Chat

as much as i love Matrix: it is not a suitable alternative to Discord for non-tech people, and my friends will never switch to it, and i think it would behoove tech people to be a lot more humble about this. many people--most of my friends included--will sooner to switch to what comes after Discord than Matrix, and if need be i'm almost certainly going to follow them (although my main community will probably switch to a forum if i get my way).

in fact: my own first experience with Matrix ended in an account i can't use anymore for inscrutable reasons i don't understand, and getting restarted ate a ton of messages someone sent me that thankfully weren't too important. not a great first impression! comparatively i have never had issues with Discord on any meaningful level.

IRC > XMPP > Matrix > Discord.

Matrix is heavy. I ran my own instance once and it is very resource intensive (even using Dendrite) even if you have only joined a handful of rooms. XMPP chat gives most of the same things I need for chat and is much lighter but no one uses it (sadly). IRC deserves a mention for something that is rock solid and simple and will still be around after Matrix and Discord (if they ever end), however people can't post their meme pics or their emojis so it doesn't appeal to younger people.

Concerning Discord. I literally only made an account because I had classmates that made a server.

Matrix is open source and has the same ethos as other projects like Lemmy.

Discord is closed source and is similar to Reddit in principles.

I'd love to see Matrix grow, but right now all my less techy friends are using Discord. I've already abandoned almost every other social media site they were using to keep in contact with each other and tried to pull people over to Mastodon instead (with little success, people are stubborn) so I think I'll have to keep Discord around as the one concession.

From a privacy perspective, I use and prefer Matrix/Element. I also admit that setting matrix up isn't the easiest thing to do and could keep people from adopting it.

I'll only accesss Discord if I can find a good third party app that respects privacy. On my computer I use Webcord for this, but I haven't found anything similar to use on a phone.

A lot of gaming communities I’m involved in are centralized on Discord. That’s mostly what keeps me there. If I have a choice, I’d pick Matrix for anything personal or non-gaming focused.

Discord is terrible for privacy! I don't mind using it for non-personal use but it's an icky feeling having all of your text and voice convos being stored unencrypted, probably with the state monitoring and the company trying to figure out how to monetize it.

If I had it "my way", then I'd prefer my friends and I to just use Matrix + Mumble (and maybe drop mumble once voice channels are better implemented in Matrix) - however, that is definitely not going to happen because while I possibly have a chance of convincing my friends to do so, it'd be unlikely they could convince their group of friends to do so.

Discord is very frustrating to me, especially the Linux client which has had countless bugs outstanding for years. But everyone I want to talk to is on Discord. Every game I play has its community on Discord. Every tournament I enter is organized through Discord. I don't see all of that packing up and moving to Matrix ever. I haven't even tried Matrix at all, because nothing I'd use it for is over there.

I happened to look at my Discord profile today. I've been on Discord for almost exactly 7yrs. I'm in several tens of servers, mainly gaming-related. Some of these are just Discords for specific games, other are for guilds/clans that I'm in, and I'm "required" to be in them (like for Eve Online).

In addition, my main friends group uses Discord. My brother (also a gamer) and I use Discord to chit chat with each other. Since us two were on there already, I convinced our parents to join us in a family Discord. Was way better than the Android vs iOS SMS/MMS texts we were doing before, which were terrible for videos and photos. And I tried to get my family on Signal; only my mom got on.

It basically doesn't matter whether I like Matrix or Discord more (fwiw, I just created a Matrix account today today to see what it is). I and the communities I'm a part of, both IRL and/or online, are already on and invested in Discord. Like someone else said, Network Effect. I guess I could leave Discord and move to Matrix...but then I'm just sitting there by myself. Super useful for a communications platform.

Everyone I know uses Discord, even my 59 year old mother. It makes sharing stuff with her, including streams, super easy. I can't imagine trying to convince her or anyone else to swap to Matrix. Plus I'm part of multiple art communities on Discord.

I use Matrix with friends. I don't have Discord account but if I will have to talk to a stranger or join a public chatroom I could make it, Matrix isn't really suitable for rooms of hundreds of people yet, in my opinion. I hope it will change soon with the development of new clients and servers

I like discord currently but matrix is just far too inactive within the communities I have sought out from what I can see personally.

Discord. My non-technical friends are there, even the technical servers seem more populated by knowledgeable people than Matrix. Matrix has been very confusing to use, and personally, except for the servers that bridge everywhere, I found it lacked the people I actually want to talk to. I prefer even IRC to Matrix.

I prefer Matrix, but for me it seems harder to understand than Discord.

discord is absolute trash for me no matter where I use it but alas the network effect keeps me on it. I'm only there because all of my friends are there😮‍💨

ive tried matrix with fluffychat a while back but somehow it was a little intimidating to me. besides I prefer forums, especially with strangers. chats feel too personal lol

I wish I could start using Matrix for personal communication, but the fact that every friend and family member I have are already on Discord and the fact that Matrix has non-trivial technical hurdles immediately kills any possibility of using Matrix.

I think at this point, I only use Matrix to engage in a few community chats from time to time.

I like Discord because its UI, customization ability (per $$ ofc) and the ease-of-use. I am not really keen on matrix yet. Seems clunky and slow. Revolt is seeming promising so far.

I use Discord almost entirely to communicate with family, they all have it, and we have our own server just for family.