I know we're all trying to figure out where to go if we're not comfortable with this and there's been multiple suggestions which makes it harder for people to stay together, but as someone who's been looking for months i want to throw a hat in the ring
Fluxer app has a good privacy policy and is almost up to par with discord in terms of features. Their "nitro" is cheaper and better. They're also currently offering a limited amount of one-time lifetime memberships. On privacy, they do not use your data for marketing/advertising purposes or to train AI. They keep their servers running by *not* mass archiving - ie, uploads have an expiry date which resets upon viewing so many times, otherwise it's wiped. So they are not sitting on a massive pile of data. It's sustainable. Your uploads are scanned for the purpose of blocking and reporting CSAM, and that's it.
Their privacy policy *did not* answer every question I had, but many of the alternatives didn't even try.
Look at it this way. Element/matrix has a bit of a barrier to entry. Many other apps are designed for work environments. Stoat developers are in no way prepared for mass migration and have never considered stoat as a replacement for discord - they are a very small team. It is also still quite buggy and the security of the app is questionable.
As far as discord servers that are used like wikis - it should *never* have been that way - it's not publicly searchable and discord was never meant as a cloud storage service. It could go poof at any time.
Genuinely, I think Fluxer is our best option. That's where I'll be.
A friend and I spend a good chunk of the past week looking into Discord alternatives because of Discord speeding up towards enshittification.
We looked into two popular alternatives, Revolt and Matrix/Element, and wanted to share what we found from a non-techie Discord user's perspective. We put our findings here along with articles going into detail about Discord's increasing decline. Feel free to reach out if you find typos, broken links, or outright mistakes!
Personally I've started moving my community to Revolt because it's a better fit for my community, but I will be keeping my Matrix account in case other Discord communities decide to move over there. Depending on what your Discord server needs and techie levels, both can be good alternatives. Neither are outright replacements and both are undergoing development, so both options should continue to improve in the future.
EDIT (2026.01.18): Should have edited the main post earlier, but Revolt Chat has rebranded to Stoat Chat. See more details in this reblog addition.
Hey for your Internet Humans stuff... Stoat is an alternative to discord that started getting popular after the Age Verification stuff started happening. Stoat is missing a few features, which makes sense cuz its so new. Streaming games (and screenshare in general) while in a voice chat and the ability to ping roles are what come to mind because my friends and I use those features a lot on discord...
Very small dev team but I'm in the server the devs are in and it sounds like they're working very diligently to catch up feature-wise
I was wondering what they'd look like in your universe? And what their relationship would be to Discord? (If I helps, I heard of Stoat both on here and on Reddit, haha.)
No pressure, just curious!
Okay So... here's where I gotta disappoint people with clarification on the Internet Humans design meta. I apologize in advance.
Apps without browser access are not applicable for Internet Human designs.
Call it my small rebellion against the curse that is phone apps, but I'm not gonna make designs for 'app only' stuff. Internet Humans isn't apps, it's websites. Websites & servers you can view (IRL) with an internet browser. They can have apps on the app store, but if they're not viewable through a web browser on a laptop or phone, they don't qualify.
This unfortunately means that Stoat is not eligible for a humanoid design! Though I hold no ill will towards the dev team (good on them for making something!). If they ever allow browser access, I'll gladly make a design! Until then, they cannot join the Internet Humans crew.
I'm just gonna vent/rant about apps real quick cause it's a Problem that people don't know the difference. Apps are software downloaded onto your device. They can absolutely contain malware and spyware. And if you're on a phone, you have very limited options for controlling your privacy.
Also! App only sucks! For people without phones!
If Tumblr was 'app only' I wouldn't be able to post this (or anything) cause my phone screen is shards of glass right now! Phones are incredibly fragile and break all the time. If your whole house uses your phone as a remote, then it breaks. you're just screwed!
I also watched "Replacing your phone is easy when it feels punk" by struthless and... yeah, having everything be an app encourages you to spend more time on your phone. And, as his video explains, it can have depressive effects. It causes you to become complacent with the horrors of the world.
Which I! Don't! Want!
Download apps being the norm is a way to make you accept you can't do anything about it. You can't modify the files, or the terms and conditions, or anything! They are teaching you to be helpless, literally.
But that's wrong, you can have an effect.
There are people out there who want you blind and stupid, so make an effort to educate yourself. Use the web browser version of things if you can. Make it fun. Be punk. Be emo. Make a damn website with HTML (It's not that hard tbh)
Do something out of the ordinary. Make an effort to go to a protest. Get involved with local politics, non profits, or even just the library! It has more of an effect than you think. Get creative!
And these things are not gonna be easy. It's easier to just scroll YouTube shorts for hours on end than it is to delete/disable the youtube app. But you don't need the app, you can find them with a web browser.
"But it's so much more difficult that way!" I hear from a piss on the poor reader
Yeah. Didja forget the part where I said it wasn't going to be easy? The easy path is full of potholes! Don't become complacent with them cause then they'll never be fixed!
The youtube privacy union server has a stoat server now!
here is the invite link
you will need to be verified by a staff member before you can go to the rest of the server
please do go the "start here!" channel to learn how to get verified and than the "verify here!!!" to get
please do join our back up server, because discord is not gonna be the best place for us soon, because of that whole entire, age verification thing that coming soon to discord
I started a NSFW ТТТЕ server on Stoat a couple of days ago. My account was dormant for like 2 years, might as well do something with it... Stoat lacks some major features compared to Discord but at least they won't force you to hand over your ID (shhh Stinky don't jinx it). I intend to strictly moderate the server, prohibiting IRL porn, discussion of controversial topics and more. So far I've only shared an invite in a few 18+ spaces, only visible to logged users.
Edit: aside from adding that I also made a Fluxer server and bridged it with the Stoat one, I have to clarify I WILL NOT send invites to the following users:
anyone known or suspected to be a minor
anyone claiming to be MAP/zoo/necro/radqueer
anyone known for supporting censorship of fiction / having stuff like "proshippers DNI" in their profile, bigotry, slander, harrassment or otherwise being disruptive and unpleasant
Our Discord Community & The New Age Verification Rules Discord Are Implementing
Hi all!
Thanks to everyone who's been part of our Discord community - we love each and every one of you.
And we respect your right to privacy.
In light of Discord's announcement on age verification and the potential implications (https://youtu.be/8Ajo2inw7aM), we're looking into alternative options for our community to continue to thrive.
But so far our best bet does seem to be stoat.chat - it’s got a very similar interface and allows for a few features Discord had paywalled, such as profile banners.
Stoat are a small team rushing to catch up with the influx of interest due to Discord's policy announcement. And even with that small team, they're doing amazing and are incredibly quick to respond. There is an FAQ on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/stoatchat/comments/1r1uk40/your_frequently_asked_questions_answered/) for any issues you might experience during sign up.
Another reason we're looking at them is that Stoat are based in Europe, and are respectful of privacy.
They also have a features roadmap: https://github.com/orgs/revoltchat/projects/6/views/4.
You may find in some places they're branded as Revolt - this is their old name and they're in the process of rebranding to Stoat after a cease & desist.
If you've previously been part of our community and maybe are less active on Discord, please hop into the server and check out our #tech-talk channel. Full details for what we're looking into and testing out will be in there. You can also volunteer to help test out the options in that channel!
We'll have our new option fully up and running by the end of February, and will be shutting down our Discord server at that time. Unless Discord policies reverse and the Admin team will be able to monitor all channels safely without providing our IDs or face scans.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to the admins!
Something rather insidious I notice in the era of corporate monopolies is that people will put the expectations they have for big corporations onto small indie projects and penalize them for not not offering free services to the same quality, availability, and robustness as a big corporation.
But a small project just can't do that. Even if they have a patreon or kofi or donation thing, servers cost a lot, paying people to run shit costs a lot, and the way you get money for that is through corporate investors. Not through small donations. Maybe if everyone donated more to the indie projects they could get more money, but that's not going to happen to the level it takes to run a project the way a corporate monopoly can.
And this isn't me going like ugh you should donate more to small projects, because I know a lot of people can't do that, and even when people can they can't give a lot, because the wealth distribution is such that the top 1% hold all the money and the power and decide who gets to run projects with that level of quality. It's like this for a reason.
So if you like having things not run by corporate monopolies, maybe have more realistic expectations. Simplyplural was run by some guy, artfight is run by some guys, all your indie projects are run by some guy. Don't expect them to be Google.
