Post #2693915

2026-05-05 00:13 UTC

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net @witchgirls@woof.tech Matrix may not be actively /good/ but it's still way better than Discord. at the risk of derailing the thread into one about chat platforms (plenty of those already tbqh) i'd like to mention that Matrix is not ideal for screenreader users. none of the clients are particularly accessible, which adds mental load to an already pretty intensive setup process for someone used to something like Discord. course there'll be friction on pretty much anything that isn't Discord, but i think there's an important difference between slight friction/learning curve, and actively user hostile :> i personally use Signal, Discord, and xmpp. i'm gonna get back on irc, and i'm willing to try out anything else that doesn't require a captcha to sign up, but after 3 years of trying, i'm done with Matrix

Replies (2)

@IceWolf@masto.brightfur.net 2026-05-05 00:14

@crowk@critter.cafe @witchgirls@woof.tech Oooof I did not know that, sheesh. I didn't think about accessibility at all. :< come to think of it, IRC might actually be pretty good here, though only for ephemeral things. Not so much if you want a Giant Archive. IRC also doesn't even need accounts! Which helps with the friction stuff.

Open ##2693916
@witchgirls@woof.tech 2026-05-05 00:16

@crowk@critter.cafe Thank you for bringing that up. My main drive behind Discord is just that everyone else uses it so getting a community up and running (which is already an incredibly difficult task) would be the easiest. If we're going to use an alternative, I would want it to be the easiest to use for everyone, while still allowing some community stuff (I wouldn't use Signal for example, since that only lets you make huge group chats and nothing else AFAIK) Have you tried https://stoat.chat/? It's the one "Discord alternative" that seems to have refused to use any LLM generated code. There's also https://fluxer.app/ which I can attest to be quite good, but it does have LLM generated code in it.

Open ##2693923