What is Matrix
Matrix is my favourite Discord alternative. With Discord beginning to roll out face ID recognition to allow you to access adult content (everything on discord) a huge amount of people have been jumping ship. Source: Just trust me bro.
Discord also doesn't let you delete your data. If you delete your account, your messages stay forever, unless you delete EVERY message manually. All your feet pics are permanent.
The longer you use Discord the more information they have about you. Then, they distribute your data to "trusted third-parties". By that point you have lost all control. These trusted third-parties sell your data to less trusted people, and before you know it your feet pics are available on the dark web, tied directly to your face, and John Dickus, the banker, will see it when you apply to a credit card in 5 years.
Your social credit will tank, and you will be outed as the feet person in your workplace. People will leave socks on your desk.
Matrix offers all the features of Discord and cannot be blocked, does not require any form of identification, it's completely open and you can 100% encrypt your messages if you choose, but you don't have to.
The real reason you want to use Matrix
You can get all Discord features but without people inviting you to 139484389 different group chats.
What is a Matrix server?
Matrix server and Discord server mean diferent things. A Discord server is comparable to a Matrix Space.
Anyone can host a Matrix server. A server is literally an actual server, like a game server. By default you will just be in the centralised server by the official devs. In this server you can create your own spaces (which are the equivalent of Discord servers).
Mozilla have a server for example. Within that server they have different spaces. Anyone on the Mozilla home server can talk to people on the official dev server too.
Most people are just going to use the main centralised Matrix server but if this one day were to go down, you could jump on another server. You can find Matrix servers to join online.
All Matrix servers can talk to each other so it doesn't matter. So if you go on Matrix server by some random guy in Uganda as your home server, you can still talk to people on other servers.
Yes, you can do DM's.
You don't need to know any of this but it's just background info.
How do I use it?
You need to download a Matrix client. This is like a Second Life viewer. Second life viewers allow you to connect to, for example, the main Linden Labs servers, or OpenSim. Matrix clients allow you to connect to different Matrix servers.
Element is the most popular Matrix client, you can think of it like Firestorm I guess.
However, it doesn't support GIF searching which is critical for memes.
Therefore you should use this one called Commet instead:
Commet.chatWhat does the Element client look like?
This is the most popular client.
What does the Commet client look like?
I prefer this over Element because it lets you use GIFs.
Same as Discord. You can also upload your own emoticons and stickers and use them anywhere.
There is an image which shows the UI at the top of this post.
It is objectively superior to Discord and costs nothing.
Why should I just stay with Discord?
Here are some reasons to stay with Discord, alongside some potential solutions.
1. You have friends on Discord
Laugh at them
2. You want the easiest solution for everything
If this is you, then you probably have too short an attention span to read this post anyway, so don't worry.
3. You are a sheep
Commit seppuku.
Do people actually use it?
Conclusion
This is what happens when you use discord
This is what happens when you use matrix
