Any alternative to social media is probably an improvement
Instead of rethinking whether the identity verification thing was such a good idea, after an entirely predictable data breach involving ~70,000 users, Discord doubled down and made it a requirement, globally, to use some of its core features.
Isn’t it strange that so many governments are suddenly trying to push the Online Safety Act bullshit, under different names, over the last year, and that the Corporate Media are telling us that messaging apps are to blame for what effectively are the social consequences of neoliberalism? Politicians are insistent about it, despite knowing the inevitable consequence will be identity theft and identity fraud on an unprecedented scale, for which there is no accountability or recourse? Innocent people do get implicated in crimes, bank accounts do get emptied, loans do get fraudulently registered against unknowing victims, all through identity theft. In fact, virtually every instance of computer-related crime, minor and serious, involves some form of identity theft. We know, as a demonstrable fact, that corporate cybersecurity, which is largely an excercise in compliance, cannot prevent this.
But people still need common platforms to communicate with each other, and that means we need to explore potential alternatives, as many have been doing on Hacker News and Reddit.
I personally don’t have the answer, obviously. What I do know is that migrating from a mainstream ‘social’ media platform to a lesser-known one (e.g. Minds.com and Diaspora) wouldn’t solve anything, because we’re merely opting for something that’s inherently as bad. A ‘social’ media platform is designed to be centralised, censored and for The Algorithm to determine what users are allowed to see, if there’s a large enough user base.
Discord clones come with a different set of problems, related to complexity. Are there enough developers working on the software, and are there enough developers prepared to fork it, should the software licence change and it becomes a proprietary commercial product? Are there enough resources to keep the software, servers and infrastructure running?
The third factor is the ’network effect’. The primary reason most people continue using mainstream ‘social’ media, despite all the ethical violations, is practically everyone else is using it. This problem will sort itself out, though, if mainstream services become unusable without identity verification. Young people, wanting to avoid the cacophany that comes with having friends, family, work colleagues and sponsored crap on the same platform, are already using basic messengers instead of FaceBook and Twitter.
Matrix and Element
Matrix is actually a published specification for a federated messaging system that’s based on standard technologies (mostly REST APIs). A number of client applications are available that use this, and more could be developed. It’s decentralised (in theory) and end-to-end encrypted. This is getting mentioned a lot on Hacker News and Reddit as the successor to mainstream services.
I’m still experimenting tentatively with Matrix, using Element and some of the client software on Linux. Apparently a Matrix server is a bit tricky to configure, but several hosting providers specialise in making that as easy as possible. Most users register with the default Matrix.org server(network effect, again).
Like many messaging system, Matrix hosts chatrooms and groups. They’re not searchable, per se, but a handful are listed on a few sites. One could try potential addresses to see whether a group exists. For example, if I wanted to find a Linux-related group, I might try #linux:matrix.org or #debian:matrix.org. If such a group doesn’t exist on Matrix.org, the client might find it on a federated server.
Signal
Apparently WhatsApp is an implementation of Signal, and that’s why the two appear very similar and why it’s just as easy to set up. The difference is that Signal is somewhat more trustworthy when it comes to privacy and end-to-end encryption.
What makes Signal a potential replacement to Discord is that it works on desktop and mobile devices, has features for video calls and can be used by developers and gamers to share code.
Personally I didn’t like having to provide a cellphone number to register my Signal app, and that’s generally an indication that a service doesn’t care much about privacy. Apparently Signal itself doesn’t store anything that might reveal to a third-party which users might be members of a given group, or which users a given person might be communicating with. Users can decide to keep their cellphone numbers relatively private, and share only their usernames.
If the identity verification thing affects all Meta-owned services, it’s definitely worth thinking about switching to Signal as the fallback messenger for friends and family.
Delta Chat
Okay, I know that Delta Chat most likely wouldn’t become mainstream, but it has a very clever approach to decentralisation, security and anonymity, and that approach is to use email servers as Autocrypt messaging queues.
The Autocrypt system is essentially a layer that automates the OpenPGP encryption of emails, and the Delta Chat client presents the emails as chat messages.
The only problem I have with Delta Chat is there’s no easy way to import or export crytographic keys, and we can’t generate our own with stronger algorithms and key sizes.
phpBB
It would be remiss of me not to mention phpBB, which was the software of choice for online communities before MySpace came along. Back in those days, online communities really were communities, since a typical phpBB forum was centred around a shared interest. The platform is ideal for long and short-form posts, and for sharing code, and content is fully searchable.
All that’s needed is a server running PHP, MySQL and phpBB software, and a little configuration, to get a forum up and running. This can be done on practically any VPS or basic hosting plan. The phpBB codebase is large, but it’s wel-maintained, reliable and the MySQL database is portable across instances of the platform.