and you don’t wanna give it to em.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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 en 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 is allows for encryption at the moment.
- 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.
The Full Brain Dump
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)
- Guilded (killed itself lol)
- Fluxer
- Root
- TeamSpeak
- some other application i have forgotten about it’s been a long couple weeks 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.
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.
Why use Matrix?
How do I use Matrix?
Further Reading
I’d love to give this article from lynndotpy.com a huge shoutout. Thank you, Sophie for showing it to me! It was wild to read through. I kept thinking, “Why am I even writing my article? This is exactly what I wanted to say but already done… and better.” They even did the a similar TLDR and chart comparison. It’s a good read. If you learned anything from my piece, you’ll learn more from theirs. The scopes of our writing is actually quite different so, similarities aside, it’s worth your time.