this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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The fascist noose is tightening the world over thanks to proprietary big tech. We have to escape now while we can to open-source alternatives.
Currently the best private (encrypted) and federated Discord alternative is Movim, which I highly recommend people switch to as soon as possible (the Dev is currently working on discord-like channels with rooms).
For a more complete guide to swapping proprietary apps for safe open-source ones, I suggest referring to this post: https://slrpnk.net/post/23012609
Dude I just spent 10 mins trying to get the thing to let me make an account. It kept saying my username didn't fit the format requirements, but then didn't tell me what the format requirements were.
That's certainly unfortunate that it isn't giving you a useful error. I'm not sure why it says that. I tried creating an account there with a similar username to yours, and it was created no problem on the main movim.eu instance.
Are you using a VPN?
That shouldn't factor in any way with web tech just as the color of my underwear doesn't.
I agree, but sometimes certain VPN's can be blocked if they are often used by bots, such as free VPN's. Just thought I'd ask to see if I could narrow down what could be happening (since it works fine on my end, even with a VPN).
Try creating an account here, then use that login to log into the Movim (you can use any XMPP/Jabber account created anywhere to log into any open Movim instance, similar to how any Lemmy user can use their account to login to the Photon front-end).
iirc OMEMO doesn't scale well compared to Megolm for large communities
I've had very consistant issues with messages not decrypting on Matrix with Megolm, and it's known for leaking a lot of metadata. I'm also not a fan of the Matrix foundation heavily courting law enforcement and getting funded by Israel. I know it's open-source, but combined with the problems I've faced using, the fact that the self-hosting side mostly targets enterprise use, and the heavy resource usage of Matrix when self-hosting, I personally think XMPP is the better option currently.
OMEMO is structured similarly to Signal's encryption. It probably doesn't scale up super well to like, 10,000+ users, but OMEMO can be turned off for super large channels where encryption might not be needed, and turned on for smaller groups where privacy is desired or between friends.
Try taking your head out of your arse for five seconds and bring minimal evidence when you make accusations like that lol
So you're confirming my point, you could have refrained from making a fool of yourself
Not sure why you're responding with that amount of hostility, I don't feel I did anything to warrant it?
Matrix's creation and development for the first 3 years was funded by Amdocs, as evidenced on the Matrix.org website itself:
Amdocs is a telecom company that was founded in Israel, and later went on to run much of the US's telecom infrastructure. It has long been suspected to be involved in espionage for the Israeli government.
One of their revenue streams is providing their services to law enforcement, as they admit to here, which I'm not particularly comfortable with, personally.
When I say 10,000+, I mean it may not scale to encrypting that amount of people in a single room, not that the service itself cannot scale beyond that. Due to its distributed nature, it can avoid being bogged down by having many thousands of users, but if 10,000 people all tried to go into a single encrypted room where all those messages would have to be sent all at once, that room would, I assume, bog down. That's an insanely unlikely situation to ever occur, as any public server that could grow to that size would not have encryption turned on anyway (and Discord itself, the thing we're trying to replace, doesn't have any encryption at all).
Because I know exactly who I'm dealing with here, that's gross misinformation.
Congrats you've found where it was founded, now it's an independent non-profit. What's wrong with you?
https://matrix.org/blog/2025/06/dispelling-myths
Then you're mixing out Element with Matrix, alleging they provide services to law enforcement. Not the same thing my friend, if you have a problem with Element, fine, then get another client. What's the problem?
You're just proving my point again on scalability, get off the keyboard lol
You're response amounts to "Okay, so what if it was created and funded by an Israeli company known for espionage? They spun it off into a non-profit, which somehow removes any connection between those two things now."
As to Element, they are, in their own words, made up of ex-Matrix Staff.
They're legally distinct entities if that matters, but they're still from the same likely compromised institution.
If you like Matrix and find absolutely nothing concerning about the connections of the two most influential entities in that space, than by all means, carry on.
For myself, I'll stick with XMPP or Deltachat.
Yes, by definition, but we can keep going.
[BIG PICTURE TO PROVE NOTHING]
You can't reject the Matrix Foundation because it's a non-profit. There is no credible evidence that Israel (government or intelligence agencies) funds or controls Matrix as a protocol.
If you write a client that uses a protocol to communicate over the internet, you better stick to that protocol, no? I mean, think about it for a second? What's wrong with youuuu? lol
Alternative link for the guide, since slrpnk is currently down for a bit.
That first video is utterly unwatchable holy shit.
Am I supposed to bookmark the website on Android to use Movim?
It's a PWA, so you should be able to open your browser menu and click 'add to homescreen' to make it feel more like a dedicated app.
There are also dedicated XMPP apps for Android and iOS that aren't yet as full-featured as Movim, but are still compatible with the parts that are implemented (usually all the texting and calling parts, but maybe not video or screensharing).
There's this open-source, but centralized, one that doesn't allow NSFW (so as to not have to deal with age verification):
https://nerimity.com/
I have an account there, but I'm not active (my producer, Neigsendoig [he goes by Sendo on there] is). It's also Free Software, like Movim is.
Hm, at least on their homepage, they don't mention the ability to do group video calls or screen sharing, do you know if it's a complete replacement for Discord's feature set? The reason I recommend Movim specifically is that the only features its missing compared to discord are the rooms, and it cannot yet share application audio when screen sharing (but should come later).
Movim is also built on the battle proven XMPP framework, which also allows for easy self hosting and access to the wider existing XMPP community.
There are some sort of group calls, both video and audio, but it's mainly a one-man project with contributions by those savvy enough in the community.
It's essentially a mixture of features from Discord, Stoat (Revolt), and Guilded, but made in their own unique way.
It seems like a cool little project, and I appreciate that it's GPL licensed, but I'm afraid without federation, it can't quite fulfill the same role that Discord does, as they would need a sudden dramatic increase of funding to be able to support a large userbase on a centralized server, and having another centralized point of failure is really inadvisable, IMO. A big reason for Lemmy/piefed's success is distributing resource useage across multiple independent servers, and that model translates quite well to a Discord like app too.
The project is also so new (11 months old) that it hasn't had adequate time to prove that the codebase could scale to a high user count. It's in a similar position to Fluxer.app, which is another GPL Discord clone, but one that is open to adding in federation at a later date.
I also think XMPP's encryption abilities are pretty essential going forward, as governments and corporations are becoming more invasive into monitoring our communications.