I've seen several people say that Matrix clients aren't good at replacing Discord, but I'm having trouble understanding what exactly is missing. What critical features does Discord have that a client like Element lacks?

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, there is the userbase ...

[–] sebinspace@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Critical Mass, as it’s sometimes referred.

[–] candle_lighter@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago

Voice chat quality is subpar, there is no screensharing audio, voice chat is buggy on a good day, unusuable on the rest.

[–] CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Here's a critical feature: Matrix bans people using a VPN. Fuck that. I joined a channel for the first time, said "Hello", and was instantly banned for "Spam".

I have to use a VPN because I get my Internet from tethering my phone using EasyTether to make it look like phone data, and connecting to stuff like Windows Update would make it really obvious I'm doing so.

[–] sebinspace@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Not sure if you’re joking or not so I’m gonna go see for myself, brb

Edit: what the fuck..

[–] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Are you talking about matrix.org? I have my own server. If it bans me, that'll be wild.

[–] CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I think so. I downloaded the recommended app, connected to the recommended server, added a channel, tried to ask my question, and BAM! That was it.

[–] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

I think they're just hyper-vigilante about spammers. They have been targeted with a lot of spam as the flagship server. Unfortunate that you had a bad experience your first time trying it.

[–] Ion@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 9 months ago

Unfortunately discord is the main app used for a lot of communities I follow for specific games, streamer communities, local organizations, etc. But for my friend group we use a self hosted matrix server. It lacks all the nifty bots for music streaming, I'm pretty sure I can't screen share for movie nights or to share gaming, but it had the bare bones chatting experience