Fluxer is the most promising one so far. It doesn't have easy self-hosting yet, but it's in development. What exists so far is pretty good though.
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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Weird how they are good at digging up the past relationship between the matrix team prior donators with the mosad. but failed to mention not even once that matrix's biggest advantage is its federated nature.
So imagine you have a selfhosted matrix server and you want to invite a friend over for a chat but this friend already has an account at his other friend's server. in Matrix he doesn't have to make an account on every server their interlocutor is in, he just sends his messages, like its done over email, or here on lemmy (fediverse). this is an advantage other software like fluxer of stoat don't have. and I doubt they will able to add it anytime soon, as the work needed is probably huge and would need years of work to make a proper secure e2e federate messaging solution.
Guy literally told people the criteria he was using, one of which was searching for things like that because that's the reason for the video in the first place, the Discord exodus due to deep state ties. He admits his knowledge is limited. Weird how hard it is for some people to see things from someone else's point of view.
EDIT: changed to more accurately represent how Matrix operates.
The issue is that due to the way Matrix is structured, it essentially spreads copies of unencrypted metadata to every instance participating in those rooms, So it's federated, but difficult to actually keep metadata from being spread around ~~even if you don't federate with the main Matrix server, if any server you do federate with dies, it'll get spread there~~. You'd have to be extremely cautious who you federate with to avoid that, or not federate at all, which defeats the purpose.
As an alternative, Movim, which uses XMPP and is also federated, does not spread meta data around like that.
I've had matrix and element set up on my personal domain for a while, but I've only used them for evaluation so far. The system and network resources used are HUGE...
I've been setting up movim and a seperate xmpp server for a little while, and I have some initial opinions:
- xmpp (prosody) appears to be much better optimised than matrix (synapse)
- matrix and element are much easier to set up
- movim is a huge PITA to deploy yourself (especially in a container... you're basically on your own at the moment)
- xmpp requires tcp ports and ssl certs that should be easy to set up... unless you're on a cgnat network. Matrix can be set up through a cloudflare tunnel with https no problem, but xmpp requires some networking elbow grease.
- the mandatory certificates probably make the xmpp network safer?
- Even with the mautrix discord bridge copying the exact layout of discord channels into element, movim seems more familiar to me. I haven't really had enough time to evaluate movim, but it seems like it's trying to appeal to discord users, and element is clearly not. Element feels like a well funded enterprise tool that is doing its own thing.
- commet (with 2 m's) chat is a very faithful discord clone for matrix, but it's very barebones.
Either way, I am gonna deploy both and let my friends/discord channel users decide what works best.
I'm rooting for xmpp at the moment, but I will be happy with anything that is self hosted, encrypted and federated.
Hopefully I don't end up having to maintain both protocols with a bridge!
I know that part of the issue is the actual protocol, but you might try alternative matrix servers such as tuwunel for potentially better performance.
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XMPP is a shitshow of its own, very fragmented architecture. different incomplete implementations. each server can chose which features (extensions) to turn on and which not) so you can't be sure that the person you are trying to talk to on the other server can have access to the same features, like threads or voip.
I have previously read that omemo 2 implementation is insecure. my previous experience with it 4 years ago made me give up after encrypted messages were getting lost when messaging between different clients
there is no one flagship app for XMPP that works cross platefrom and has all features implemented. heck I can't even find a windows that support voip. and their will be none. cause xmpp has lost all traction.
As for Movim, I hate using web apps. bad user experience in general. add to that I don't remember it ever having been audited
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The issue is that due to the way Matrix is structured, it essentially copies ALL of your serber’s metadata to every instance, including the main Matrix server.
This is false. Data is only copied to instances participating in the relevant rooms.
You’d have to be extremely cautious who you federate with to avoid that, or not federate at all,
Or just don't invite users into your private rooms if they come from servers that you want to exclude.
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The fact that we went from Teamspeak to Skype to Discord and back to Teamspeak again is wild.
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In my experience, Matrix has a lot of misleading functionalities that drive people into enough of a false sense of security to out themselves.
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Yeeah.. Noble effort, really. Except people don't give enough of a shit to actually move.
I've arranged for a Matrix space and Teamspeak server to be used for my friend Discord of about 100 people. 10 registered and 0 actually use the Matrix.
The bridged Matrix channel is only used for lighthearted spam from the Discord side.
The Teamspeak got like 6 registrations and 0 active users.
Most people won't budge until they see the ID verification screen, and some not even then.
I don't think making these other programs optional is going to work to migrate a community. You can't say to your football team that you're gonna start playing basketball and be disappointed when they don't come with you.
If the discord and matrix server was fully bridge then maybe you'd are a bit more success as the community would be less fractured. If you're friends don't want to move from discord, and you really don't want to be in discord, that's a tough situation for you be in.
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Ok everyone. Hear me out. Let’s just all get in the same room and play the same game.
wish it was that easy,
My closests friendgroup dispersed around the province, one in kelowna, one in enderby, and im out on the Coast now. Discord (and now steam chat) kept us close
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Stoat seems to be the one my friend group is most interested in, currently I'm waiting to see which one is better in the next couple of months or so.
I spent quite a lot of effort getting Stoat up and running because they aren't working on the selfhosted version, only to get a nice email from the German government that my server was running an outdated version of React with RCE vulnerabilities. Nuked that stack at 3am.
Also I fixed their Tenor integration to be provider agnostic so the self-hoster could choose a different gif provider like klipy (Tenor turned off their API so gif search in Stoat is broken), tried to contribute that one small change back to the main project, immediately rejected because "we have no plans for klipy support".
Not worth the effort, IMO.
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Good. Discord just sucks as an app and as a company.
Currently hosting a couple of zulip instances for communities that had been on discord. I really like the way it handles topics/threading and they make hosting a breeze. I reported in an upgrade recently and it was < 30 minutes between me reporting it and getting code to solve my issue pushed to the repos. Wild.
10/10 recommend if voice/video are not a focus.
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Some of my friends have registered on Flux but still use discord. It's sort of just there until discord makes it unbearable for them to use but discord will never do that. They'll just slowly tighten the noose until you get comfortable.
They pay for nitro, which to me is bonkers.
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It isn't a great discord replacement but it's a metadata blackhole with PQC and Tor support that's surprisingly stable.
Downside is that the founder is apparently a die-hard trump supporter. Which doesn't mean the app is bad, but still would leave me wondering if one should contribute to its' success via network effect, or perhaps ignore it.
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He mentioned IRC but skipped it, probably thinking it's still text only. However there are now web clients that can display inline images, url preview, persistent chat and push notifications. To me it's the most KISS solution, as it's super easy to setup and self-host.
In order for this to work, one needs an IRC server and a place to host the web client's server. That's it. I use The Lounge but there are others like Convos or ObsidianIRC.
It's still text only. When I hear text only I already assume it supports all you mentioned.
Text is not ASCII only :)
Beyond text only comes voice calls, video calls and screen share, which are paramount for my discord use case. Me and my friends like to game while sharing our screens, so I game in my main monitor and have a matrix of screens on the second. It creates a LAN party feeling and it's important to maintain connection after some moved out of town.
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