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Roomy is an open-source Discord alternative built on the AT Protocol (ATProto), the same protocol that powers Bluesky, with ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma, and others) planned for the near future. Currently in alpha, it sits somewhere between Matrix and Discord in terms of its practical position in the broader chat ecosystem.

That said, it aims to fill the niche currently dominated by Discord, while remaining a free, fully federated solution for full user freedom and greater privacy. In this article, we'll look at what Roomy is today, what it’s aiming to become, and what it could bring to this space.

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[-] Auster@thebrainbin.org 8 points 3 weeks ago

Can't check much of it now, but one thing that concerns me in Discord, and that I've already seen happening, is entire chat histories getting nuked, either by accident or by moderation's dishonesty. With AT Protocol's middleman-style of delivery system, I don't trust it for preserving a chat history, but with ActivityPub and its nature of more easily being self-hostable, backing up suddently becomes far more reachable. So for that, I'll be waiting until ActivityPub compatibility is added.

Also, on a more positive light and pondering on design possibilities, I wonder how channels will look like for platforms not inherently compatible with such. Maybe Mastodon and Misskey will treat as private mentions? Also maybe Lemmy and Mbin will treat each channel as a separared DM? Also makes me wonder about other platforms within the fediverse. 👀

this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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