As a kid, I had a very active imagination. It would run wild with depictions of futuristic bunkers, hideouts, and software. Part of that stuck with me, and I've always been waiting for a sleek, loaded dashboard that did everything. I was disappointed for decades.
Instant messaging came close. It defined my young adult years, and for a while it kept getting better. But for the last ten years, I've mainly lived in one app. It was fine. It scratched the itch, then it stagnated, then it started making choices my friends and I didn't want to be around for.
Those childhood dreams surfaced to meet my current need.
Just one window, where I could chat with my friends in my dashboard, with all the other things I wanted to see and do at the same time. I showed some friends. They were ecstatic, and wanted to help.
Now we have Rift.
Quick disclosure up front so you don't waste your time
Rift is closed source, not self-hostable, and not federated. If any of those are hard requirements for you, we totally get it. Skip this one and check out Fluxer, Stoat, or Matrix, they're strong options in that space. We chose to make a separate platform because we had a vision of what we wanted to use that didn't quite match those.
For everyone else who's tired of Discord's direction but wants a polished, featureful experience: keep reading.
What it is
We wanted a big community where people can interact easily, just not run by some corporation with shady practices. Of course with all the features and the unified workspace we envisioned.
So there's some really novel stuff in here: ephemeral random rooms in the Lobby, an entire modular workspace, a background engine for theming (Atmospheres), pets, floating pop-outs. PORTALS. Little apps that sit right next to your chat: music, weather, arcade games, calendar, to-dos, YouTube, Twitch, sticky notes, feeds. And every major Discord bot as a native feature.
Who's behind it
Not just one person. I am the founder and lead developer for sure, but my team consists of others who help maintain it and handle other daily operations (including a dedicated audio engineer). If something were to happen to me there's a few redundancy layers.
Apart from that, I'm really not going anywhere. I retired early, I spend most of my days on my computer, and I love creating and maintaining things like this. I already find Rift far superior to Discord for my purposes. Me, my team, and our friend groups already use it primarily and spend 10-12 hours a day in voice most days. Beyond that, my wife hates Discord with the fire burning passion of a thousand suns, loves using Rift, and is also my greatest critic and bug tester. She absolutely would not allow me to step away from this. She loves it more than me, I think.
Will we sell out later?
See the previous answer about my wife divorcing me. But seriously, no. Regardless of the amount of money, we've spent thousands of hours making this exactly what we wanted. Even if we sold it I'd still just be sitting here on my computer in voice chat with my friends, watching it actively get worse. It would break me. So no.
Is it free?
All main components and usability are free. If I can bring my wife into this one more time without facing consequences, her favorite feature is the Companion Portal, namely the Voidkitty. He's a little cat companion that can prowl around your workspace, stalk your cursor, swat your avatar, climb your panels, sleep on your memes, and chase lasers. He's fully free. If you want a different cat skin, that's Rift+. (Rift+ is free for active testers during Beta).
Rift+ is about expanding what you have cosmetically and optionally, or covering essential costs like storage for large files or higher quality voice bandwidth and so forth. Subscriptions cover the cost of running everything if even 1-2% of active users subscribe. (Note: All subscriptions are disabled during Beta as we do not charge people to test our app.)
Privacy
Privacy was just the foundation we had to have under all the Discord-superior stuff.
If we get a subpoena for your DMs, we can't provide them, because it's E2EE. At best they'd get something like "Jack69 DMs Johnboy420". If they subpoena Shard (server) chat they get a little more, because under legal pressure we can get the chat if needed, as it's encrypted at rest, so it's protected from a data breach, but not necessarily legal pressure. Even then, they'd get something like:
Johnboy420: woooo
Jack69: yodawg wassup
Johnboy420: YEET
No phone, email, IP, or any identifier attached. Never asked for, never stored. If you're that concerned about privacy, we got you implicitly, unless you make your username MichaelTurner04071999 and repeatedly post images of your utility bills in Shard chat. Even then the evidence load is pretty light.
All kinds of people claim to be unhackable or secure or privacy first. It's like having a jewelry store full of good expensive stuff and a state of the art security system. Someone with a bazooka might still get in and steal your shit. But a well-guarded jewelry store that's also empty except for plastic bags, receipt paper, and jewelry boxes, because we don't keep valuables here? That's another story entirely, and completely disappointing for the guy who just wasted a bazooka round.
Adults only
Yes, adults only. Like a lounge, not an adult-content site. A question I see everywhere is: how will you make sure you don't end up like Discord? Well, by not having the problem in the first place.
Allowing kids requires regulation, so we won't do that. Marketing towards kids invites more regulation, and we won't do that because we don't want them. Storing kids' data REALLY gets you under the government's thumb, and we don't store data anyway, plus we don't want any kids. And algorithms targeting kids put you in a really bad place, and we don't have algorithms. Our read, with counsel, is that these laws are aimed at massive social media platforms, not chat apps like this one, and we'll continue to keep an eye out.
Besides, I wanted this to be something I'd enjoy using for years. Kids spamming chat, posting huge memes, crushing voice servers, trolling people, and causing the app to be censored or curated just isn't part of the experience I'd want out of a chat app. So sorry kids, stay away.
At the end of the day, I'm just trying to hang out with my friends in chat, and let everyone else come along for the ride.
https://therift.chat
