this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/26986197

Wayland and audio is fixed, but only on the canary branch for the moment, this isnt lazy either, they changed the whole screenshare flow to suit linux's permission prompts

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Well, "nice" to have that feature, but you still shouldn't use Discord, or at least limit your time on it as much as possible. Remember, when you use it, you're part of the network effect that makes Discord big. You have to resist that. Take a look how Discord compares to pretty much any other messenger or communication tool in existence: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html Avoid it whenever possible, get your friends to leave it and weaken its network effect.

So, some of the drawbacks (there's probably more):

  • Discord has weak security (see URL above)
  • Discord has non-existent privacy
  • Discord has an incredibly vague privacy policy which means they do what they want. Even companies with strong privacy policies screw users over routinely. Guess what companies do who don't even care about good privacy policies. They even weakened it further a while back because they need to train their new AI features on your data as well, and probably even their weak privacy policies were in the way before. Well, good thing that the users agreed that they can change it at any time for any reason and be fine with it.
  • You grant all rights of everything you write, say, share or do on Discord to Discord, and everything you type, say, upload or share is being processed by their servers
  • Discord tracks what you're typing before sending it
  • Discord suspended accounts and required even more user data for "verification", such as telephone numbers which is completely unnecessary except for tracking and data selling purposes
  • Discord shares chat logs with law enforcement (and they can share everything because they're collecting everything)
  • The Discord client app tracks what programs you have running so it can for example display what games you're currently running. That means it contains a process logger. It has to scan every running application and then finds games out of those, and then you have to hope that only the game-specific bits are uploaded to their servers. Maybe that is the case, but can you trust them, and also to never change that? No.

If you have to use it:

  • Never use their desktop app, always use the web version from a secondary browser (web apps running in the browser have much less rights than locally running applications), and even then limit what the site can access to the least amount of stuff necessary. If you never use your mic or camera then block it in the browser settings. Don't trust Discord's own mute setting (this also applies to other proprietary software).
  • Use a fake e-mail alias / telephone number when creating your account, generally give them the least amount of data possible. Opt out of any options or features which are tied to you exposing more data to them
  • Don't give them additional money e.g. for their premium stuff (you already pay with data they gather from you)
  • Block at least these API endpoints which are purely used for tracking purposes (there may be more though, and they might change) [easy to do with uBlock Origin for example]:
https://discord.com/api/v*/science
https://discord.com/api/v*/channels/*/typing
https://discord.com/api/v*/track*
  • You can also block these related hosts safely without impairing Discord's main functions (again there may be more):
crash.discordapp.com
status.discordapp.com
b.stats.paypal.com
app.adjust.com
client-analytics.braintreegateway.com
[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I just wish there was a FOSS version of Discord. I haven't looked too deeply into existing alternatives, but I have a feeling they all miss features Discord has and are just not as good.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

[matrix] looks promising, but it isn't quite ready yet

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

It is way too expensive/wasteful to run as both a client & a server by its architecture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

I think SimpleX is similar

[–] dojan 2 points 12 hours ago

Depending on what you aim to do, Matrix works well enough. Reminds me a lot of Discord back in 2017 or so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago

What about video acceleration though? Cause last time i tried it as soon as I moved the camera the screen share's framerate would drop like crazy making it essentially useless. On AMD anyway

I'll prob check later today cause im interested

[–] x00z 20 points 22 hours ago

I've been using Vesktop since forever. They have had it working already for a looooong time.

[–] raspberriesareyummy 23 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Fuck discord. Proprietary spyware. That shit isn't getting on my computer anytime ever.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

FYI, Element now has a lot of the call features that Discord has

[–] [email protected] 7 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Including screen share with audio?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

tbh if you're on linux there's kind of an easy workaround

pactl load-module module-combine-sink sink_name='Stream' slaves='easyeffects_sink'

^^I have this aliased as "gamesound"

easyeffects is great for this because it'll just be the default sink, plus easyeffects makes your mic sound good anyway. (if you configure it for that)

then when the game opens i set it to output to "stream" and bam i can output game audio in a stream without capturing anything else, since i'm on hyprland i can also stream just the window, discord screenshare with audio everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

nope but this must be added its like the most requested feature

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago

Doesn't mean it'll be added in an open source application... There has to be a dev/some devs willing to implement that, they can't force volunteers to implement features because of the selling value it'll have.

[–] raspberriesareyummy 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Been using matrix since forever :) But the dissing of shitty corporate centralized applications is necessary because way too many naive users still give their data away for convenience.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

in the case of discord, it's not convenience, it's the network effect.

[–] raspberriesareyummy 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

That falls under convenience. Getting others to leave corporate bullshit malware and/or spyware takes effort (and I know very well how frustrating it is). Personally I refuse to use discord or FascistApp (I guess with the recent policy changes that name is warranted) etc with all the implications that it has.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Facts, I just left discord and joined groups in matrix, and had some close associates get matrix/element to chat w me. Easy peasy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

And people are celebrating it now being able to record your screen 🤣

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[–] sixdripb 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

people on reddit are saying audio-sharing is still broken for every app that utilizes the pipewire audio API directly

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Which programs use the pipewire API? I can only think of mumble but no one is going to stream that.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Whish Steam would put some effort into this too.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Try using OBS with its virtual camera.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I've been using that for ages to share my screen, but it doesn't bring over the audio which can be annoying, but otherwise works great. I am sure there are ways to get the audio into it, but it felt like it would be more trouble than it was worth.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You can stream the audio using PulseAudio volume control. (pavucontrol)

Click in the Recording tab, find the discord input (it should be called WebRTC engine or something similar) and select the audio device you want to use.

To stream audio from your computer, just click the 'monitor' version of the device you want to use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

it's horribly out of sync with the screenshare and low quality

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Really? I don't have that issue. Are you also using OBS? It's possible your stream is lagging due to hardware restraints.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

Meh, I guess there's just no reason for it to be synced. Hardware is out of the question

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Note that the flathub version has not yet been updated. The version with the screenshare is 0.0.79.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago

Oh ok that explains why it wasn’t working very well

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