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submitted 1 month ago by Teknevra@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml

I personally don’t have the technical knowledge, time, or energy to take on something like this — but I was curious:

Since Matrix, XMPP, etc. already support most (if not all) of the features that Discord offers — text, voice, video, threads, bots, roles, federation, etc. — would it theoretically be possible to just replicate Discord’s UI and UX and build it on top of the Matrix or XMPP protocol instead of starting from scratch?


I mean, sure, there’d be some challenges with existing third-party clients, like

Matrix:

Element X,

Nheko,

Cinny,

FluffyChat,


XMPP:

Aparté

AstraChat XMPP Client

aTalk

Beagle IM

Bruno

Chat-O-Matic

Chatty

Conversations

Cheogram Android

but if developers and users agreed to focus on a stack — say, Matrix, XMPP, or both — couldn’t there a “Discord-like” ecosystem of compatible apps and communities?


Basically: could an open-source “Discord alternative” be built using Matrix or XMPP as the backend rather than trying to reinvent the wheel?

What are the technical or social barriers to doing that?

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[-] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 points 1 month ago
[-] Teknevra@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
29 points (93.9% liked)

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