#stoat chat

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.