To make it clear to those who are misunderstanding: that’s a list of companies that host matrix for you. They do it at a good price.
If you and your friends chip, it’ll be a few bucks a pop per month to have your own private server with voice chat rooms and video chat rooms.
It’s all opensource and contributes to the ecosystem. Best of all, no age verification because the data is yours.
I haven’t actually used Stoat, but they don’t have group voice calls listed on their website, so I assumed they weren’t there. My mistake on that part, but also they should probably list that on their website. That would probably put Stoat as the most viable alternative, especially if they add federation (especially over XMPP, which it seemed from their website was the most likely they’d go with?)
Nowhere in my comment did I state that Matrix didn’t support voice calls. What was said was this:
Cinny doesn’t. Their UI does not have a call button that I can locate, unless they’re hiding it because I’m the only user in the room.
Fundamentally Stoat is probably the one that’s there as a Discord replacement, since it does have calls, and between two different apps you can get a fully functiobal Discord alternative out of Matrix. But you have to use two apps to get it. If Stoat adds XMPP federation I will 100% switch in a heartbeat tho, I’ve been saying we could have a discord-like XMPP client since I started using XMPP.
Back on topic, though, the things I want out of a true discord replacement are this:
That’s all. That’s all Discord has over literally every other chat app. If something is missing those 3 features, it’s not a Discord alternative. It’s a chat app, which is fine! But when people say shit like “Signal is a good Discord alternative” it makes me question how they’re defining every word in that sentence, because it is 100% on the level of saying Guild War 2 is a good Second Life alternative. And my experience with most of the big “Discord alternatives” is that they aren’t. The default Matrix+Element experience is not like Discord. I had to start a whole ass Lemmy thread to be pointed to Cinny, which has 2 of those features! Missing the third. Element has two of those features! Missing the third on mobile. I want a cheeseburger and what’s happening is one place will sell me a grilled cheese, and the other is selling me a burger with a slice of cheese on top.