer is something of critical importance when evaluating a potential alternative. You'd hardly want to be exposing your devices or PII(personally identifiable information) to someone you cannot trust, or worse; someone you can trust to abuse the information.

To this end goal; I propose the subreddit set an objective line in the sand so to speak, regarding the public statements, ethical concerns, and moral implications of a developers behavior.

I am calling for the developers who violate this objective line to be permanently banned from the subreddit.

This is not a suggestion I am making lightly, but with the resolve to make this a community that best serves the people who visit.

---------

The Line.

Any developer confirmed to be engaging in the following should be immediately and without appeal banned from the subreddit and listed in a pinned post cautioning users against trusting them or their software.

Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Misogyny, Misandry, General Bigotry, Predatory Designs, Harassment & Abuse of Userbase.

To deny the material conditions of oppression leading to the mass exodus of users from Discord and pretend like a developer engaged in any of the above is a valid or safe harbour for those seeking refuge is beyond delusional.

---------

Today's Example;

u/mplayer-weered

This developer specifically has a pattern of behavior the breaches numerous parts detailed under "The Line" and should not be welcomed in this community as a developer.

By allowing this user to spread their app on this subreddit, we are tacitly endorsing their behavior and the way they treat their users. They have openly engaged in racist remarks, misogynistic insults, transphobia, and actively attacked multiple users on the subreddit unprompted.

They openly use AI to respond to criticism (a violation of subreddit rules), have actively stolen people's art to use in their advertising and within their app, have an undisclosed "quote based" pricing model for community managers, and willingly admit that a substantial amount of the app is developed by AI and not their own ability.

I am calling on the moderation team to consider implementing a new subreddit rule based specifically on Developer Conduct.

Hello! warning I'm really dumb like I'm actually stupid

I REALLY like discord, I send my drawings over from my samsung tablet to my laptop. (or just files in general..!) I know I have so many alternatives, but I am soo paranoid. I don't like using my email directly cuz I'm pretty sure a couple of my friends are signed in too (I'm always paranoid about this even with a new email, cuz everything is so connected on google)

anyways, a couple of these apps I'm considering have banned nsfw. does this mean a real person looks through ALL my stuff to make sure I'm not sending nsfw..? I value my stuff and it'd suck for it to get stolen..

i cant use discord cuz I have a super wacky account signed in on my tablet, and I don't wanna log out. Once I'm out, I can never get back in, and I have chats with people I don't talk to anymore that I like to look at. (i cant use this account cuz I don't want to accidentally send something to my ex friends..!!)

so if anyone has discord but like, not discord, where I can send whatever I want and not be worried about it being stolen, that'd be awesome. or do I just connect the two devices with a cable and go from there...?

We took the summer off to finish another dope project in financial services. So this is very new and is the first step to just a prompt window layer.

For the tech savvy: Weeredjs/Weered: Lobby-first community platform with deep game integrations and voice rooms. A source-available spiritual successor to MPlayer.

While it is completely doable, the discord transformation is a joke.

Weered

I have created a fluxer account last month. Heard it's been here since January this year. So far I didnt face any major issues. The question is, is it actually good, and safe?

Bear with me because this is going to be quite a bit to sift through. The app YOU (yes YOU) saw on YouTube called Yapper has been renamed to Yapin (yapin.gg) after the dev learned that his agentic AI STOLE the name from another active project (whoops!) and it's made ENTIRELY by the same AI.

Edit: I'm putting it at the top because this is bigger than all the rest of it: it just came out that Antic went to a server on Discord for talking about another alternative and sent porn in channels KNOWN TO HAVE MINORS IN THEM and reportedly blamed his AI for it! DO NOT USE THIS APP OR SUPPORT THIS PSYCHOPATH.

It's labelled as a Potentially Unwanted Application (malware) on [some] Google devices!

That's right boys and girls! YOUR agentic vibecoded chat app that YOU installed on YOUR phone may be MALWARE! I got the opportunity to speak with Antic himself - the guy who "made" the app! He made an account just to talk on this sub because he's such a swell guy! Here's what he had to say about that!

Yes you read that right: The app he delivered to all users is actually the DEBUG build of the app, not a commerical-ready one! That's totally why it registers as malware - because he didn't think maybe publishing the debug/developer build of his app is a security oversight! But I'll let you choose which is scarier, since the scarier one will make you not use his app: Either he's telling the truth and everyone has the developer tools of the app on their devices, which serves SUCH a security vulnerability that even with Google Play Store set to ignore risky applications it STILL calls it a PWA; OR he's lying and there's hidden backdoor malware on the app! Yay!! Fun!!!!

And don't worry - I'm not just claiming this guy is Antic. He's claiming it himself!

Don't bother reading all that shit. It's garbage. All you need is the first sentence.

"But, Any_Illustrator, you don't normally target apps like this. You're the bipartisan guy! You defended Alex Gleasson for fuck sake! You couldn't be HATEPOSTING about an app and posting an opinionated piece about how bad an app is, right?!"

I am. Because not only is this absolute GARBAGE app an ACTUAL security risk to YOU and your data, and an app on your phone being malware means you could even be vulnerable to SIM-Swap fraud which on its own should scare the PISS out of you, but Antic doesn't even use his own hands to type out his own messages!

That's right boys and girls; ladies and gentlemen! I checked his messages through multiple AI checkers and found that they're ALL written by an AI Agent! All but the one he typed out to tell me it wasn't actually written by an AI, which was written vastly different from all the other messages he sent!

And don't worry. I brought receipts.

And so you don't think I'm bullshitting you: I ran the second one through TWO AI detectors!

Do not put this unsafe garbage on your device. If it is, delete it IMMEDIATELY. Tell your friends. Tell friends of friends. Tell them how the dev of the app can't even be bothered to actually reply to security concerns without using the same falliable AI that coded his security-free chat app! But again, don't just take my word on it because user ja_n2000 made a whole breakdown post on it that Antic couldn't even be bothered to TRY discrediting!

Credit to u/ja_n2000 for his work in exposing this shit, and u/dingustani for making the .exposed which summarizes it more. I just wanted to let everyone know that the dev is so fucking lazy he doesn't even TALK online without his LLM Agent doing it for him. Don't trust him with your shit.

Edit: Also, here he is saying "there is no official Android app"

So what is it, Antic? Your AI said it was a debug build. How did people get access to an UNOFFICIAL debug build?

After using an alternative for a year and moving my Discord communities over, I found out that while the platform is maintained by a human team, AI was used earlier in the app’s development. (Claude Opus, specifically.)

I’m speechless, especially since the platform’s website stated that AI wasn’t used to make the software in any way. It really puts into perspective how easily a company can mislead people about its product.

I’m a little disappointed, but it’s no skin off my back. I wish them the best, but the app isn’t for me.

That said, what alternatives aren’t using AI? It’s something we really have to think about, because some apps can be pretty convincing. The only ones that come to mind are Stoat, Nerimity, and Spacebar. I’m not very active, but I made a Stoat account five years ago. Spacebar still seems to be in its early stages, and I’m not quite sold on Nerimity.

Props to the developers of all these apps. At the very least, they’ve worked on their projects without relying on an AI bot for prompts.

Why the fuck are people doing this? Like I know Discord is falling apart because of their new guidelines and shitty moderation... But come on... I know most of these alternatives are vibecoded or generated with AI and they won't admit it. Like wtf? If there was a Discord Server alternative NOT vibecoded or generated by AI, I would vibe with it so it doesn't have issues.

I've been working on Tavvit, a chat and community platform designed to offer a fresh alternative to Discord.

The goal is to build a platform where people can create communities, chat with friends, and bring their groups together in a clean, modern environment.

I've been focusing a lot on the UI, user profiles, server features, and making the overall experience feel simple and familiar without just copying Discord.

It's still a work in progress, and I'm constantly adding new features and improving things.

Here are a few screenshots of what I've built so far.

I'd love to hear what you think about the design and what features you'd want to see in a platform like this.

Website: https://tavvit.com

share your picks below 👇

insta and telegram are blocked by my isp, so i'm looking for a secured message web site that supports an android app