Post · Indieweb Studio

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

If you're interested in funding or helping us find funding for a Discord replacement that's federated and end-to-end encrypted, we're interested in implementing that at @spritely ... we even had been talking about that being our big focus for 2026.

We have the skills and the underlying tech to pull this off. What we need right now is resources. Funding for open source nonprofits like ours really fell apart in 2025. If you think you know how to help, feel free to reach out.

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@3@social.xenofem.me · 3 months ago

@cwebber
>irc
no!!! to hard!!!
>xmpp
no!!! the clients look bad!!!!

STOP making new discords and just write a pretty UI using existing protocols! isn't that all modern developers are good for anyway?

and for the love of fuck do not base your shit on matrix i'm not provisioning 2gb ram to my chat vps that is going to have to bridge to your shitfucked nucord Because Everyone Else Is Using It

@suika@pl.ibuki.club · 3 months ago

@3 @cwebber someone here some time ago said to package https://github.com/ObsidianIRC/ObsidianIRC as a desktop app and call it good since ircv3 is slowly adopting things people have come to expect of modern chat platforms

GitHub - ObsidianIRC/ObsidianIRC: Modern IRC Client for the web, desktop and mobile.

Modern IRC Client for the web, desktop and mobile. - ObsidianIRC/ObsidianIRC

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

@suika @3 FWIW, I do love XMPP and IRC. I use and love them!

Please see the thread, we are talking about something specific that none of these things have: a chatroom with no center / that nobody hosts, which we think is important for sociopolitical reasons explained in the thread.

It's not to put down XMPP or IRC, both of which I love, use, and have built and run tech for before.

Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️

@Blort@social.tchncs.de · 3 months ago

@cwebber
Would this be using Spritely (et al) tech? Also, what is wanted beyond what Matrix / XMPP provide?
@spritely

@toon@toon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely https://nlnet.nl/funding.html @nlnet

NLnet; Apply for funding

@Daniel_Blake@mastodon.top · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely

https://elfaconsortium.eu/

They're being funded. Maybe ask for EU grant?

The Matrix.org Foundation

@matrix@mastodon.matrix.org · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely have you considered a hybrid approach - using spritely for the capabilities & decentralisation, but layering Matrix on top for the CS API? Something we've been toying with is the idea of 'portable Matrix' to make it easier to hook up Matrix to entirely different underlying protocols, rather than folks reinventing their own apps & e2ee every time.

@mrak@solarsystem.social · 3 months ago

@spritely @cwebber Could you just use @matrix ? If you really want to build something, perhaps add federation to Mattermost !

@volothamp@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely

https://zulip.com is a good open source alternative

wide eyed doodad

@outputdoubtr@mastodon.seattlematrix.org · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely

discord is bad
a discord replacement will also be bad

who needs yet another garbage chat app

@Caseydunham@infosec.exchange · 3 months ago

@cwebber @onepict @spritely Excellent. Will be following this development. I would love to assist from an appsec perspective if/when needed. We really need a good alternative.

@epzillon@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely How is the devlopment looking as of now? Currently looking into Stoat for the time being but will have no issues moving again. Discord-esque chat platforms is the next big thing I'm missing from the fediverse right now.

@luggage@benehomini.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely if it can be made as simple to install and run as Mastodon, then I could see it being a great opportunity. I’m advocating for hyper local installs as a way around age verification. https://www.empathyforward.org/2025/12/community-based-fediverse-instances/

My own FOSS efforts are focused on making this easier to manage.

Kristoffer Lawson

@Setok@attractive.space · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely why wouldn’t Matrix be the natural replacement?

LΞX/NØVΛ 🇪🇺

@lexinova@cyberplace.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely just if possible try to avoid the major bug from both element (matrix), and simplex, that is losing the capacity to decrypt message because of a desyncronisation of some user on differents relay (server).

Sprocket The Clown

@SprocketClown@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely In the meantime are there any half decent FOSS alternatives one could use as a stop-gap measure?

@mattof@functional.cafe · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely why not a xmpp chatroom?

@danvolchek@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely Its so frustrating that all the other replacements should be good options, but they're not because they either don't work or have a difficult to use UX. If you end up doing this please make it usable 😭

Bill, organizer of stuff

@wcbdata@vis.social · 3 months ago

@spritely @cwebber Can you help Zulip achieve this (and fix their conversation thread model)? 🥺

@dallo@pouet.chapril.org · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely is it going to be a new protocol or maybe build on top of xmpp or matrix?

@KryptykPhysh@mastodon.kryptykphysh.xyz · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely How much funding is significant and how much is too little?

Ekaitz Zarraga 👹

@ekaitz_zarraga@mastodon.social · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely What is going on with Discord? why does EVERYONE use it?

I don't even know what it is LOL

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

We need more institutional support to get to the level where this can be our focus. But in the meanwhile, if you're an individual and you do want to help @spritely advance, you can donate here: https://spritely.institute/donate/

Support Spritely! — Spritely Institute

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

This turned into a huge-ass thread between going to sleep and going to the dentist.

To everyone who's saying "Matrix!" and "XMPP!" those are great ecosystems that should keep moving forward and we should simultaneously support.

I'd like to reframe what we're interested in doing, and in a good position to do. I have to get through some things in my day first tho.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

Okay, here's my followup. What did I mean by "build a replacement for Discord"? That's shorthand, because to be honest, Discord is *a lot of things* because it has a lot of resources behind it. And of course, people have their own preferred directions, especially in XMPP and Matrix, and I think those efforts are worthwhile. But I'm talking about some near-future threats-and-opportunities, so let me explain what we want to, and ought to, build.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

So I will detail in this thread, and yes, this will be a Classic Christine Thread (TM), what I mean. The things we would *like* to do, at a high level:

- Get "moderated chatroom with no center" tech in the hands of users
- Which also includes direct file sharing
- Advance Spritely's core tech in the process. There's nothing like a real world use case with real users to push forward your system
- Advancing that tooling also means opening up some things that you can't do anywhere else

What does that mean? Read on! Let's go!

1+ more replies

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

There's a lot of things that the XMPP and Matrix ecosystems provide. XMPP has probably the widest amount of implementations out there, and the best written documentation and specifications for those specs. This is great! But the end-to-end encryption story isn't good, and there's still a center to each room. But it's also been around for a long time and there are a lot of wonderful things to the XMPP ecosystem, including a variety of lovely clients and servers!

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

Matrix provides federation and end-to-end encryption. It has a Iot of quirks, as any user can tell you. But it's also pretty well developed for what it is and can do many things, including many things that aren't near term on our agenda at all, such as video and audio calls. That's worth highlighting and celebrating! And if you want to recommend someone something to replace Discord, Matrix is probably the best option... it's what I personally recommend, at this time.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

I don't want to highlight these things to put them down. I don't want to focus on the negative space. I want to focus on the positive space, of opportunities less explored.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

So first, let me focus on the user-facing thing I described before getting to the larger ecosystem. "Moderated chatroom with no center." What does that mean? And why is it politically important right now?

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

Increasingly, we are seeing regulation and policies being driven by a coalition of two groups with differing goals: people with I will say, bad intentions to crack down on speech and communication between at risk groups, especially non-white and queer people. Who are, weirdly, teaming up with well meaning people who are upset at big tech for allowing terrible things to happen especially as engagement-oriented feeds have lead to radicalization of hate and other such things. And both of them are saying, "let's punish big tech!" Which like, great, I'm all for punishing big tech. Except...

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

Except, for the most part, they aren't doing it! Things like repealing Section 230 in the US won't punish big tech much at all, it'll make it so that big players dominate the ecosystem more because they are the only ones that can comply with it (a "regulatory moat") and in the process, they'll tamp down on content from more diverse groups (it's no coincidence a lot of these bills are being pushed for by fundamentalist anti-queer lobbying orgs.) And unfortunately, it may get a lot harder for smaller, community oriented and self-hosting groups to exist.

(Notably, even Matrix is recognizing this in their own blogpost about Discord stuff!) https://matrix.org/blog/2026/02/welcome-discord/

Welcoming Discord users amidst the challenge of Age Verification

Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

Similarly, activism right now is absolutely relying on end-to-end encryption; Signal is hugely important to activists today. But much queer community building actually still happens in places like Discord, and Signal is highly centralized, and let's be honest, "just host your own Matrix server" isn't an easy ask for most people.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

I think our engineer @dthompson put together the right ideas here with our Brassica Chat demo: https://spritely.institute/news/composing-capability-security-and-conflict-free-replicated-data-types.html

This is a demo, but it's a demo you can try in your browser. It permits users to go offline and come online, it has a design for moderation, without anyone being the central host. Nobody is hosting it because everyone is; there's no logical center. And yet, unlike a Blockchain, information can be forgotten, you don't have to hold on to everything, there's no proof-of-whatever. (And it uses capability security on multiple layers, which is important, but we'll get to later.)

Composing capability security and conflict-free replicated data types — Spritely Institute

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

Furthermore, while there is a federated relay, that relay is (with the new E2EE work Jessica Tallon is working on) oblivious to what's happening. There's no server in charge of state. The logic of what's happening in the room is handled by the peers talking with each other directly. I think this is a solid design but all we have is a demo. Well, I'd like to make it not a demo. I want it to be something people can use.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop · 3 months ago

So yes, today, I would recommend you use Matrix, and even initially, it may be something more useful for activist and queer communities and people interested in advancing this kind of ecosystem. I am glad we have other things in progress that I can recommend right now. But I am worried about where things are going socially, and trying to design for systems safer for that.

@Glyg@mamot.fr · 3 months ago

@cwebber @spritely

Framasoft has a longstanding practice of ''freeing out'' free services
Maybe they can beaucoup of some help?
@Framasoft