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Should Lemmy Consider Implementing a Voice Chat Feature? Exploring the Pros, Cons, and Implications for a Federated Platform (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 days ago by Teknevra@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Reddit previously experimented with live audio chat rooms, but ultimately discontinued the feature.

Given Lemmy’s unique position as a federated, open-source alternative to Reddit, should the Lemmy project (or individual instances) consider developing a similar voice chat feature?

What potential benefits could voice chat bring to Lemmy communities, especially considering the platform’s focus on decentralized moderation and privacy?
How might voice chat align or conflict with Lemmy’s core values of decentralization, privacy, and user autonomy?
What technical and moderation challenges could arise from implementing real-time audio communication on a federated network, and how might these differ from centralized platforms like Reddit?
Should such a feature be standardized across all Lemmy instances, or left as an optional plugin for instance admins to enable or disable?
How could Lemmy’s open-source nature and ActivityPub federation protocol influence the design, adoption, and interoperability of a voice chat feature across the Fediverse.
Are there existing open-source projects or protocols that could be leveraged to add voice chat in a privacy-respecting, decentralized way?

I’m interested in hearing from both users and developers about whether this is a direction Lemmy should explore, and what considerations should guide such a decision.

https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/11o30v2/why_is_reddit_ending_audio_chats/

https://mashable.com/article/reddit-clubhouse-voice-chat

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[-] PattyP@lemm.ee 9 points 3 days ago

Why would anyone want that? You mention “Lemmy’s core values of decentralization, privacy, and user autonomy”, but surely another “core value” is being a general use forum. One main benefit of a forum is that you can have discussions without necessarily having to have everyone together in the same place at the same time. Live voice chat is the opposite, so surely something like that would be better off as a feature of a platform that focuses more on live interaction.

Moderation challenges would be absolutely immense of course, that is not in question. Moderating a voice chat is all but impossible in a setting where anyone can join without an invite, and accounts are free and easy to create.

[-] 0xtero@beehaw.org 4 points 3 days ago

Also, you can't easily/fast search in voice data and you end up implementing all kinds of weird and costly workarounds like AI transcription in order to make voice meetings searchable. Voice is great for telling stories around camp fire, but it's awful way to convey and store information in a online forum.

this post was submitted on 18 May 2025

-28 points (22.0% liked)

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