Over the weekend, hackers targeted federated social networks like Mastodon to carry out ongoing spam attacks that were organized on Discord, and conducted
“I would estimate that the entire fediverse is developed off of the backs of maybe, at best, 100 engineers,” she said. “All of whom are either low paid, underpaid, or unpaid, who are trying to build software, and at the same time, are supporting the userbase of monthly active users in the range of 1.1 million to 7.4 million.”
Transcription-Kevin Durant meme, "LIKE 100 PEOPLE:"..."Y'ALL THE REAL MVPS"
I reported a server where the users harassed, both online and offline, a trans woman who later killed herself. Then they made memes about her death. Discords 'safety team' suggested I talk to the server admin (who was part of the abuse) and closed the ticket.
If anyone is looking for an alternative to discord, please check out revolt.chat
The interface and user experience is the closest I've seen to discord (miles better than any Matrix client), has functioning voice chat (being rebuilt for more stability) custom server roles, and a functioning youtube music bot called Remix.
They're doing awesome work over there!
Edit: Forgot to mention that it's also open-source and self-hostable (although not federated)
I think the problem with projects like that is they end up with stuff like this: https://i.imgur.com/PRX4haL.png where the only recommended client is one that is unmaintained.
Though I hope Revolt succeeds because Discord has way too big of a monopoly.
I've got a Matrix server up and running and have tried a couple of different clients, but at the end of the day the Matrix UX isn't really an alternative to Discord, rather an alternative to Facebook Messenger/WhatsApp or other group message platforms.
The main thing I would point to is that Matrix itself only does text; the Element client uses Jitsi to add in audio/video calls and screensharing, but at least right now, it's the only Matrix client to integrate voice, video, or screenshare.
My other gripes are just with the user interface, but if you open any of the Matrix mobile apps and compare it to Facebook Messenger and to the Discord mobile app, and you'll see it really doesn't look like Discord. I wish I could quantify it better, but Matrix just doesn't feel like Discord whereas Revolt does.
Ingress and egress costs are real and those assholes attached images to their spam. Hundreds of posts coming in at 700kb a pop does damage if you're relying on a cloud provider to store your shit. Then, it gets accessed by all your users.
I saw a few instances had large bills from their CDNs because some spammers uploaded many attachments. I don't think this is from the current wave of spam about the Japanese discord server though
Why would a company like discord even attempt to take action against coordinated attacks against anything they see as a threat? That'd only be shooting them in the foot because then people would have the most minute expectation of them doing anything good.
There is also discord guilds for sharing cheats, which is very damaging to the massive fps games industry. If discord would be complicit why doesn’t valve or riot sue them?
Then they can't, and I think that's also the point. A tool shouldn't be snitching on its users. If the act itself is illegal, then of course the perpetrators can be prosecuted
Which is wild because Discord has taken down servers for what is in my opinion pretty benign stuff like independent Korean comic localization groups. (Although I personally don't use those because it's generally very shifty people trying to enter DMs of vulnerable people, just get a website dudes).
I've seen several people say that Matrix clients aren't good at replacing Discord, but I'm having trouble understanding what exactly is missing. What critical features does Discord have that a client like Element lacks?
Here's a critical feature: Matrix bans people using a VPN. Fuck that. I joined a channel for the first time, said "Hello", and was instantly banned for "Spam".
I have to use a VPN because I get my Internet from tethering my phone using EasyTether to make it look like phone data, and connecting to stuff like Windows Update would make it really obvious I'm doing so.
Unfortunately discord is the main app used for a lot of communities I follow for specific games, streamer communities, local organizations, etc. But for my friend group we use a self hosted matrix server. It lacks all the nifty bots for music streaming, I'm pretty sure I can't screen share for movie nights or to share gaming, but it had the bare bones chatting experience