this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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I'm not even personally opposed to getting my hands dirty (I run Arch and Emacs ffs) my bigger issue is that this just... Doesn't feel like a Discord replacement. It feels more like a texting replacement out of the box. Someone pointed out you can make it not show all of the rooms in the DMs list, which would bring it closer to what I expect from a discord alternative.
I think it's on the way there, but it'll be a while on the order of years. It's not the easiest thing in the world to self-host either.
It's not a Discord replacement, full stop. Someone could make a Matrix client that was a Discord replacement, but no one has even attempted to do so as far as I know. Element (the reference client) was very clearly a Slack replacement. I know because I literally moved my small company to it from Slack. I think that Discord's continued enshittification could lead to someone making such a client either for Matrix or XMPP. That being said, making something like this isn't a small project and I wouldn't expect one soon if one comes at all.
Discord hating rant here: Discord is kind of weird as far as these sorts of services go tbh. Its "weirdness" is part of why I have always has a dislike of it (the bigger part of why is the jerky users and company, just like Telegram). It focuses heavily on VoIP and video screen sharing in a way that most chat services so not, but is also a heavily emoji/sticker/whatever filled chat service. It was clearly made for the shit talking gamer crowd and it honestly excels there. If it had stayed there in that niche, I'd think nothing of it. Then many FOSS projects and small companies then decided to use it in lieu of a proper support forum, probably because they were already were, or had previously been, shit talking gamers and used it all the time.
Someone else pointed out Cinny, which is... Pretty close to a discord replacement on Matrix, actually. Also I know Stoat mentioned a few federation options that they'd use if they ever do federate (not on the roadmap), with XMPP being the one it seemed like they'd favor.
Also ngl it doesn't even seem like Matrix would be a good slack replacement, unless the UI you're using makes it more slack-like
Re: Discord section, yeah... I liked discord at the start. It was mostly for voice calls, with a decent chat interface (based on IRC's). Then it started getting used wildly inappropriately, which annoyed me, and then all of the horrific privacy stuff came up and it's just... Ah. Whelp. This ship's sinking fast.
I should say that Element looks like it was heavily inspired by the OG Slack UI as it was at a specific point in time probably 7-8 years ago. Slack's UI started getting tweaked and enshittified quite a bit, especially after Salesforce bought them. So I can totally get not seeing the direct resemblance, but as someone that was forced to be on Slack for a decade, Element felt like "ahh old Slack" in a good way, though obviously not exact.
Ahh, okay, we only started using Slack at work a couple of years ago, so I don't remember the old UI