Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
soundworlds 24 minutes ago [-]
While it's great to have alternatives, I suspect a lot us are really only interested in forkable open alternatives (like Matrix / Element), as most concerns about Discord are tied with it being a private company.
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
LorenDB 25 minutes ago [-]
Why do all the Discord alternative apps try to 1:1 clone Discord's UI? Half of my dislike of Discord stems from its UI.
theturtletalks 16 minutes ago [-]
Have you tried Chatto[0]? Seems to be an open-source Slack and Discord alternative with a nice UI.
Looks like a cool project, thanks for the reference. Have been relying on Dorion up to this point.
tekchip 20 minutes ago [-]
So much this. Discord UI was for simple voice and text chat. Over time it's had so many other things shoe horned in its now a royal kludge.
nelsonfigueroa 7 minutes ago [-]
I guess because there's people like me that like the UI (aside from all the Nitro bloat at least)
Sohcahtoa82 19 minutes ago [-]
I'm always surprised to hear people hate Discord's UI. I think it's fine.
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
Gigachad 11 minutes ago [-]
It's fine as a kind of replacement for forums, but I don't like it at all for chat and community. I find Discord admins always tend to create 5 trillion channels which each get about one message per week. And then whine when you haven't sorted your messages in to the most relevant channels.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
virgil_disgr4ce 13 minutes ago [-]
Yeah; I get the impression that people saying this really mean "I hate the stupid upsells." Which is fine, I do too. But I guess on HN there's more clout to claiming it's the UI that's the problem?
LorenDB 6 minutes ago [-]
Well, I do hate the stupid upsells, but the entire Discord UI just feels... off. I can't really place a finger on it, but I just don't like it. (Maybe there is a bit of a UX nag causing these feelings as well? I'm not sure.)
charcircuit 21 minutes ago [-]
Because it reduces the switching cost because users don't have to learn a new interface. Discord has shown that its UI is at least capable of being used by hundreds of millions of users so it is not a bad starting point.
hmokiguess 16 minutes ago [-]
That's exactly it. A lot of users are likely emotionally attached and trapped to their Nitro garbage and feel like they "invested" far into the cult by now. Giving them a way out is important if you want to acquire that market.
virgil_disgr4ce 12 minutes ago [-]
Man, the Nitro stuff is garbage, but it's bizarre that you're equating the ENTIRE UI to that. It's really not that obtrusive. I don't like it either but it's like 0.5% of the UI
hmokiguess 8 minutes ago [-]
Fair point, opinions are not truth. That said there are lots of mods out there for it with substantial (many millions) of users where their entire reason for existing is taking control of the UI.
What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
hatthew 7 minutes ago [-]
Is this P2P, or hosted on proprietary servers? How is it funded? I don't like ads and I like free things, but "no ads, free forever" doesn't make me confident in its long term stability.
muwtyhg 6 minutes ago [-]
Why do companies like this continue to promise "No Ads Ever"? How do they plan enough money to support their service? Video sharing is incredibly expensive, even Discord is unlikely profitable between their advertising campaigns and server boosting revenue.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
hmokiguess 17 minutes ago [-]
Please please please someone take over discord and their use base. Their nitro and ads is the most toxic nonsense stuff I have ever had the displeasure to work with.
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
adzm 14 minutes ago [-]
There is so little advertising on discord that I find it hilarious you are so upset about a few notifications here and there about nitro and other aesthetic perks which are basically entirely optional
hresvelgr 8 minutes ago [-]
There are 3rd party ads in Discord now, and they are probably going to expand as an ad platform. I think this is what the parent comment was upset about.
edit: grammar
hmokiguess 5 minutes ago [-]
That too, I have to be on Nitro because of work. (Managing communities, streaming resolution, etc), and the level of ads triple after being a customer. Even worse if you need to blend in like adopting some of the customization since the cult goes deep.
To be fair, I put myself there and I voluntarily work with those audiences. I am aware I don't belong to the same level they do, and I'm ok with that. I just wish I could customize it my way too. In my view, if this was a protocol rather than a PaaS locked-in system, like IRC for example, we all would be winning.
hmokiguess 10 minutes ago [-]
A few notifications here and there? I'm not sure I can agree with you. It's a daily persistent thing that there is no way to disable and the constant dark patterns.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
axus 9 minutes ago [-]
Charging for perks and user self-expression seems a lot healthier than what we see in app stores and websites.
This is all pre-IPO, it's sure to get worse; hopefully one of the Discord alternatives will have caught on by then.
The big line they've crossed is collecting identification; much thanks to HN for linking to the bypass that worked for a day.
nickthegreek 11 minutes ago [-]
> Please please please someone take over discord and their use base
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
Ekaros 12 minutes ago [-]
I have never seen true need to get Nitro. Missing on some things but if someone wants to pay for it let them.
Big question is how else would they make money? Monetise hosting "servers" directly? Would they have even gotten community if they did that?
hmokiguess 9 minutes ago [-]
Do you have or use Discord for work? E.g. streaming, many calls, etc. Only nitro lets you do those.
Ekaros 7 minutes ago [-]
Thankfully my company uses Teams. So I don't need Discord for that. As non-nitro uses it works fine for text chat.
bitmasher9 25 minutes ago [-]
Is there anyone there I want to talk to? You need to demonstrate that before I create a login, otherwise there is too much friction for me.
The iOS storefront is also far behind your website in quality and attention to detail.
Edit: please accept this in the spirit of some quick feedback from one maker to another
apetresc 16 minutes ago [-]
How on earth do you expect them to show you whether there's anyone there you want to talk to?
bitmasher9 6 minutes ago [-]
I have a lot of chatting applications that all demonstrated that to me. The most common way was having another party indicate the app as a communication option
Apreche 2 minutes ago [-]
If it’s not open source and self-hostable, it’s a non-starter. Not switching to another closed platform just for it to die. I’m tired of switching. Whatever I switch to next must be able to last the rest of my life expectancy.
acley 1 hours ago [-]
We have been online for more than 1.5 years. Back when we started, we didn't see Discord alternatives popping up left and right, so we created our own. Nowadays, there are like 10 of them popping up every single day, most of those are below par and completely usable. If you like to try out a new one you can give us a try no stress haha bye
altilunium 13 minutes ago [-]
Cool. I would like to try it, but it will probably take a considerable amount of time to convince my circle of friends to migrate to this platform en masse.
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
Varelion 23 minutes ago [-]
Sorry, where is the source code? For any trust to be built OS should be a prime feature at this point in the game.
s0ss 16 minutes ago [-]
Are clients and server FOSS? If so, advertise that. Personally, I’m not interested in another platform that isn’t.
Madmallard 8 minutes ago [-]
Not open source
Not interested
jonstaab 7 minutes ago [-]
xkcd 927 but instead of another standard, another vibe-coded discord clone.
I see no point in switching from one closed-source platform to another closed-source platform.
ludston 11 minutes ago [-]
Congratulations, I'm sure it was a monumental effort to build this. Good luck with marketing and all that.
bellowsgulch 15 minutes ago [-]
I'm just ready for something new, personally. I don't really like Discord's vibe of paying for avatar skins? Gross. And paying for custom emojis? Super gross. Yuck.
jimmygrapes 6 minutes ago [-]
Yeah ok.
2025 to 2026 full of slop signals, LLC reg number from April 2026 to the same address in multiple reports as ultra scammy:
Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
0. https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
edit: grammar
To be fair, I put myself there and I voluntarily work with those audiences. I am aware I don't belong to the same level they do, and I'm ok with that. I just wish I could customize it my way too. In my view, if this was a protocol rather than a PaaS locked-in system, like IRC for example, we all would be winning.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
This is all pre-IPO, it's sure to get worse; hopefully one of the Discord alternatives will have caught on by then.
The big line they've crossed is collecting identification; much thanks to HN for linking to the bypass that worked for a day.
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
Big question is how else would they make money? Monetise hosting "servers" directly? Would they have even gotten community if they did that?
The iOS storefront is also far behind your website in quality and attention to detail.
Edit: please accept this in the spirit of some quick feedback from one maker to another
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
Not interested
I say this as someone building a discord clone (https://flotilla.social)
2025 to 2026 full of slop signals, LLC reg number from April 2026 to the same address in multiple reports as ultra scammy:
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/30-n-gould-st-sheridan-wy-scam...
https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-rec...
https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/scammers-use-reg...
Lot of other red flags for me but those are even more vibe-based than everything about this.