It is an more private alternative to Discord. Even tough they do not offer federation, self-hosting servers is possible, but self-hosting Dms is not possible. Matrix does not have separated voice and text chats in one server, aka Discord style. Is it better to use Revolt for now or create our own Federated Discord alternative?
Revolt: https://revolt.chat/
I remembered and tracked down this comment made by Matthew on HN 4 months ago - I’ve been trying to pay attention to pain points that prevent my friends from trying out federated services. He seems to acknowledge the issue / distinction between discord’s voice channels and what matrix is lacking:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28435893
And further down:
I’m not sure if there is anything more recent about it though.
Yeah, almost everything really is a UX problem after Spaces fixed the community limitations. Element still desperately needs a UX overhaul.
E: Matthew’s comments also frustrate me as it’s apparent that no one in the Matrix team has actively used Discord and understand what it does right. Otherwise there’s no way the git issue would have been ignored for 5 years.
Lack of dedicated voice channels is a massive dealbreaker for almost anyone wanting to migrate over from Discord. We all know all the things Discord does wrong, but some desing decisions like dedicated channels really should just be copied over.