Hello, everyone. 👋 I am bibbleskit, or just bibs, please. I’m a sysadmin by day, digital artist by day, and so very sleepy by night.

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Too Long; Didn’t Read. Just tell me what to do.

Option 1: “I just want a good, non-invasive Discord replacement.”

• Stoat aims to be a 1 for 1 Discord clone. It’s very good and improving quickly.

Option 2: “I am very worried about my privacy.”

• Matrix is a solid choice, albeit somewhat user-unfriendly.

Feature	Stoat	Matrix
User Friendly	YES ✅	NO ❌
Community Centered	YES ✅	NO ❌
Not owned by a company	NO ❌	YES ✅
No Age Gating	NO ❌ (see below)	YES ✅
Open Source	YES ✅	YES ✅
Works on all devices	YES ✅ (iOS coming soon)	YES ✅ (even your toaster)
End-to-end Encryption	NO ❌ (in discussion)	YES ✅
1 on 1 voice calls	YES ✅	YES ✅
Group Calls	NO ❌ (coming soon!)	YES ✅
Video Calls	NO ❌ (coming soon!)	YES ✅
Screensharing	NO ❌ (coming soon!)	YES ✅
Themes	YES ✅	Sorta ❓
Custom Emoji	YES ✅	Sorta ❓
Stickers	YES ✅	Sorta ❓
Easy Sign-up	YES ✅	YES ✅
Discord-like Channel Structure	YES ✅	NO ❌

Stoat is the choice with the least friction. It’s already pretty popular. Honestly, this is what I’m going to push most people toward.

Matrix is not Discord. It won’t ever be. It’s entirely different protocol. But with the right client and settings, you can make it sort of act like Discord. The main reason to go through the trouble is privacy. Matrix supports End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) and is federated.

Matrix is great, is ever improving, and has a ton of familiar features. The difficult part is that it is NOT Discord. It never was and it won’t be. I personally believe it’s worth getting to understand. It’s pretty much future proof. But it’s not a 1:1 replacement. It is fundamentally an entirely different protocol. The transition is made way easier with the right client, though. I recommend the following:

• Commet
  • Very discord-like.
  • Supports voice, video, and screen-sharing.
  • Only text chat allows for encryption, currently.
• Cinny
  • Very discord-like.
  • Currently doesn’t support voice, video, or screen-sharing.
  • Text chat allows for encryption.
• Element
  • Not discord-like.
  • Supports voice, video and screen-sharing.
  • Everything can be encrypted.

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The Full Brain Dump

Why you should ditch Discord

• Discord will be making every account “teen by default.” Here is their official press release statement. To determine whether you need to have your age verified, they run your account data through an AI to guess your age. At best, nothing changes for you. At worst, you are determined to be under 13 and your entire account could be locked. Anything forcing you to give your ID or biometrics to “keep children safe” is just a way to control what the population has access to. It’s has nothing to do with children.
• 70,000 photo IDs and related personal information have been leaked. It’s common for people to say that Discord itself was hacked but, as I understand it, it was their support system. This isn’t much better, but I don’t want to spread misinformation.
• Discord was “experimenting” with Persona as their means of verifying age. Persona has funding from Peter Thiel. Persona was accused by hackers of having servers that allow the US government and ICE access to their data, but Persona denies this. In any case, Discord has stated that they are no longer using Persona as it was just a test for the UK.
• Discord’s CEO used to beo CEO of Activision Blizzard. And.. well… you’ve seen how Discord has turned out. Full of microtransactions, the subscription models, Discord currency, inconveniences built in to push you to spend money, etc.
• Proprietary code.
• AI built into the service (so you can edit other people’s pictures, ew).

Alternatives

If you’ve been searching for a replacement for Discord for privacy reasons, it feels like there’s no other real option than Matrix. I have looked at all of the following, and you may have tried or checked out a few:

• Stoat (formerly Revolt. Is open source!)
• Guilded (killed itself lol)
• Fluxer (not open source)
• Root (not open source)
• TeamSpeak (not open source)
• Many other applications I have forgotten about. It’s been a long couple of months, okay.

They all share the same problem:

They are privately owned and using their service means your data is being kept by a company. If they want to comply with the law, they will eventually also require you to verify your age somehow. They are no different than Discord in this way.

Having said all that, Stoat is actually far better than all the rest on this list. It’s open source and is the only project I’ve ever seen that has a strict “no AI generated code” policy.

Stoat the GOAT?

Here’s why I’m pushing for Stoat over Matrix:

• Discord-like, so its familiar
• Open source, so you know what’s going on
• No ads
• No tracking
• No paid subscription bullshit
• Very customizable
• You can self-host your own server if you want full privacy.*
• Easy bot integration and API
• Doesn’t have ties to Peter Thiel and Palantir.

It’s a great choice still, and the devs are working hard to give people a place to move on from Discord. If you want the easy transition, pick Stoat. Nearly all of the “NO ❌” sections are being worked on. And, due to the open source nature of the platform, you can watch its progress and even help out if you know how. The development team has grown considerably in recent weeks.

_{* All of Stoat’s server code is available from their GitHub repository. You can download, configure, and run it all on your computer, giving you complete control all the data. However, this means that the only people you can talk to will be people who sign up for your version of Stoat. I’ve seen mentioned that they have thrown around the idea of allowing federation, though.}

“Tell me more about the age thingie.“

Right, so. Stoat (and every other company) has to comply with the law, so that means that they cannot allow anyone under a certain age (location dependent) to view content deemed “unsafe.” What is considered unsafe for you is up to the will of lawmakers in your area. This can mean gore, sexual content, or anything really. This affects pretty much every online service.

Currently, the Stoat’s system allows server owners to mark channels as “age restricted,” which then prevents anyone from seeing the content of the channel. At all. Even the server owner, haha. That’s because Stoat has no way to determine your age.

Stoat devs are bashing their heads against the wall trying to figure out the best way to deal with this. They KNOW users are signing up left and right to get away from Discord. They KNOW that asking for your face or ID is absolutely going to bring the same fury upon them. It’s a very difficult situation to be in. It’s costly, it’s awful, it’s a pain in the ass. They don’t want your personally identifiable information. Do not be mad at them, be mad at your law makers. Send them angry letters. It’s the old people in charge’s fault, not the Stoat devs. You can be mad at Discord, though. They actively do want your data.

“I could just use Discord without giving them my biometrics. I’ll keep my face and my ID to myself.”

That’s fine. Go ahead! I am 100% with you, honestly. I will likely be doing the same so I can keep up with certain communities that have no alternative.

As long as Discord’s AI determines that you’re older than 13 (based on the information it gather from ingesting all of your chat history 🙃), you’ll still be allowed to use your account. You won’t be allowed to look at age restricted channels, but you can still use the account.

If they determine you’re under 13, they’ll block you from accessing your account entirely. You’ll be forced to verify your age.

Okay, but you brought up Matrix.

It’s complicated.

What is Matrix?

Matrix is an open-source protocol. The easiest comparison is email, but secure and instant.

• Open Source: All of the code is free to look through yourself. You can be sure that your data is being handled carefully.
• Protocol: It’s not a service, it’s a blueprint.
• Federation: No central location owns ALL of the data. Think about simple text messaging on your phone. When you send a message, a copy of that message is on the receivers phone now. If you delete your message, they still have their copy. This is also how email works.
• Self-Hostable: You can spin up your own fully functional service on a computer you own, use it for authentication, and data storage. No third-party needed to handle your data.
• End to End Encrypted (E2EE): Data sent between you and everyone else is securely transferred in a way that not even the service provider can read it. The only people that can read it is you and the person its intended for.

Federation means that if a something breaks, everything is still okay. If Discord goes down, its down for everyone. Matrix can’t “go down” because it’s not a single service. It’s everyone’s Matrix instances working together.

E2EE is great and is offered but isn’t always the default. You would have to check your settings in each Matrix room you’re in.

How is it different from Discord?

First, let me make two distinctions, otherwise it will be difficult to speak clearly.

• Discord:
  • Guild: A collection of Channels that share permissions, members, roles, settings. A.K.A. a “Discord server.” Discord renamed “guilds” to “servers,” which only confuses things, so I will be using the original name.
  • Channel: A single flowing chatroom contained within a Discord Guild.
• Matrix:
  • Space: A collection of Matrix Rooms and Spaces (Spaces can nest, creating sub-Spaces). Members of that Space can see other members and Rooms of that space.
  • Room: A single flowing chatroom. It has its own permissions, settings, and members.
• “Server“:
  • Definition: A computer that serves and handles information between you and the service.
  • Discord has many servers that work together to handle the millions of users each day. All of these servers are privately owned by Discord.
  • A Matrix server is owned by whoever installed, configured, and connected it to the rest of the Matrix protocol. There is one at matrix.org, one at fedoraproject.org, and even one hosted by me at uwu.bibs.dev.

The big difference here is that Discord communities are separated by Guilds. This makes things (in my opinion) really easy and simple to understand. You want to be a part of the “Legend of Zegend” server guild? Great! As soon as you enter, you are now a part of every channel and get to have roles and emojis and etc that are all contained in one place.

Matrix, in contrast, is separated largely by Rooms. Commonly, you would join a single focused room to talk about the subject it was made for. Spaces are a newer introduction that are largely meant to help you find/organize your rooms. Want to be a part of the “Legend of Zegend” community on Matrix? Well… now you have to find out where people are talking about it. Perhaps there’s a #zegend-fans:matrix.org channel. You can join that and get right into it with whoever else is there. Or maybe there’s a livelier one at #zegend-forever:uwu.bibs.dev.

It’s quite the difference. I love having a big collection of channels that are all related to the same topic. In Discord, you would have:

• Legend of Zegend (Guild)
  • Meta
    • #game-announcements
  • Text Channels
    • #general
    • #tloz-theories
    • #cat-tax-pics
  • Voice
    • 🎧 muted
    • 🎧fangirling

In Matrix, you could join a bunch of different rooms and then put them into a space that you created. It would look like this:

• My Zegend Rooms
  • #zegend-fans:matrix.org
  • #zegend-forever:uwu.bibs.dev
  • #tloz-theories:tloz-fans.com

This is the biggest reason I keep saying “Matrix is not Discord.” The high level organizational structure, purpose, and ideals are completely different. They are both avenues to chat and connect with people, but its like comparing a mall to a downtown shopping district.

This isn’t to say it’s not possible to force Matrix to fit into a Discord shaped hole. By utilizing spaces, subspaces, rooms, and the proper client in a certain way, you can get a very discord-like experience. Let’s look at Commet again:

This looks VERY Discord-like. Commet has chosen to display Spaces, sub-Spaces, and Rooms as if they were Guilds, Categories, and Channels. The “channel” #your-art is actually the room #your-art:uwu.bibs.dev within the sub-space #Art:uwu.bibs.dev within the space #bibs-art-refuge:uwu.bibs.dev. Commet puts a blurple coat of paint on these Matrix concepts to make it more familiar.

This means you can create your own Space that is made up of rooms from all over the place. The following is a picture of a Space I just created called “Art Stuff”. Within it are two rooms from completely different servers:

And check out this space I just created called “Bestest Friends Ever” and filled it with direct message rooms (DMs are also rooms!):

It’s very flexible and very cool, but I hope I’ve illustrated how much of a completely different paradigm it is from Discord.

How do I use Matrix?

Pick a client you like. At the beginning I mentioned Commet, Cinny, and Element, but there are 100 different clients. Think of them like themes for Matrix as opposed to Matrix itself.

In those clients, it will ask you for what host you want to sign into. Usually, they auto fill it with “matrix.org.” If you don’t have an account, there is usually a sign up button. Click that and follow the steps.

By the nature of being federated, your account will be hosted on whatever provider you choose to sign up with. I recommend signing up with matrix.org if you are unsure. This just means that you will sign into “matrix.org” with whatever client you choose. And after you have an account, you can sign into ANY client with that same login, as long as you tell it you’re signing in with “matrix.org” or whatever else you choose.

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Final Thoughts

It’s been a long, loong, search for a good alternative. Everything has its pros and cons. There isn’t one perfect solution. But Stoat hits a lot of great notes and the devs are good people. I will push you and everyone else toward Stoat, but in the end everything depends on your personal use case.

If you have thoughts or opinions that conflict with what I’ve written, please feel free to contact me using one of these methods. I’d love to hear.

• Stoat: @bibbleskit#1743
• Matrix: @bibbleskit:uwu.bibs.dev
• BlueSky: @bibbleskit.com

If you have a different alternative that is open source, trustworthy, Discord-like, and has a possibility for mass adoption, then I’d love to hear about it. This disqualifies things like Signal, Telegram, SimpleX, etc.

Thank you for reading. It took me a long time to write this and I still might come back and update it. But in the meantime, I hope to see you on Stoat.

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💖