Discord isn’t exactly known for generous file-sharing limits, still, the messaging app offered a 25MB limit to free users. The company has now updated its support page to reflect the upload limit for free users has been lowered to 10MB.
Removed by author
I moved a big group off Discord last year to Matrix chat (Element). It’s been largely pretty alright. 100mb upload limit, we have a bot that downloads tiktoks/Instagram/reddit videos and uploads them to the channel so you never have to visit the sites. Pretty nice! Open source and federated, you guys should give it a try!
Matrix is nice, but it’s still very bad UX wise.
I’ve used it on and off for years now, and about 2-4 times a month it loses my chat view encryption keys, and loses me my entire chat history. It also regularly has sync issues between devices signed into the same account, and is relatively slow sometimes to send messages.
Of course, that’s just my anecdotal experience, but I’ve tried many messaging platforms over the years, and while Matrix (and multiple of its clients, primarily Element) is the most feature-complete compared to Discord, it’s nowhere near properly usable long-term for a mass-market audience.
I don’t know how you loose your keys all the time. But in that case you really should use a key backup.
Lose*
I agree, the security key thing is a bit of an issue. However this might a bit of a user error as well. The thing to understand is that Encryption keys are not stored on Matrix.org. If they were, then Matrix.org (or whatever homeserver you’re using) would be able to decrypt everything you can decrypt, thus making Matrix pretty useless. The solution is that keys are only stored locally on your devices. Keys are shared to other devices using the Verification process and Emoji matching thing. The problem is most users just go “Whatever!” And ignore the verification process and then have a bad experience because they don’t have Encryption keys.
The thing is, I did have encryption keys set up. The problem was that Element would repeatedly forget the very encryption keys passed by the other user, and would then have to request the keys again. Any historical message history would be permanently encrypted forever, and wouldn’t decrypt with the new view key.
After this happened about 4 times, I stopped using it, because it was impossible to maintain conversations for longer than 1-2 weeks before they’d inevitably be lost, and I’d then have to spend about an hour waiting for Element to receive the new encryption keys from the people I was contacting, even when they were already actively online.
I have no clue what was causing it, but it happened on multiple accounts, on multiple devices, all the time, and there was no conceivable fix. I’m not sure if this is fixed now, but I haven’t had a good reason to go back, especially with other encrypted messaging options out there.
we have a bot that downloads tiktoks/Instagram/reddit videos and uploads them to the channel
Would love to see the implementation!
I like bringing stuff to the fediverse by way of cobalt.tools -> catbox.moe (shoutout Catbox for so much 100% free hotlink bandwidth) (also the owner’s trying to find a CSAM content ID solution that’s not super expensive FYI y’all)
Would love to see the implementation!
I’m using Maubot in a docker container with the Social Media Download Plugin. Here is a list of all the plugins: https://plugins.mau.bot/
on mobile it’s just a huge pile of stinky shit anyway
*everywhere
Just use signal or any e2e instant messanger instead of it.
I primarily use Discord as a one stop shop to play and run dnd campaigns. I first hopped on it around 2017, and its was way better than any other group chat app. Around the pandemic all my groups started playing on it and it became relatively seamless. I joined exactly one streamers discord but that is totally it. In general I wouldn’t expect it to be a good archive, or forum, nor do I expect it to be secure. I use armchord on PC. I started using it before it was enshittified. For what it does, it does it pretty well.
For the record, I have used matrix and Signal. I think both have the issue that a critical mass of my friends don’t use them. I liked Signal a lot when it had SMS support. I used it as a my primary SMS app, and some of my friends had signal as well, so that was cool. now its more like a specialized messenger app, and I fucking hate having yet another one of those on my phone. Matrix encryption keys are giant stumbling blocks to my friends who do give a fuck. I play ttrpgs with some people who could not give a fuck. I would have to set up the server, set up the account, and then I would have have to do the encryption key for them. And like people say, Matrix logs you out every little while. You can turn notifications off and totally forget about it. For my non techy friends, this is literally a bridge too far.
I literally have two friends who think Matrix is cool. No one else even has an account, much less a server. And the support to meet people who have this app is very limited. Cool, but I think it will always be a niche.
It took me a lot of convincing to get my friends on Signal instead of WhatsApp. I believe WhatsApp was talking about adding advertising or charging money, and I used that to get people to switch.
This reminds me of the argument I see from Linux users that Linux is just as easy to set up as Windows. I think it doesn’t occur to people making that argument that most people never even set up Windows. It’s just on their computer when they get it.
The setup needs to be fast and easy for people to consider it. Nobody will spend even 5 minutes figuring something out these days.
Edit to add that a bunch of younger people have never had a computer or laptop. They do their computer stuff on a phone or possibly a tablet and they definitely never did anything technical like reinstall the OS.
How do you understand this without falling into the defeatist mindset that the sheeple deserve to be imprisoned in the state of enshitification that their ignorance, laziness, and unwillingness to learn has helped build? Put down your iPhone, or go check into your local FEMA camp. I hate to be negative like this, but people really seem to be willing to give up everything for convenience and bling.
esstee
People can choose what to spend their time doing. Some of us choose to be able to install operating systems, other choose to become master gardeners. Who’s to say which one is right or wrong? The gardeners probably don’t have any issues using WhatsApp, even if there is advertising in it, because it solves the problem they have. Then they go back to the thing they’re experts at instead, saying things like “why can’t these tech sheeple grow a radish? send them all to jail.”
You dont have to be an expert, i barely know anything about the kinux cli but i still use linux daily
Most people have never installed an operating system, and I’ve never seen a laptop running Linux for sale at Best Buy or wherever, so there’s a huge barrier for entry for the average person.
I’m sure most people would be fine with Linux day to day if it was set up for them, but they’re not going to download an ISO, boot from it, and install an OS if they don’t have to.
These same people, to stick with my example, might grow delicious tomatoes, better than those you buy at the supermarket. Can anyone grow some tomatoes? Pretty much. Does anyone really have to? No.
It… Is?
Matrix works pretty good.
Yeahh no shit! Been using it for a short while now, glad Im able to find a couple groups to chat with, such an underrated service/protocol or whatever. I hope it and element keep getting better maybe I can get more friends to use it! Been tryna ditch Instagram cus half for the reason I use it nowadays is simply to keep in touch with friends and family as I don’t use any other messaging service ATM.
Is there a Matrix for dummies guide? It seems difficult to get started with, finding the right client etc.
the enshitification will go faster now i bet
They want your data, everything you upload to discord belongs to that corporation. Corporations do not have souls
Discord continues down it’s path to total enshittification, which is exactly what I told everyone would happen when this fucking dogshit app got pushed on me around 2018 or so.
It’s a private company with a profit motive. Fucking shocker that it enshittifies. /s
Fucking dipshit gamers not knowing any better.
Anything that wants to meaningfully compete with Discord will probably also need to be able to near-seamlessly port over existing Discord servers to the new platform, since it’s so established now. Is there a competitor that can do that?
I’m completely out of the loop, so I might as well ask you: where is discord so established? Never used it in my life. I used IRC, ICQ and MSN in their time. Now for work Slack, teams and zoom. Signal and Telegram privately. Email for everything.
What am I missing? What does discord provide?
Discord is used a lot for gaming groups, modding, software development, and has largely replaced forums for lots of niche communities
Which is unfortunate. Hiding projects, code and support behind discord is just wrong.
There are Linux and open source communities on discord. I mean, just think about that for a second. These people have chosen to put their stuff on a platform that has refused to acknowledge the existence of their OS / development platform. Every other post on Reddit in the Linux community before I left was about some half assed discord workaround.
Discord is fashionable. That’s it. The whole app is fantastically impractical if you want to use file or screen sharing. It’s just a bunch of gamers circle-jerking each other, which is a perfect way to keep them from infesting the rest of the internet.
A really ugly and confusing UI.
Unfortunately, a lot of fandom communities, video games, and (ugh) hobbyist development projects have Discard servers instead of a forum or similar.
It provides a weird IRC-but-not-really type experience that is similar to MSN in some ways. A lot of younger people flock to it because they find computer stuff difficult and they just want it to work, be easy, and have an app. The UI is trendy even though it’s horrible to actually navigate due to all the wasted space and buttons.
I really just think it caught on at the right time, though the video calling is pretty good. What I have a problem with is that you need to join a server to access any information inside of it, so it’s not searchable from outside of the Discord ecosystem. For dev projects or large communities, that sucks and makes the internet a worse place.
I have a hobby development project with a modest community and maintain a Discord server basically because it’s necessary in order to avoid reducing my potential community reach by at least 50%.
I’m active on GitHub and respond to comments and issues there. I maintain an official thread for my project on the official forum for the game it’s related to. I also keep all documentation, downloads, and guides off Discord and on the clearnet. Discord is still easily 80% or more of where people look for information about the project.
That’s great - I am obviously not talking about you in that case. I understand why people want to use it, I just don’t think Discord’s features are good enough to justify the mass adoption and the walled garden and UI are bad.
Yeah, I’m just sort of also complaining because it feels like I have to use it.
Personally I originally went to Discord because it was the alternative to skype which was increasingly becoming shittier and shittier when Microsoft bought it.
Discord is great as chat program. It should’ve only ever been used for that. It completely sucks as forum replacement. Discord should’ve had very little value to any decent organization.
Yes, that’s how I ended up there too. At the time, Skype sucked and Mumble/Ventrilo/etc. were seen as too old-school for my friends (and a lot of them didn’t have PCs, just smartphones). We also tried Google Meet, Zoom, and Facebook Messenger at various points but Discord always seemed like the most reliable.
ICQ
You sure about that part? I thought they shut down. I guess they might have some user-based servers?
if you read the whole sentence it might make more sense…
i used […] in their time.
Every single small game I play has effectively the entirety of their support, community and forums run through discord. Instead of easy to search and discover forums, I have to use crappy infinite chat logs. It sucks.
Is there a competitor that can do that?
I say this with all due respect: Who gives a shit? If you were foolish enough to dump your entire community into Discord alone and don’t have an off-ramp, that’s your own fucking problem.
Who gives a shit? The people who use it that you apparently want to switch to something else, for one. Shouldn’t it be easy to switch, like going from Chrome to Firefox? That’s how we get out of Discord hell.
Shouldn’t it be easy to switch, like going from Chrome to Firefox?
Say you have no idea how any of this works without saying you have no idea how any of this works.
That’s how we get out of Discord hell.
Why is it our job to fix the problems of a private, profit-focused company?
We’re not fixing Discord’s problems, oh my god. We’re trying to get their existing users to go somewhere else even though it’s what’s familiar and Discord works for them.
Also it’s definitely possible to code an import tool that scrapes a given server for info on how to structure things on the new platform, so idk what you think you’re gaining by insulting my comparison to an aspect of a service that makes users motivated to switch.
I don’t know who shat in your coffee, but get a fucking new cup.
Honestly the onboarding for a lot of alternatives to various to popular platforms/apps (Matrix, Mastodon, etc) seems to be the biggest impediment to more adoption of those platforms and apps.
By onboarding here I mean the communities that use those platforms recruiting others to join them and help build communities up.
Like goddamn if that users comment was the first time I’d heard of Matrix it would have turned me away for sure.
Not to mention Mastodon having a reputation that proceeds it.
Yes, exactly! At this point, some of these communities have been on Discord for years and have specialized bots for certain tasks. They don’t want to start over, and I don’t want them to either - there’s tons of real work that these communities have put in. I think that these messaging services that want to make headway in the space Discord occupies need to reduce the friction in switching because a lot of Discord admins do believe that the feature set is better, they just can’t easily move over.
This happens to organizations all the time and it’s a known issue - Discord communities are no different. I’m hoping something comes along in the next few years if it doesn’t already exist in its infancy right now. Even at the user level, I know many people are confused about Matrix. I don’t know how exactly to fix these issues, but they need to be priorities.
Look, I’m as upset as you are about the enshittification of everything, but this is a bit too far.
There was always legitimate issues with Discord’s storage management, and they at least seem to be taking it seriously now.
I’m not a massive fan of Discord, but this is a bit of an overreaction.
LITERALLY UNUSABLE 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Discord is fine for 99% of users.
Ok but why are you so angry about it?
I’ve been using it for years and haven’t had to pay a dime.
How have they harmed you with their free app?
Because if you didn’t expect this path when you signed up you were naive.
Now everyone complains about it but for people who had already been paying attention: this was par for the course. Of course this was going to be the outcome. Why should I be happy that everyone fell for the promises of a for-profit private company again?
Like why do you think we are on Lemmy for fucks sake? Is it not for the same reasons??
How many times do we have to be fucked by private corporations for people to learn they don’t care about us?
But every time its all “but they have a better feature set so its okay that they might enshittify in the long-run!” Literally same shit is being said about Bluesky over Mastodon right now.
You didn’t even come close to answering the question. So I’ll ask again.
How were you harmed by Discord?
That wooshing sound you hear over your head is you willfully missing the point entirely.
Like why do you think we are on Lemmy for fucks sake? Is it not for the same reasons??
*woosh
The problem being, there aren’t many alternatives around for discord. And even the ones that exist have issues of their own. Mostly relating to use base and entry barrier, in the case of the item source alternatives.
No, literally the problem is most people would rather give in and use a sleek corporate option every time.
No matter how many times they get fucked by doing that.
It’s a choice to keep getting fucked.
Lololol y’all are insane.
I’ve been using discord for free for like 8 years now. But now I can only share 10mb files and I’M FUCKED 🤣
So much entitlement.
Example one, this ^ shit-for-brains. People like him are how we end up with Discord, when alternatives like Skype have better file and screen sharing and are completely free. Because discord is fashionable. It’s where his equally brainless friends “game.”
No one is preventing you from using Skype. You are unhinged over discord 🤣.
Incredibly weird.
The people downvoting you are the ones who eat up the enshittificaion. Discord is unusable for anyone who wants file or screen sharing. Skype, by contrast, has free screen sharing that’s smoother and higher quality, and a file sharing limit of 300mb, all free for the last decade.
But yeah most users are barely computer literate so Discord keeps humming along.
Skype was annoying to use and so is element
Oh, I know. It’s squarely aimed at fucking tools who don’t even own a PC, which is why it has that “mobile first” design ethos even though their mobile apps are absolute trash.
It doesn’t matter how many times this happens, people would rather get fucked by corpos than spend time learning anything.
What an overreaction. Also FYI the free file limit was 8MB two years ago before they raised the limit to 25MB, so if anything it’s gotten better.
Yeah the file limit on Skype is 300mb and has been for like a decade. Gamers are the dumbest fucking demographic on planet earth.
calm down man, no need to be so rude :(
You’re upset that I said the f-word @IntergalacticTurtleFucker@lemmy.world
Jk
you spoke the truth and it hurts (im retarded)
also I still haven’t decided if my name means that I am an intergalactic being, or if the turtles are intergalactic
Maybe it’s not even about you at all.
Intergalactic turtle, fucker.
I saw this headline and was thinking, “Huh, I thought the limit was 8MB.”
Huh, I wonder how enshitified it has to get before I stop seeing discord on FOSS projects.
It begins lol.
discord on FOSS projects
I don’t understand why this was even a thing to begin with. FOSS projects using non-FOSS platforms is kinda weird, especially platforms with unclear financial situations like Discord.
It is, but then again many (most) are hosted on GitHub.
Because you don’t need to have significant experience or rent a VPS in order to do that, and I can respect that. We don’t need to force FOSS developers to become proficient in everything.
What needs to happen is some kind of tool (ideally FOSS) that lets you spin up an actual forum with the same difficulty to set it up as Discord.
Because you don’t need to have significant experience or rent a VPS in order to do that, and I can respect that
I’m not saying you have to self-host… You could still use something that’s open-source and remotely hosted.
Sentry (error logging and bug reporting system) is like this for example. They have a hosted plan, including a generous free plan for open-source projects, but Sentry itself is open-source.
That looks like a really nice policy. But my question then becomes, what happens if the company sells out someday? What if they get bought out by a larger company, or a private equity firm? Did they take funding, and if so, how much leverage do the funders have to influence them to make money and cut out programs like this?
It’s great to see companies trying to break that trend and I highly commend them for it! But we have already seen this pattern a million times before and it always ends due to something similar to this.
Unlike other platforms, we store your files for as long as you need them, so it is crucial that we manage our storage sustainably
I mean, its great that they offer that, but all my files dont need to be permemnant. I would love the ability to review and delete old files
Yeah, makes no sense that they store some pdf I was dragging over to someone one time. Super inefficient. They should allocate an amount of storage per user that then rolls and deletes the oldest files when the cap gets exceeded to make room for the new files.
It’s probably because it’s their property now and personal data is precious
Maybe, but then they’d want more data, not complaining about needing to limit it. Or maybe it’s just because they want lots of small files like text, and not waste it on inefficient sound and video files.
They want more data and literally can’t store it efficiently enough. You can read their eula and see, they instantly own anything you upload and you no longer have rights to it, which is absolutely bonkers and pretty dubious in many countries if this is even legal. We found out when they overviewed the security of our studio and we use other communication software now because of it. They could literally argue that they own the assets to the games we make if we send concepts to each other.
No it’s not
Next issue
Well, it is better than 8, but still sad.
Does anyone know of a Discord alternative?
My vote is for Matrix
I haven’t heard of Matrix but I’ve heard of Revolt.
Matrix any good?
Revolt tries to be a discord clone/replacement and suffer from some of the same issues. Matrix happens to have a lot of feature in common, but is focused on privacy and security at its core.
Matrix is a laggy dumpsterfire. Messages take longer to send in Matrix than they do in Lemmy, and Lemmy isn’t even supposed to be a real-time chat app.
Try Element X if you have a mobile. It’s rebuilt on the new sdk and offers a new architecture that has messages come in way faster than on Element (original)
My homeserver is a one-person Conduit installation, and slowness is not something I have encountered. However, in groupchats that happened to be encrypted there were moments when my messages failed to decrypt for others. That might’ve been due to my own carelessness with the VPS though.
Did you blindly sign up for matrix.org?
What is the best instance with the largest user base?
Edit: and …yes I did
I don’t know. Why do you want a large user base?
Guessing at one reason:
It feels good to know that you’re not signing up for someone’s instance that they’re just trying out admining for the first time and maybe if they’re too busy to do the proper updates next weekend they’ll just close shop.
(And by shop I mean fantastic free volunteering effort of course!)
Yeah, pick literally any other instance. I went with Mozilla’s, but there are plenty of alternatives. Or host your own!
The first time yeah, but I tried it again on another instance and it was better (at least it didn’t fail to load half the time), but still super slow. The 2nd time is what I was talking about.
It works tho!
Homeserver issue most likely.
Matrix is the closest replacement, and XMPP can replicate some functionality too.
Revolt is the only feature-rich swap in option.
I’d be down if Discord offered optional/default compression for images/videos. Yeah naybe my photos are 10 MB each, but with a slight quality loss they can get under 1 MB. Telegram does it well.
Discord offers automatic compression for images uploaded from mobile, but not from desktop IIRC. It’s weird.
I guess locking basic features behind a paywall didn’t work for them after all, eh?
