There seems to be a serious lack of a Discord equivalent fediverse platform unlike other social media alternatives. Most of the closest options are either too overwhelming in UI/UX for majority of people coming from Discord, missing deal-breaking features like video calling or are not federated.

Could it due to some technical limitation of the ActivityPub protocol? I skimmed through its documentation and I get the impression that content may not be accommodating of instant messaging without unconventional modifications. It would also be troublesome to federate massive bunch of messages across (physical) servers in real time.

If it were truly possible to create a Discord alternative, what would it take to make it compatible with the fediverse while also ensuring it feels functional and intuitive for migrating users and not pose too much of a resource drain for self hosters?

Edit: Modified title to clarify post talking about ActivityPub in particular

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Its buggy, it just doesn't really look like Discord. It is a chore for new users to use. There's no useful community discovery.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 points 1 week ago

That sounds like a frontend issue. Not a protocol issue

[–] littleomid@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Don’t go looking for a 1 to 1 drop in. That mindset won’t work much. Same case wit expecting windows to work the same as windows: they’re just different and have to be learned in their own ways.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

Right, but it almost doesn't matter because no-one is actually using matrix in the same way they might use Discord. It just isn't being used socially for hobbies and interests and a part of that is it's design and bugs and tedium getting set up.