this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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What's the better platform that everyone should leave to? I looked into Stoat the other day but its obvious they aren't currently equipped to handle the influx of traffic they're getting, and a lot of dev work still needs to be done.
I switched to Matrix (Element client). Works fine but I have my eyes also on Movim (XMPP) https://movim.eu/
Matrix. Federated and self hostable, open source, supports encryption
Matrix would be my own, personal suggestion as well. I didn't name names in my original comment because I didn't want anyone to feel pigeonholed into something, the most important thing right now is simply getting yourselves safe if you need to. But yes, if you want a suggestion, Matrix is probably the best idea for all the reasons above. Plus, you are free to use any Matrix supported client, I admit pickings are a little slim in terms of variety on the front of clients atm, there are a few but they are functionally largely identical currently. But hopefully that will change in time, faster if the standard gets more popular.
IRC
Its mature, it can handle a bazillion users and is really lightweight. And with a nice front-end like "The Lounge" it can also look fancy.
You can stream video and voice over IRC?
No, but who needs that in a chat? For that you can use something like Jitsi.
That's like half the reason people use discord.
Sooo... what about telling those people that they should learn to use the right tool for the job?
There's like a million options for text only chats. The reason discord is popular is that it has voice and video calls, screen sharing, and text chat. Most people don't want to need 3 or 4 different programs with 3 or 4 different accounts to use those features.
That is the appeal of discord, and there are very few options that offer a similar, seamless experience. It is (moving towards was) the "right tool for the job" for all of those features, all in a single tool.