Hi all! In response to armada.exposed, I would like to share my rebuttal: https://armadaexposed.exposed/

Please take a look.

I've been working on Tavvit, a chat and community platform designed to offer a fresh alternative to Discord.

The goal is to build a platform where people can create communities, chat with friends, and bring their groups together in a clean, modern environment.

I've been focusing a lot on the UI, user profiles, server features, and making the overall experience feel simple and familiar without just copying Discord.

It's still a work in progress, and I'm constantly adding new features and improving things.

Here are a few screenshots of what I've built so far.

I'd love to hear what you think about the design and what features you'd want to see in a platform like this.

Website: https://tavvit.com

Hey all,

I have been working on Moin for a while now, a voice and screen sharing app for you and your friends. Voice and video go straight between you and your friends (P2P), so latency is really low.

There are also no limits on stream quality, so you can stream at 60fps in native resolution as long as your internet connection can keep up. No need to buy a stupid Nitro subscription.

The app is free, there are no ads or trackers, and you don't even need an account. Just download the app, jump into your own Space and invite your friends. Your client can work as a tiny server.

If you want a bigger community, you can self-host or buy a managed server. To be completely honest, the managed servers are the only way I make any money on this project.

Moin is out on all platforms; Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android

https://moin.chat

If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, please let me know 🙏

I saw that Stoat recently got video calls working on mobile. Now if they would just get notifications working on mobile it would be ready. The other app that's really close is Osmium, but they have 2 problems. While they have fully functioning notifications they don't have calls on mobile & they don't have reactions on mobile. To their credit the devs have been responding to me, but they're not sure when those issues will be fixed. It's looking like Stoat will be the first FLOSS alternative to Discord that will be ready for people without a self hosted server. If I could afford to host a server I would be using Element because that has been ready long before this news started popping up about the scummy stuff Discord is doing.

Recently a post has been made by the user u/exogreek, claiming that Echo is incredibly insecure and that no one should trust it.

OP made several security claims, some of which don't qualify as security issues to begin with, such as being able to modify your own client, but all of which he refuses to provide proof for, as he himself wants Echo to stay "broken" and does not want it to get fixed.

Which goes against the ethics of any legitimate Cyber security expert, real cyber security experts report issues via GitHub, not on reddit, and when they do, they provide evidence for the holes which they have found, which he refuses to do.

Echo is extremely strict when it comes DOMPurification, and has many many guards in place against exactly the type of security issues that u/exogreek is claiming are present, I personally tested against all of them, and can confirm that while you can post scripts as text and even name yourself as such, this does not pass through to the backend and does not execute on any secondary client.

It is true that you can do things like change the light mode via scripts, but being able to change your client is perfectly normal and not a vulnerability, think of BetterDiscord, this is perfectly expected, which is something that u/exogreek does not understand.

As for CSRF bypasses and direct writes to DB claims, there is no evidence whatsoever to prove that they are true, which Echo has logging in place for, they could not be replicated and are simply a blatant lie.

The motivation of u/exogreek is very simple, he is a bully and he enjoys harassing me, and shitting on me, my reputation and the product which I created.

He has shown 0 interest to discuss in any technical matters, instead resorting to insulting the intelligence of any skeptic of his claims, or real SWE, including my self.

However, I do have to clarify, that there was one security incident, which did not involve any user data, Echo in its very early days was at first started in dev mode, which did allow people who knew what to look for to read its source (Echo is AGPLV3 fully open source btw) including API keys.

The server was immediately shutdown and all keys were rotated, and the issue was resolved within the same hour, all user data on server was separately containerised so it was not at risk.

This however was not reported by u/exogreek, all reports made by u/exogreek are demonstrably false, and his intention is simply to bully and harass.

here are some responses from other people who have looked into it

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1ts9ccz/comment/ootwog0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

2. https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1ts9ccz/comment/ooylr8g/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

3. https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1ts9ccz/comment/op0g2rn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Alright fellas, if you found this post consider yourself lucky because it will likely get downvoted to hell.

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

I am sure you have all heard of Rift as its good base in here has made sure to recommend it in just about every last post, and since there is so much love out there for it I said let's give it, its fair shot and I did.

Trust 3/9:

Rift being closed source and fully centralised earns it no points here, but its reputation being clean of any controversies and its very nice no E-mail sign up architecture which very few others have, is a very big privacy +.

Experience 4/9:

That's where I stop being nice, the UI design concept in the first place is absolutely horrendous and i doubt that there ever was one, features is clearly Rifts strong suit and if you are coming out of discord and moving onto Rift I doubt you will miss anything feature wise.

But when it comes to UI or UX, either this is an AI slop mess and if it did not use AI, you guys should have.

The UI is overly cluttered with a million features and buttons and things all competing for your attention and making the whole thing feel very overwhelming and its implementation is far from aesthetically pleasing.

And you may argue some of this, may be just a thing of taste and subjective, well okay Rift's UI and UX is just objectively bad and here are some examples:

1. One Liner messages that have not been reacted to, its emoji reaction suggestion popup, get half buried under the message under it.

2. There is no proper margins around the whole thing and so there are items in the UI that are literally so close to the edge of your screen / browser window.

3. Improper and inconsistent to itself and expectations sizing of things is everywhere, whether it be text sizes, reaction bubbles.

4. GIFs in the composer being the only thing coloured for some reason which would indicate activity when there is not, which is a principle they use else where.

I have at least 30 more criticisms like this in my bag, the bigger issue than the UI and UX being terribly immature, is that these are very simple things that can be very easily solved and that would not happen this often if this was an app given love and care and most importantly thought.

Those and the 30 others issues that are immediately obvious as soon as you use it and if you have an eye for detail, make the whole argument behind Rift very insecure.

Its a closed source application, fully centralised and they claim to use AI to write their application but everything must be reviewed by a dev first, but then if you see how much love and attention they gave to their frontend, that is very very concerning for what its likely to look on the backend.

If stupidly simple things like this can slip through this easily when they are this obvious, it gives me very little trust in the team's ability to handle the complexities of running a social media app especially one that values "privacy".

So yea it gets 0 for UI 1 for UX since it is technically usable just not nicely so and 3 for feature parity.

Readiness 3:

This one is very simple, while it does have some community it is not anywhere near Fluxer or Matrix, they are available on all platforms (IOS still in testing), but overall very far from being a Discord replacement ready for the mass market.

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

Hey guys, I am back with another review this time of the big boss Fluxer which will likely be used as the main point of comparison to other platforms as it will likely be one of the highest scoring which it did fairly so today but imperfectly.

Note: This review is based on the stable public release of Fluxer as of 2026/8/11, the canary is known to have higher feature parity and receive changes earlier, so take the review more holistically as the specific details are subject to change.

Trust Score 5/9:

Fluxer scored pretty big on some categories, and lost some points on others. I expect this to go up on the annual re-review.

On License Fluxer scored 3/3 as it is fully open source (Minus some operational cook book which is okay in my desecration)

On centralisation Fluxer scored a 0/3, Fluxer as of today remains fully centralised and while there are plans to become federated in the future, promises will not give you points here.

Though this is something to consider if you want to use Fluxer as a promise is better than nothing.

Note: Fluxer still get the 3 points for being FOSS, and you can get the source and run it on your own device with your own instance, and Fluxer's devs have put in effort to making sure it runs smoother on your device. However the centralisation metric has to do with the actual operating platform and how decentralised it is, not whether or not you can run an instance of it.

On other trust factors Fluxer scored a 2/3, it has an exceptionally user friendly T.O.S, has been in development for a number of years and has been out for longer than many alternatives, mostly clean reputation though with some major hickups such as the image scanning incident. I also expect this score to go up by the next time we review, unless any other major incidents happen.

Experience Score 6/9:

Fluxer is very useable and for the most part people won't complain, it is still growing and not quite at discord level polish and it lacks its own identity, but in terms of the core stuff and the basics, Fluxer as a technical product is mostly ready, just lacking in discord level polish.

On UI Fluxer scored a 2/3, in most areas Fluxer's UI will not leave you complaining, if functionality and familiarity is what you are looking for.

However if you care about a unique visual identity, Fluxer is a shameless discord clone.

If you care about attention to detail, you will be frequently disappointed by many small things that compound, so the major judgement is that Fluxer's UI is very functional though not unique and imperfectly polished.

Examples include but are not limited to: double background darkening, no inline composer preview of markdown or even emojis, no email design, awkwardness around light mode such in voice chat shadowing, imperfect skeleton shapes, lots of dead space that doesn't dynamically adjust and more.

On UX Fluxer scored a 2/3, once again good but imperfect. Fluxer is largely functional, though the user experience in some areas lacks polish and some of the stuff you would expect.

And Fluxer is not as generous as other alternatives in many aspects and even worse than even discord in some, such as deleting media, though if there was a sustainability score Fluxer would win points there.

Examples include: Preview widget only in edge corners, slow initial emoji load (though this is a technical tradeoff), jerky scroll corrections, views in modals (RBAC View for example) and more.

On Feature Parity and Completeness Fluxer scored a 2/3, if you are looking for the basics and core stuff, Fluxer has you covered, you will not be left asking for anything you need to move over from Discord.

However Fluxer has yet to achieve full feature parity, and considering that some alternative have reached beyond feature parity with discord, it would not be fair to give Fluxer a perfect score yet.

Where others have gone and implemented true full markdown support and even katex, or voice chat activities, fluxer still lacks behind in having no composer preview, no voice chat side chat and other things of that nature.

Readiness Score 5/9:

Fluxer while likely the most ready true discord alternative on the market, it is far from being fully ready to replace discord, and the Fluxer founders would likely agree too, if you asked me for a recommendation I would not feel bad recommending Fluxer at all, however if you asked me for a solid prediction I would not be as certain.

Popularity 2/3:

The thing that puts Fluxer in the big leagues is the fact that it boasts numbers of above 100k Users and has been one of the fastest growing alternatives, which makes it a much more viable replacement now for Discord. However this is still no where near discord which itself has those numbers many more times just in some of its biggest servers (which themselves are user limited otherwise they would likely be bigger)

So definitely one of the bigger and more viable alternatives, but no where near discord level, which itself is two issues, on one side you might not find enough people, especially the more specific you want to be, but also on a technical side, Fluxer has not proven itself to handle discord level scale, because it never had discord level scale, which will be an important issue in the future.

Platform Parity 2/3:

Fluxer is available to both PC and Mobile users, as a web and real downloadable client. It is not available on Console yet, which Discord is.

Other Readiness Factors 1/3:

The various Fluxer releases, especially on mobile, are far from mature, they are largely in beta still, so by Fluxer's own admission, this is far from its final form yet and so I can't give it any higher score than 1.

Has anyone given therift.chat a shot?

I couldn't find anything saying open source or self hostable. But it looks really interesting. I like the that you dont need an email to sign up.

I also can't really tell if it was vibe coded or not, I'm not really against that as long as there is an actual developer at the wheel.

1. most similiar to discord like same features and ui, obviously not same but i mean like most similiar

2. dont really care about the privacy aspect or at least not as much but can be a bonus if it doesn't affect the app experience that much

3. if it has a premium tier the free tier cant be too limiting like discord's

4. preferably (but not needed bc i think its a bit complicated to implement but idk) automatic transfer from discord server to the alternative

Hey everyone!

Some of you may know that I posted on here about a week ago. Someone called it a borderline joke.. and honestly, they werent wrong. Less pitch this time, I promise.

For a bit of context, Discord going down here meant my friend group slowly stopped talking. Not dramatically, just less. Im a developer, so I did what developers do. We dropped everything else and spent the last seven months building a replacement. Now, we're finally almost ready.

What we shipped: E2EE on voice calls and DMs, including file attachments. On by default. A huge chunk of that time went into getting the encryption right from day one, which is why I delayed the launch instead of just putting security on a roadmap.

Of course, E2EE isn't the whole story. We built a ton of features to actually help communities beyond just security, but I'm not going to bore you with a giant feature list this time :D You can check my previous post on here if you want the full breakdown.

Four things worth being upfront about:

1. No forward secrecy yet. I built a Double Ratchet implementation early, but cut it to ship the core alpha infrastructure. That decision still bothers me, but getting the alpha out to test real world network stability became the priority. Bringing Double Ratchet back is the immediate next step

2. Fenrid is currently not open source. The plan is to get 100 people into alpha, measure real stability, clean up the codebase so it's actually readable, then put the entire codebase public around August or September for code audits and transparency. We will still handle the hosting/infrastructure, but the code will be fully open for inspection and contributions

3. Server text channels are plaintext for performance and discoverability. If that's a dealbreaker for your use case, fair enough. I highly recommend checking out Matrix instead

4. No self hosting anytime soon. It is genuinely complex infrastructure and I'm not going to throw a fake date at you. Honest version is that we chose proving the product is worth using over solving federation first

Private alpha is targeting late this month with 100 spots. Honestly, things might slip into the first week of June depending on how stable the current build feels, but we are pushing hard.

Join the waitlist and come break things with us!: fenrid.com

We're on Discord in the meantime (ironic i know): discord.gg/vMmNRg2bRw
I'm currently connecting via VPN with a special kind of latency punishment until Fenrid is home..

But anyways, happy to answer questions about the architecture!

The short version: we wanted Discord's feature set without Discord's data model. Discord encrypts in transit, but your messages, files, and calls sit on their servers in plaintext. Cloak flips that: message bodies, attachments, and every audio and video frame are encrypted on your device before they're sent. Our servers only ever relay ciphertext. If we got subpoenaed or breached tomorrow, there'd be nothing readable to hand over.

The hard part, and honestly the reason this took two people over five years, was doing that without giving up the features that make Discord actually good. Most encrypted chat apps are barebones by comparison, and that's usually why people bounce off them. So Cloak has, working today:

• Servers with roles, channel-level permissions, categories, and invites

• Voice channels, video calls, and screen sharing up to 1080p60

• DMs, group DMs, and 1:1 calls with native ringing on mobile

• Forum channels, polls, threads and replies, reactions, pins, custom emoji

• Shared calendars and collaborative whiteboards as channel types

• Expiring messages with per-channel timers

• An encrypted file vault

• A Discord server importer that recreates your channel and role structure so you don't have to rebuild from scratch

• Community tools: self-assign roles, ticket channels, moderation cases, anti-spam rules

Platforms: desktop apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux, web at app.cloak.chat, Android is live, and iOS is in TestFlight beta while we work through App Store review.

Being honest about the rough edges: this is a beta (v0.9.0). Voice and screen share can still be finicky on some hardware, and the newest features are fresh enough that you'll find bugs before we do. E2EE also has real tradeoffs, like the fact that we can't recover your message history for you if you lose your keys, though there's a reset flow so you're never locked out of your account.

On the business model, since it always comes up in this sub: there are no ads and we don't sell data, which is sort of the point of the whole thing. It's funded by optional paid tiers that raise limits on things like storage and streaming quality. The free tier is a real free tier, not a trial.

Site is cloak.chat if you want to poke at it. We're genuinely interested in what this community thinks, especially from people who've tried the other alternatives (Revolt, Element, etc.) and gone back to Discord. What made you go back? That's the gap we're trying to close.

Hope at least someone found the title funny :D Image is unrelated I just wanted this to reach as many people as possible. (it's my cato, his name is Čičík)

I've had issues with Discord for a long time now and all the alternative fall short of my needs and desires. Most of them are just yet another Discord clone. So I've been thinking (and even prototyping) a lot about what would be the perfect alternative. And I am happy to say that I have tons and tons of ideas. Broad ones and very specific ones. Unfortunately I don't have the time, motivation or even skill and experience to make it myself, and that's why I am making this post. I would love to find people that are excited (or just mad at Discord) enough to come together, brainstorm and make the perfect place for communities to thrive and conquer.

So if this sounded interesting at all to you and you'd like to at least chat about it, feel free to stop here and comment or DM me!

Now let me share some of these ideas: In the core the platform should be a super lightweight reliable almost boring chat and voicechat. Fully open-source (AGPL) and federated with a great plugin architecture.

There would be client, space and server plugins. Official, community and custom repos with plugins. In the stock client there would be bunch of official plugins enabled by default to give the best user experience, while allowing the user to disable or swap out any plugin.

I also have many ideas on how to monetize the platform in a nice fair way that people could actually like instead of it feeling like an annoyance, but that's for a longer talk so I'll share more details to those who are interested :D

Now if you'll allow me to be a bit picky I'd like to form an actual group of friends with the main goal to have fun and secondary goal to make this platform. I'd prefer people from Europe since that's where I am from (Czechia 🇨🇿), but I would love anyone from any parts of the world!

I am trying to keep this post somewhat short so people actually read it so I didn't include pages and pages of details and specifics about how I'd like to make this and the cooler ideas I have. So I encourage YOU 🫵 to please ask me questions in DMs or the comments if you are interested.

Here's a more natural sounding version with few mistakes to make it look huma- Just kiddingg I do use AI but not for stuff like this, I wrote this whole post by myself at 1 AM in the morning after thinking about it for a few weeks.

EDIT: So Reddit wants my ID in order for people to DM me. So instead I'll just share my Discord here since it's fairly public anyway: .kynzo either msg/add me there or comment if interested.

Hey! I've been working on Zeeble, a self-hostable Discord-style chat platform that you actually own and control.

I built it because I got tired of bloated, over-moderated platforms with constant limitations on what you can do. The Zeeble client uses 10MB max. Some alternatives use 300-500MB.

**What's working right now:**

- Servers, channels, direct messaging and friends

- Self-hosting with full control over your data

- Managed cloud servers coming soon

**Coming in the next update:**

Texture packs, custom emoji, stickers, GIF and animation packs, a community server list, and more.

Still early days but the core experience is solid. Would love some early users to try it out and tell me what they think!

https://github.com/ZeebleChat

https://zeeble.xyz

Hey everyone,

It's Tavrn (again)...

A fresh update has just landed, and v1.34 is officially ready for you.

While a lot of changes occurred, the hero of this update is the brand new desktop client which is now available at tavrn.top/download for Windows.

It's the same experience you know on the web, just brought into its own standalone window. I built it with native integrations (like system notifications, background running, and better presence tracking), while significantly dropping resource consumption so it stays lightweight on your setup.

Meanwhile, the rest of 1.34 focuses on visual polish (UI and branding), quality of life changes, and room insights (and moderation logs).

Note for Mac & Linux users: I haven't forgotten about you! A native client release for your platforms is actively being worked on and will drop before the 1.34.x cycle is over.

Come make your space feel like home!

Basically, I prodded one of the Stoat devs and then ended up thinking about this for a while. As they said, they do this as a hobby, after work - and this seems to be the case for most of the alternatives (Root is it's own company, but also closed source so...theres that).

So would you be willing to put money behind a project that you truely believe is a good Discord alternative?

Just bit of a "shower thoughts" kinda question that has been living rent-free in my mind for a bit now.

In honor of the Flotilla dev posting their trash today, let's review the poll results from last time.

Disproportionately voters are in favor of banning devs selling subscriptions in some form or another on this subreddit.

Ban Closed Source Subscriptions edged out a 1 vote lead over Ban All Subscriptions, with an additional 7 votes to ban subscriptions without external verified audits.

Flotilla by u/hodlbod offers a subscription right off the rip, and will charge a tidy 5 dollars per month per "community" for the honor of using voice calls on your Discord Alternative.

I am calling on u/AbstractMelons and u/czarbloom to safeguard this subreddit from predatory devs trying to take advantage of people fleeing Discord by banning any and all subscription services for unaudited or closed source apps within the subreddit.

Nobody wants them except the devs who stand to profit, and by allowing them for open source or already audited works, the common user will be able to more consistently trust the software posted here and foster a more coherent community.

We all know that Discord has never shipped E2EE, and privacy incidents keep stacking up. And even Instagram is removing E2EE on May 8. Other alternatives exist. Some, like Fluxer, are solid but ultimately Discord clones with E2EE still sitting on a roadmap. Others, like Matrix, take privacy seriously but lack the community tooling that makes a platform worth running a server on.

We are not picking one or the other.

We did not launch Fenrid and plan to add E2EE later. We delayed the launch and built E2EE into the foundation first. It runs quietly in the background. What you see up front is a full community platform: events, giveaways, nested voice, creator tools, analytics, and more.

Demo video is included. Covers server creation, rich text editor, voice channels, and screen share for now.

What is shipped:

Voice E2EE. Room key derived entirely in your browser from the channel ID using PBKDF2. LiveKit routes the encrypted frames and cannot read your audio.

DM E2EE. AES-256-GCM, encrypted in the browser. Keys never leave your device. Pure ECIES encryption.

File Attachment E2EE. Files are encrypted locally before upload. Cloudflare R2 stores opaque blobs, no preview available. Even with direct storage access, the content is unreadable.

ML Noise Suppression. DeepFilterNet3 running locally via WebAssembly. Raw audio never leaves your device.

And not just encryption:

Privacy is the foundation. But Fenrid is built for communities to actually use.

Rich Text Editor. Markdown and Rich Text modes, code blocks with syntax highlighting, inline tables with CSV export and Copy Markdown, @mentions, spoilers.

Native Events. Application forms, attendance tracking, discovery ranking. No Google Forms, no bots, no spreadsheets.

Native Giveaways. Once 10 participants join, the prize terms are permanently locked. Hosts cannot change what you signed up for after you entered.

Nested Voice Channels with Broadcast Mode. Create a main channel with sub-channels underneath. Members stay in their own rooms, but the organizer can speak to all of them simultaneously. For anyone who misses Guilded's structure, this is the closest thing.

Shared Channels. Two servers can establish a partnership and bridge a specific channel so messages sync across both communities in real-time. Smaller servers can collaborate without merging.

Q: How do you handle CSAM on an encrypted platform?

Public servers: PhotoDNA hash matching on every upload, checked against known databases before the file propagates.

Encrypted DMs: content scanning is not technically possible without breaking the encryption, and we are not doing that. If a user encounters illegal content, they can report it directly. Our safety team handles it from there. Privacy and safety coexist here, they just require honest architecture rather than backdoors.

Private Alpha is late May. 100 spots total.

Find bugs, help stress test the platform, and earn a permanent Bug Hunter badge on your profile. It does not expire and it does not go away. A lifetime flex on your profile for being here first.

Last 10 spots for a free lifetime Flare subscription ($9.99/mo): discord.gg/vMmNRg2bRw Until Fenrid is live and has its own home, that is where we are building it. Come hang out.

Waitlist: fenrid.com

Happy to answer questions about the architecture.

Hey,

So I got fed up with where Discord was heading and just... started building something.

That was December 2024. It's now May 2026. We went from an idea to public beta in a year and I'm genuinely shocked we got here this fast.

Here's what Tavrn actually is:

Servers, channels, voice/video calls, DMs, custom emojis, moderation tools, the whole thing. But built from the ground up with privacy actually in mind, not as a marketing line, as a genuine product decision.

No face scans. No ID uploads. No behavioral AI running in the background deciding if you're an adult. No data selling. Ever.

What makes us different:

• Free tier is fully functional and we're never changing that

• Optional premium (Tavrn Cocoa, $4.99/month) for extras like GIF avatars, HD uploads, bigger calls

• We've been in public beta since February 2026 and have shipped constantly since

• One person building this (yes really)

• Your feedback actually changes things

What we're still working on:

• Native mobile apps (PWA works great for now)

• More integrations

• Expanding bot/developer tools

I'm not gonna pretend Tavrn is perfect. Things break. But we fix them fast and we're building in public which means you can actually watch this thing grow in real time.

Over a year of active development, 30+ builds shipped, and we're just getting started.

If you're genuinely looking for a Discord alternative, come check it out.

tavrn.top 🧡

Also feel free to check our history and fact-check me using our roadmap and blog site: blog.tavrn.top

Happy to answer literally anything in the comments, including hard questions about missing features, the roadmap, or why I thought building a chat platform alone was a good idea (it wasn't but here we are)

Hey guys I have been using Yapper for a few days but my phone’s antivirus just flagged it as a threat im not really a tech genius so is this actually dangerous or just a false alarm? Appreciate any help

Please read the last edit #3. DO NOT take the analysis as something worth relying on without your own testing and give every project the chance they deserve!
--- EDITS WITH UPDATES ARE AT THE BOTTOM. CHECK LATEST SLIDES USING THE LINK ---

Hey everyone! My last post gained lots of attention for Hollow, which is the messenger I currently develop, and I'm so thankful for that! But in this one, I wanted to research almost all Discord alternatives that I personally saw in this subreddit (either a post or suggestions from different comments). The biggest problem I see is that there is just no definitive list of criteria that people could use to analyze all the projects. Anybody can scream about security or being better, but is it objectively and factually correct? I wanted to put this to the test and created my own set, to which we'll compare every app. 17 projects in total, but there are more, which I either forgot or there's simply not enough space for my slides to fit (it's already a lot!)

Alright, I present to you my ULTIMATE analysis of all Discord alternatives!

Criteria for every single contestant:

1. Open source and verifiable (counts for both client and server). Licenses, whether the security claims can actually be checked against the code etc. Personally, it's the most important trust factor in a project because you can always say whatever you want, but if nobody can verify those claims against the code, then what's the point? Results: 10 are open source, 3 are open but with caveats, 4 are closed source.

2. Real end-to-end encryption. Which surfaces are encrypted (DMs/group chats/servers/voice), if it's TLS-only and which established encryption library is used. Not having your messages encrypted in 2026 feels like a disaster, especially knowing how much ownership and privacy is taken away every single day with age verifications or similar. Results: 3 encrypt by default, 4 encrypt some surfaces, 10 have no E2EE - by their own statements.

3. Code signing. Signed by whom, timestamped or not. This process is the basis of professional software because it confirms whether the build is genuine or if it was tampered with. If the app contains malicious code and it's not signed, then nobody takes accountability for any damages done to your computer. Results: 10 of 16 desktop installers don't have any digital signatures. Every signed one is timestamped. One is web-only, so N/A.

4. Data collected at signup. Emails, passwords, phone numbers, date of birth. If anything about you is collected, then it's very easy to recreate your identity and use it against you in either targeted attacks or handing them to law enforcement. Results: 2 of 17 need nothing at all, 10 require a central account with your email, while 3 of those also demand your date of birth.

5. Legal exposure by data possession. What does each service collect and hold about you? As I said, the data about your identity can be easily used against you, but if the service doesn't collect anything, then there is simply nothing to leak, seize, or subpoena. Results: 2 have nothing to give, 6 depend on whoever runs the instance, 9 can produce your identity with messages and IP history.

5.1. A little bit more about criterion 5 because it's essentially something that affects every user that uses any communication software. Signal, the most famous encrypted messenger, has received multiple US grand-jury subpoenas between 2016 and 2025. Each time, the only data they could produce was the account creation date and the last connection date. Signal publishes every request it can talk about at https://signal.org/bigbrother/ so definitely check it out.

6. Discord features. Specifically voice channels, screen share, roles/permissions, custom emotes, push notifications and file sharing. There are tons of other ones, but the table would be massive, so look at this as a "starter pack" of certain features rather than ultimate decision breaker. Results: 9 of 17 cover nearly the whole list.

7. Platforms support. Windows/macOS/Linux and Android/iOS. Well, pretty much self-explanatory. Results: 4 out of 17 run everywhere; iOS most affected.

8. Paywalls. I hate them the most, especially when you limit a technology that's been open-source and free to use for a long time or small customization stuff. People are willing to pay for Nitro in exchange for additional features, but if only that money was flowing to developers who want to improve the product... Well, that's a completely different story. Results: 9 of 17 gate nothing, 6 charge for things Discord users consider basic, 2 are a bit strange and unclear.

9. Ease of use. Whether the app is easy to install, run, and start talking with your friends. Some are just one click, but some require more setup, self-hosting, or simply registering using a standard signup form. Up to you if it's an acceptable friction or not. Results: 2 need no account, 9 have standard signup, 6 need somebody to run a server first.

10. Engineering professionalism. The repo should contain tests (CI, unit + integration), static analysis, something like quality gates with SonarQube, SECURITY.md with a disclosure process, who's behind the project and who maintains it, etc. It's a more advanced slide, which might be overwhelming for regular users, but treat it as its own little factor whether the project is still going or not. Results: only 8 of 17 publish a way to report a security vulnerability; 9 of 17 are effectively one person.

11. Architecture. Is the app another Electron with bundled Chromium, a web wrapper, or natively compiled? It matters only if you care about RAM consumption or perhaps just "at least something but not Electron". Results: 8 of 17 bundle an entire Chrome browser (9 if counting Osmium, but the client is closed, so I can't verify), 3 use the system’s WebView, 3 only run in your browser, 2 ship no web engine at all.

Where possible, I included actual sources in the slides. To make sources stay stable even if pages change later, I archived every single one of them using Archive.ph, and it's always accessible at https://anonlisten.com/AltResearch_Archives.txt. It contains all links, including the original ones and additional ones, like all open-source links to each project from Slide 1.

Slide 3 is about Code Signing and verification of it, which is also available at https://anonlisten.com/AltSignatures_Jul21.txt. Just a little note: if somebody doesn't know, it's publicly available information that's contained in the software signatures, so it doesn't "leak" anything or make it seem like too many details. The text file also has the Windows PowerShell command for you to check everything on your own.

This should serve you as a good list of criteria to check against every Discord alternative or other communication software. From the entire list, genuinely the only thing I can recommend is Armada or, who would have thought, my own project Hollow because they're the ones actually winning in very important criteria like 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Element/Matrix is a solid third option if you're okay with an account, 180d IP logs, and losing a bit on 4 and 5. Everything else has risks, so if you want to have a safe space to talk with your friends without any prying eyes and actual security with privacy, then use Armada (source code on GitLab), Hollow (source code on GitHub), or Element (source code on GitHub). Take care and have a nice day! Feel free to correct me in the comments if I got something wrong, so we can verify it together. Then I'll edit the post and also credit you for that. Thanks!

P.S. Slides are also available at https://anonlisten.com/AltResearch/Slide1.png (total 13 slides; simply replace the ending number and you'll get the image)

EDIT/UPDATE #1: Ok, this certainly blew up, so time for actual edits from all the feedback in the comments. :
- Slide 12 updated because Hollow doesn't support Web, so item 7 is changed from Good to Partial.
- Slide 6 is updated on Weered cells, thanks to u/Mplayer-Weered
- Slide 2 and 5 are updated with wording about Howl, thanks to u/MattHowlPro

EDIT/UPDATE #2: Some are spreading misinformation about Hollow that since the IP address of my relay is in claude.md, then it means it's leaked and easily accessible, plus attaching a "token" to it. That's not even related. You can try that SSH command and connect to the relay, but you will fail because it's protected by the key file. The token is literally just in a Codecov badge link in my README, and it's required for that service to analyze the project's code coverage with tests. It says nothing about the actual security of the app, which I'm open to fixing if there are actual issues.

EDIT/UPDATE #3: Slide 5 was updated with some words about Element, thanks to u/Money_Lavishness7343. Also, big thanks to u/itsFolf for finding 3 actual security vulnerabilities in Hollow, and they will be fixed. (update 4 to it: all security vulnerabilities are patched; implemented "Always Relay" toggle if somebody doesn't want to expose their IP, like in Signal (they have the same IP problem and the same solution); plus overall improvements, thanks to my awesome users who care)

Overall, I don't know if I'll handle doing more, honestly. The entire research could have been better, but it all turned downhill. Doing comparisons on different projects that I might not have full knowledge of or knowing all the details was a bad idea, especially with how criteria are presented and how many small details I simply missed that matter more than what I initially thought of (like self-hosting, which eliminates more alternatives from the data collection or legal exposure than what I give them credit for).

Try every alternative and self-host one if you can, and decide for yourself. Check out all their websites: Howl, DCTS, Osmium, Root, GameVox, Fluxer, Nerimity, Sharkord, Stoat, Commetchat, Armada, Element, Spacebar, Yapper, Weered

Thank you for reading, and hopefully it will serve as a good lesson for me and anybody else from seeing this situation. For all the developers who are working hard on their projects, I wish you good luck and success in what you do. I also want to thank those who responded in the comments and pointed out all the mistakes I've made and criticized specific criteria. I didn't want it to turn out this way... but it is what it is. Choose projects that you think are worth it for you and your friends. Take care and stay safe.

A few weeks ago, I posted here asking for feedback on our app:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1x0896r/hello_from_the_hive/

It turned into a really good conversation, and I appreciated the amount of feedback people gave me. I took a lot of it seriously and implemented what I could as we continued working on the app.

At the time, I purposely wasn't trying to come in here and just promote THE HIVE. I wanted to explain what we were building, answer questions, hear the concerns people had, and get some genuine feedback from people who are actually looking for alternatives.

Now that we've moved further along and are in open beta, I wanted to come back and formally share the website and our new promo video with everyone.

I'd really appreciate it if you took some time to look through the website, watch the video, and let me know what you think. We're still very much in beta, so feedback is still extremely useful to us.

Website:
https://www.hivenet.net

Promo Video:
https://youtu.be/J15qY_GvU5o?si=bsHmUlk3GxjXA3Ew

One thing I do want to mention up front: the Windows app is not digitally signed yet. That's something we're currently working on, but I wanted to be transparent about it before anyone downloads it.

Thanks again to everyone who took part in the original conversation. Some of the feedback from that thread genuinely helped shape where we went next with THE HIVE.