So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

@0xabad1dea as someone who uses discord mostly as IRC but with emojis and images... What *are* the main reasons people use discord? Like this seems like there should be so many open alternatives, but I'm obviously missing something.

So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—

Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use it

So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—

Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use it

@RandomDamage @nojhan @0xabad1dea Sadly, #Mattermost is only "open core" and thus #OpenWashing...

https://infosec.space/@kkarhan/116058411874869363

@enejjohhem @0xabad1dea

A system with end-to-end encryption has no access to message content on the server because that is literally the definition of E2E encryption.

That means you will never have access to past content – you weren't in the receiver list of a channel when the message was sent, and you won't retroactively get it, because the server cannot add you. You are essentially joining an empty channel or even server.

That also means that the server cannot look into message content, for example to identify and autoban spammers, work on message moderation or otherwise do what anybody would reasonably expect a server to do in terms of safety and abuse control.

It also means that the server cannot provide you with a meaningful server based search at all. Instead the client has to download the content it has keys for and then search locally. That won't happen except on desktop devices, and even there it won't work well.

You could add a server machine user to every message so that search and automoderation would have access to message content. But that means effectively you don't have, and don't need end, and don't want to end-to-end encryption.

Which you don't.

It's not a cool feature, for anybody except the most limited set of users, and these will still hate every second of the experience they are forced to have by their circumstances.

@0xabad1dea @gabboman if you don't make it distributed, you also have to host the entire bloody thing - which gets expensive once you add video chat and/or screensharing at any meaningful scale

So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—

Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use it

So You Want To Write An Open Source Discord Replacement

Things you don’t need:
- federation/distributed systems
- multiparty end-to-end encryption
- an entirely new operating system kernel specially designed to—

Things you DO need:
- a user interface that is Normal
- the ability to use languages other than English and writing systems other than Latin
- higher standards of user experience than how irc actually works in the real world
- any fucking clue how Discord works and why people use it

@krapp @0xabad1dea I think when she says no federation she means that each organization hosts its own server which functions completely independently of others. Since discord is divided into different "servers" which you have to switch between, its fine if its replacement makes you switch between different REAL servers in order to message different groups.

@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea So basically - The servers are fine if they do not communicate, the clients just need to be capable of swapping between server instances? Overall sounds like it could work.

That *does* open up a weird UX setup though that the DMs between User A and User B are bound to a specific server.
So suddenly you can have *multiple* DM conversations with the same User as long as you both share multiple servers.

@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea Yeah, that could be weird. However I don’t think person to person DMs are the main use case of Discord— signal works well enough for that. My impression of discord is that servers are generally created for some sort of social group— a college club, all the students in a specific class, a Minecraft server, etc— to be a place to talk about things relevant to that group or activity.

@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea I might not include DMs as a feature and instead have people manually create a chat with a single person. This would be annoying but it would make it clear that the conversation is tied to a specific server.

@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea As someone that does use discord I'd say private chats make up about ~20-30% of my usage, the rest being VC and group chats. So I'd agree it's not the *main* use-case, just that it's also *a* major usecase.

Another thing that might get lost would be server discovery.
A client could still work if "add server" means pasting in a server-URL somewhere, you could even "mitigate" it by hard-coding the major server instances, it just adds a limitation to be aware of.

@Isofruit @krapp @0xabad1dea How do you discover discord servers other than someone already on the server giving you an invite link

@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea As someone that does use discord I'd say private chats make up about ~20-30% of my usage, the rest being VC and group chats. So I'd agree it's not the *main* use-case, just that it's also *a* major usecase.

Another thing that might get lost would be server discovery.
A client could still work if "add server" means pasting in a server-URL somewhere, you could even "mitigate" it by hard-coding the major server instances, it just adds a limitation to be aware of.

@scunneen @krapp @0xabad1dea
Have an interest and desire to join a community somewhere for that interest.

With the discovery functionality such as that from matrix and discord I found:
- Angular Discord Server
- React Discord Server
- Nim Discord Server
- "Shape of Dreams" Discord Server (Gaming)
- Nim Matrix channel
- GTK Matrix channel
- Accessibility Matrix Channels

etc.

These do actually have a fairly valid usecase.

@0xabad1dea To clarify about federation, dozens if not hundreds of projects have tried federation, and there are only two that have actual federation and an actually decent UX.

@enejjohhem @0xabad1dea

A system with end-to-end encryption has no access to message content on the server because that is literally the definition of E2E encryption.

That means you will never have access to past content – you weren't in the receiver list of a channel when the message was sent, and you won't retroactively get it, because the server cannot add you. You are essentially joining an empty channel or even server.

That also means that the server cannot look into message content, for example to identify and autoban spammers, work on message moderation or otherwise do what anybody would reasonably expect a server to do in terms of safety and abuse control.

It also means that the server cannot provide you with a meaningful server based search at all. Instead the client has to download the content it has keys for and then search locally. That won't happen except on desktop devices, and even there it won't work well.

You could add a server machine user to every message so that search and automoderation would have access to message content. But that means effectively you don't have, and don't need end, and don't want to end-to-end encryption.

Which you don't.

It's not a cool feature, for anybody except the most limited set of users, and these will still hate every second of the experience they are forced to have by their circumstances.

@isotopp@infosec.exchange @enejjohhem@mastodon.social @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange You could just... not enable encryption in your communities, then. But it should absolutely be an option for vulnerable groups where "no full text search :(" and "no automod :(" are less important than ensuring their own safety.