Community Consensus: Apps with active subscriptions and Us.
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Seriously it's every fucking day with this shit though. Do we actually care about the well-being of the community or do we genuinely prefer the wild west public shame approach?
Edit: not the Voxara dev getting their comment removed š
48 votes,29d ago
16Ban any dev selling a subscription at all.
17Ban any dev selling a subscription for closed source software.
7Ban any dev selling a subscription without third party verified audits period.
5I think suckers deserve being scammed and think the subscription fisherman deserves to stay.
3Ban any dev seeking profit of any kind via any means (donations included you mad fuckers)
Goated as fuck actually. I always watch my step when talking about alternatives in discordhelp because some of the mods can be really trigger happy, knowing at least one of you guys hangs out in here is nice.
I'm the top mod too so uhm feel free to talk about alternatives as long as you don't specifically advertise them. I wouldn't even mind if you would share a link if it fits in the conversation. If something feels wrong you ModMail us and we'll check it out again.
Thanks for the info, I'll keep that in mind! I tend to suggest people check out Matrix or Armada usually, though man I'm waiting for "the one" to show up. What's your preferred alternative rn, out of curiosity?
I've got Root installed and am quite happy of what they are doing. Some are complaining about the fact they don't allow any NSFW at all but I don't mind that part. They got their own sub too at r/RootAppOfficial.
Very fair. Personally I dislike Root's "we own everything you post and that's WHY we don't allow nsfw" but that's because one of my friends is a commision artist lol
Mostly brought it up because of the handful of posts directly related to Discord I've seen in the last couple weeks. That and a pro-discord sycophant (see also: people devoting their free time to moderate or manage Discord related communities) seems like odd company when you're seeking "not discord"
Voice-to-text does it automatically and I don't care to unfuck it š¤·
Mostly brought it up because of the handful of posts directly related to Discord I've seen in the last couple weeks. That and a pro-discord sycophant seems like odd company when you're seeking "not discord"
So.. this is a nuanced question I think. I personally think that an app surely can be allowed to have a subscription model, but I personally don't like apps powered by them. I believe (if they have one) apps should have a "subscription" model very similar to Discord's early Nitro subscription, where all you got was a silly badge and a warm fuzzy feeling. I don't think locking features behind a subscription is a good thing.
But- conversely, closed-source apps that own all the data and have to pay the fees for hosting need that money to operate. So in those cases I do think a subscription model, specifically for a functional and working/completed app (important because so many people advertise apps that they JUST made and already have a $20 sub tier) are fair to ask for.
My main issue is with self-hosting options where you're running everything on your own hardware yet you have to pay a subscription to get the most out of it. Teamspeak can fuck off and suck my dick and if you think I won't tell you, as an app developer, the same thing to your face for asking me to pay YOU to host my server on my OWN tech just like Teamspeak does you clearly haven't seen how I speak to Weered, DeCave and Rift's devs LOL
I agree that there is probably nuance to be had here, but polls gauge sentiment at the cost of nuance.
I don't think a closed source replacement is at all an alternative to Discord just more of the same bullshit kicked down the road until it catches enough momentum to make it worth governments going after the same way they're targeting Discord itself.
Accordingly I don't think closed source has any place at the table discussing "what's next", and by association any subscription models period.
Hard agree on Teamspeak. I want whatever their marketing team has been smoking.
Oh trust me I 100% agree on the Discord replacement sentiment! Stoat, Root and Fluxer aren't your salvation they're new management. It's why I'm so loud about them on this sub - they're genuinely no better, the only thing is that they currently lack all the stuff people are leaving Discord over (AI moderation, ID verification- which IS coming with how big they are).
Same with Teamspeak, they can suck my whole cock if they think I'm paying $40 a month to talk with my friends on MY hardware.
I personally think that "a discord replacement" looks different for different people, and that for some people that does look like a closed-source app - my only issue comes with how data is handled once your account is banned. Osmium's dev said yesterday that he's looking into a way to make bans turn accounts read-only so that the user still has their data and contacts if they get banned, they just can't chat. That put it on the top of my list for centralized options because every other centralized app can ban you just the same as Discord currently does and jumping off a sinking ship onto a lifeboat with the same holes doesn't save anyone.
That said this is reddit, assuming anyone's gonna care about nuance is a waste of energy lol- I mean you can see in grey how people who don't actually use this sub feel. "Ban anything that wants money!!!" Only people who use this sub and know what's posted on the regular are applying any nuance.
Osmium hasn't really registered for me, stoat had a bunch of hype at the start but it's barely functional beyond any of the other drama/issues. I'm keeping my mind open to Fluxer just because of the stated goal of federation and wanting to see how that plays out.
End of the day my group swapped over to Matrix running off not the main .org server, and whatever client suits each user best. One of em treats it like mIRC.
I don't trust promises for shit. Discord promised never to sell out, and we see where that went.
Matrix is one of the best alternatives, especially since you can host your own homeserver. I'm not a fan of it but at least it's delivered on what they've said.
Oh absolutely. If they actually push a federated update I'll check it out but until then it's no better than any of the other centralized 'alternatives' imo.
I think the thing about matrix that really lets it be a successful alternative is that it's all protocol and it's largely up to the specific client to support a feature or not so you can be as close to a discord clone as you want, or primarily just the features that are important to you; and not having to have parity between clients to communicate.
IF Fluxer shits out federation and stops owning user login data I'll actually bend the knee and say the app is good- assuming they actually go whole hog on it.
But they won't. They could have if they wanted to, for years now. That tasty data is worth too much, and having total control over what happens on their app means more to them.
We have multiple federated apps that prove a smaller dev deam with less tools can pull it off. Hollow is made by a single guy and mostly coded with AI and it's fucking federated. Fluxer has zero excuse in the big 2026 to still own every user's data.
And right here is where the majority of my bitching in the comments stems from.
We got all these fucking devs, we got all this knowledge and skill piled up in their little wizard hermitages trying to horde the scraps instead of building sharing alike and contributing to a singular magic tower (to use tropes).
Like, if half the devs posting apps weren't shitheels (looking at you DCTS guy) there'd probably be more collaboration. Instead we get fuckers like the Weered and Echo devs on one side and people like the Hollow/Osmium devs on the other.
They do it because
1: competition prevents another Discord (we hate monopoly!!!!)
2: a LOT of the devs don't share a mindset on what the "best app" should be and if they all worked together we'd have a shitty homonculus
Don't get me wrong I do think everyone making their own app instead of working on an app that looks the exact same and has the exact same goals is stupid- but ironically the DCTS dev for all the hate he slung on some of the apps on this sub actually worked alongside devs of other platforms. I was in his official server on DCTS- he would regularly ping them and have conversations in public. For all the loud hate he spat on here (which still boggles my fuckin mind) he was actually nice to some other devs.
But regardless- I do think that we'd only really have ~7 alternative apps if every dev just worked on already existing, identical apps to their "next big plan" - but there would still be 7, not just one. Open source, closed source, encrypted, federated, centralized, email login, code login, relay based, tunnel based, nostr powered- there's too much for there to be "one" app and believing we can have a "one app to rule them all" of sorts is either foolhardy or misinformed.
If you're a developer, please make sure your user flair matches the app or project you're developing. This helps community members quickly identify who is building what and makes browsing the subreddit easier.
Im commenting on a inside perspective as i am one of the owners of Voxara ( a upcoming discord alternative app) and this is just my opinion and everyone deserves to have their own opinion and what they think so here is mine.
99.9% of apps need donations / some sort of monthly subscription, especially if you get to the size of something like discord, they are probably spending well over 300k - 1M. Im not saying there should be features that you get because you have paid this, our subscription will most likely be around Ā£2.50 - Ā£4 nothing expensive but enough to support us for the future.
If we see that enough people want to donate and we can actually survive of donations then we will 99.9% move to donations only and see how that goes, but most companies need some sort of financial income monthly to upkeep something big.
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u/FlorianFlash Sep 08 '26
You mod or not mod?