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dymk 2 days ago [-]
Front page says 150MB RAM, About page says 90MB.
Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
lenkite 4 hours ago [-]
All the people saying AI makes less mistakes than humans are just completely wrong. That has NOT been my experience in the last year and half after reviewing ~100 AI-assisted PRs. Humans made LESS mistakes when they took direct responsibility. (Some developers don't make any mistakes) Also, humans don't generally tend to repeat the same mistakes again and again.
General code quality has gone to shit and problems are discovered far too late.
Varelion 1 days ago [-]
Exactly. I am simply done using any service whose source code I cannot audit myself.
acley 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, the RAM numbers are off, those are from different builds, and we never synced them. my bad, fixing today. And it's two of us and the landing page got like a day of attention because everything else felt more urgent. not really a defense, just what happened. Same reason it's nowhere near as rich as Discord's site.
"free forever" — it's already been free 1.5 years, we were Zorium before the rebrand. If we do add a paid plan later the stuff that's free now stays free, new stuff gets charged for. we also build business software, so we've got spare server capacity, runs fine on it.
Thanks for the feedback tho :)
soundworlds 2 days ago [-]
While it's great to have alternatives, I suspect a lot us are really only interested in forkable open alternatives (like Matrix / Element), as most concerns about Discord are tied with it being a private company.
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
LorenDB 2 days ago [-]
Why do all the Discord alternative apps try to 1:1 clone Discord's UI? Half of my dislike of Discord stems from its UI.
theturtletalks 2 days ago [-]
Have you tried Chatto[0]? Seems to be an open-source Slack and Discord alternative with a nice UI.
No! You see, it has text and a version at the top. That makes it new, fresh, and completely different. Some would even say superior.
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
Damn this is gorgeous. That said, how can one try something if no one is there? I can sway my team to move it, but not my audience. Discord still owns the market as a medium to reach an audience.
arikrahman 2 days ago [-]
Looks like a cool project, thanks for the reference. Have been relying on Dorion up to this point.
tekchip 2 days ago [-]
So much this. Discord UI was for simple voice and text chat. Over time it's had so many other things shoe horned in its now a royal kludge.
nelsonfigueroa 2 days ago [-]
I guess because there's people like me that like the UI (aside from all the Nitro bloat at least)
Sohcahtoa82 2 days ago [-]
I'm always surprised to hear people hate Discord's UI. I think it's fine.
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
Gigachad 2 days ago [-]
It's fine as a kind of replacement for forums, but I don't like it at all for chat and community. I find Discord admins always tend to create 5 trillion channels which each get about one message per week. And then whine when you haven't sorted your messages in to the most relevant channels.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
Sohcahtoa82 2 days ago [-]
[dead]
virgil_disgr4ce 2 days ago [-]
Yeah; I get the impression that people saying this really mean "I hate the stupid upsells." Which is fine, I do too. But I guess on HN there's more clout to claiming it's the UI that's the problem?
saintfire 2 days ago [-]
Nah, everyone I know isn't a fan of discord's UI.
I stand to gain nothing and I don't even think it's popular sentiment.
For a new user it's completely alien. Trying to get a coworker to try discord for the first time is a nightmare.
It tries to solve so much in such a condensed bar on the side. Why are DM listed "as" a server. I hate the notification system for transient server joins. I have no opinion of the channel system. Why can't you read discord threads of a public discord without joining the server and accepting the posting rules? They're trying to emulate forums but it's a huge PITA to just read (in a RO state, even).
Idk lots of complaints, network effect is a bitch.
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
Totally, I suspect a lot of people who preach discord here use it for fun and hobby, like some book club or small community.
Try using it at scale, for channeling communities, engaging with users, bots, marketing, and for work with streaming, video, rooms, voice rooms, moderation, etc.
There is an entire universe, even large businesses, built just around navigating Discord for good and for worse.
Turn it into a protocol.
LorenDB 2 days ago [-]
Well, I do hate the stupid upsells, but the entire Discord UI just feels... off. I can't really place a finger on it, but I just don't like it. (Maybe there is a bit of a UX nag causing these feelings as well? I'm not sure.)
jamesfinlayson 2 days ago [-]
I log into Discord maybe once a fortnight to check what's going, and every time I land in a channel, it shows me the newest handful of messages, and I need to scroll back endlessly to get back to where I actually left off.
charcircuit 2 days ago [-]
Because it reduces the switching cost because users don't have to learn a new interface. Discord has shown that its UI is at least capable of being used by hundreds of millions of users so it is not a bad starting point.
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
That's exactly it. A lot of users are likely emotionally attached and trapped to their Nitro garbage and feel like they "invested" far into the cult by now. Giving them a way out is important if you want to acquire that market.
virgil_disgr4ce 2 days ago [-]
Man, the Nitro stuff is garbage, but it's bizarre that you're equating the ENTIRE UI to that. It's really not that obtrusive. I don't like it either but it's like 0.5% of the UI
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
Fair point, opinions are not truth. That said there are lots of mods out there for it with substantial (many millions) of users where their entire reason for existing is taking control of the UI.
What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
Please please please someone take over discord and their use base. Their nitro and ads is the most toxic nonsense stuff I have ever had the displeasure to work with.
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
adzm 2 days ago [-]
There is so little advertising on discord that I find it hilarious you are so upset about a few notifications here and there about nitro and other aesthetic perks which are basically entirely optional
hresvelgr 2 days ago [-]
There are 3rd party ads in Discord now, and they are probably going to expand as an ad platform. I think this is what the parent comment was upset about.
edit: grammar
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
That too, I have to be on Nitro because of work. (Managing communities, streaming resolution, etc), and the level of ads triple after being a customer. Even worse if you need to blend in like adopting some of the customization since the cult goes deep.
To be fair, I put myself there and I voluntarily work with those audiences. I am aware I don't belong to the same level they do, and I'm ok with that. I just wish I could customize it my way too. In my view, if this was a protocol rather than a PaaS locked-in system, like IRC for example, we all would be winning.
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
A few notifications here and there? I'm not sure I can agree with you. It's a daily persistent thing that there is no way to disable and the constant dark patterns.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
xboxnolifes 2 days ago [-]
I'm actually confused about what you mean with "daily persistent thing". I see a discord popup on start about a new feature or ad for some collaboration maybe once a month. Most days it just starts and brings me to the last server I was in.
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
Three things I can't remove from the UI that often have intrusive popups at random placed directly under "Friends":
1. Nitro Home
2. Shop
3. Quests
And hovering on users often brings up upsell.
xboxnolifes 2 days ago [-]
Interesting, I almost never see any of that stuff when I use discord, but I realize that's because I almost never use DMs.
axus 2 days ago [-]
Charging for perks and user self-expression seems a lot healthier than what we see in app stores and websites.
This is all pre-IPO, it's sure to get worse; hopefully one of the Discord alternatives will have caught on by then.
The big line they've crossed is collecting identification; much thanks to HN for linking to the bypass that worked for a day.
Ekaros 2 days ago [-]
I have never seen true need to get Nitro. Missing on some things but if someone wants to pay for it let them.
Big question is how else would they make money? Monetise hosting "servers" directly? Would they have even gotten community if they did that?
hmokiguess 2 days ago [-]
Do you have or use Discord for work? E.g. streaming, many calls, etc. Only nitro lets you do those.
Ekaros 2 days ago [-]
Thankfully my company uses Teams. So I don't need Discord for that. As non-nitro uses it works fine for text chat.
esseph 2 days ago [-]
> Thankfully my company uses Teams.
Wwooooooowwwww I never thought I'd read that or even a similar statement in my entire life!
nickthegreek 2 days ago [-]
> Please please please someone take over discord and their use base
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
Cider9986 2 days ago [-]
https://fluxer.app seems to be the best alternative so far, by a mile. Gained a bunch of users during some controversy too.
Someone else here also mentioned Chatto [0] which seems far easier to self-host than Fluxer, though both appear to be quite similar to Discord in overall functionality. I've played with Chatto a bit and it seems surprisingly solid overall thus far.
Is there anyone there I want to talk to? You need to demonstrate that before I create a login, otherwise there is too much friction for me.
The iOS storefront is also far behind your website in quality and attention to detail.
Edit: please accept this in the spirit of some quick feedback from one maker to another
kennywinker 2 days ago [-]
What a weird and entitled position. This is a product for people who create or manage communities, not people who demand to be shown there is already a community there
apetresc 2 days ago [-]
How on earth do you expect them to show you whether there's anyone there you want to talk to?
bitmasher9 2 days ago [-]
I have a lot of chatting applications that all demonstrated that to me. The most common way was having another party indicate the app as a communication option
hatthew 2 days ago [-]
Is this P2P, or hosted on proprietary servers? How is it funded? I don't like ads and I like free things, but "no ads, free forever" doesn't make me confident in its long term stability.
acley 2 days ago [-]
We have been online for more than 1.5 years. Back when we started, we didn't see Discord alternatives popping up left and right, so we created our own. Nowadays, there are like 10 of them popping up every single day, most of those are below par and completely usable. If you like to try out a new one you can give us a try no stress haha bye
altilunium 2 days ago [-]
Cool. I would like to try it, but it will probably take a considerable amount of time to convince my circle of friends to migrate to this platform en masse.
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
Varelion 2 days ago [-]
Sorry, where is the source code? For any trust to be built OS should be a prime feature at this point in the game.
muwtyhg 2 days ago [-]
Why do companies like this continue to promise "No Ads Ever"? How do they plan enough money to support their service? Video sharing is incredibly expensive, even Discord is unlikely profitable between their advertising campaigns and server boosting revenue.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
s0ss 2 days ago [-]
Are clients and server FOSS? If so, advertise that. Personally, I’m not interested in another platform that isn’t.
anon7000 2 days ago [-]
No one’s squads give 2 shits what language their app is written in. The LLMisms are so annoying to read and tell me nothing genuine about what it’d be like to use it.
Madmallard 2 days ago [-]
Not open source
Not interested
bellowsgulch 2 days ago [-]
I'm just ready for something new, personally. I don't really like Discord's vibe of paying for avatar skins? Gross. And paying for custom emojis? Super gross. Yuck.
ludston 2 days ago [-]
Congratulations, I'm sure it was a monumental effort to build this. Good luck with marketing and all that.
jonstaab 2 days ago [-]
xkcd 927 but instead of another standard, another vibe-coded discord clone.
I see no point in switching from one closed-source platform to another closed-source platform.
Apreche 2 days ago [-]
If it’s not open source and self-hostable, it’s a non-starter. Not switching to another closed platform just for it to die. I’m tired of switching. Whatever I switch to next must be able to last the rest of my life expectancy.
jimmygrapes 2 days ago [-]
Yeah ok.
2025 to 2026 full of slop signals, LLC reg number from April 2026 to the same address in multiple reports as ultra scammy:
Lot of other red flags for me but those are even more vibe-based than everything about this.
acley 1 days ago [-]
yeah 30 N Gould is a registered agent. We registered a US entity mainly for stripe + dmca since users upload stuff which content tons of restriced contents. it was the cheapest way to do it without a US office.
2 days ago [-]
fishgoesblub 2 days ago [-]
Yet another Discord alternative whose effort could've been put into an XMPP client.
pavo-etc 2 days ago [-]
I've been dealing with this exact problem this week. For being such an established protocol with such strong servers, the open source clients available are shockingly undercooked.
I've been playing around with using XMPP as the communication layer for some agents, but the popular client apps (converse.js on web, conversations.im on android) have such little polish.
I've had to fork them to make them pleasant to use at all, this feels like it should be a solved problem.
Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
General code quality has gone to shit and problems are discovered far too late.
"free forever" — it's already been free 1.5 years, we were Zorium before the rebrand. If we do add a paid plan later the stuff that's free now stays free, new stuff gets charged for. we also build business software, so we've got spare server capacity, runs fine on it.
Thanks for the feedback tho :)
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
0. https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
I stand to gain nothing and I don't even think it's popular sentiment.
For a new user it's completely alien. Trying to get a coworker to try discord for the first time is a nightmare.
It tries to solve so much in such a condensed bar on the side. Why are DM listed "as" a server. I hate the notification system for transient server joins. I have no opinion of the channel system. Why can't you read discord threads of a public discord without joining the server and accepting the posting rules? They're trying to emulate forums but it's a huge PITA to just read (in a RO state, even).
Idk lots of complaints, network effect is a bitch.
Try using it at scale, for channeling communities, engaging with users, bots, marketing, and for work with streaming, video, rooms, voice rooms, moderation, etc.
There is an entire universe, even large businesses, built just around navigating Discord for good and for worse.
Turn it into a protocol.
What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
edit: grammar
To be fair, I put myself there and I voluntarily work with those audiences. I am aware I don't belong to the same level they do, and I'm ok with that. I just wish I could customize it my way too. In my view, if this was a protocol rather than a PaaS locked-in system, like IRC for example, we all would be winning.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
1. Nitro Home 2. Shop 3. Quests
And hovering on users often brings up upsell.
This is all pre-IPO, it's sure to get worse; hopefully one of the Discord alternatives will have caught on by then.
The big line they've crossed is collecting identification; much thanks to HN for linking to the bypass that worked for a day.
Big question is how else would they make money? Monetise hosting "servers" directly? Would they have even gotten community if they did that?
Wwooooooowwwww I never thought I'd read that or even a similar statement in my entire life!
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
[0]: https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
The iOS storefront is also far behind your website in quality and attention to detail.
Edit: please accept this in the spirit of some quick feedback from one maker to another
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
Not interested
I say this as someone building a discord clone (https://flotilla.social)
2025 to 2026 full of slop signals, LLC reg number from April 2026 to the same address in multiple reports as ultra scammy:
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/30-n-gould-st-sheridan-wy-scam...
https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-rec...
https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/scammers-use-reg...
Lot of other red flags for me but those are even more vibe-based than everything about this.
I've been playing around with using XMPP as the communication layer for some agents, but the popular client apps (converse.js on web, conversations.im on android) have such little polish.
I've had to fork them to make them pleasant to use at all, this feels like it should be a solved problem.