Can't speak to the other apps but I have like 6 or 7 Discord servers that I'm actively involved in and a half dozen others I use sporadically. Even if I got all my friends to switch apps for our group chat I'd still need Discord for the servers I use and I'd rather not juggle two apps that are doing the same thing (actually already doing this with Discord and a text group chat and it's annoying as fuck). Also, switch to what?

What are some good alternatives to discord?

I have the same issue, but got 2 Discord users to try Jitsi Meet with me (a friend of mine on my Snikket server invited her friend). After a while, her friend asked me why it looked so much alike Discord and my friend agreed. I gave them a big smile and said, "because this is awesome".

Jitsi Meet + Snikket has been my saves since I deleted my Discord account during the pandemic.

For me it's Discord, I can't find a good enough self hosted alternative with all the features me and my friends want.

Not really. I have none of those apps or alternatives. and I don't know anyone I want to chat with on Discord, WhatsApp, Insta, or other. Not that I'm antisocial, I just have no interest. Lemmy is about as close as I want to get to anyone. Before, it was Reddit, but they have tanked as a place to search for knowledge.

Discord is fairly unique, there isn't really a replacement for it that works well.

Yeah, this is so fucking annoying. I've been banging on about Signal for years, but everyone except a small handful of my wisest friends insist upon using WhatsApp and Discord.

Almost everyone I know also uses Instagram, and no other social media. I am yet to meet someone in real life who even has Mastodon.

I convinced my friends to get Discord so we could communicate as a community without Facebook. Now I have figured out it is just as bad. I tried Matrix and couldn't figure out how to log in before I heard it's enshittification is underway.

Imagine it's the 90s again, everyone has a phone number, but one person will only talk to you via ham radio. Same energy.

For communication, people will prefer what everyone is using, simply because it's easier to reach someone else. Herd behavior. You can try to get them in, but pressure will mean that it'll be you who will have to either give up and cave in to use Discord, Whatsapp, etc, or get removed from the talks for refusing to be where they want to.

I wish I could leave whatsapp, but it's a literal case of "everyone uses it" in Brazil. Even the short, justice mandated wpp blackouts couldn't keep people on telegram for more than 2 days.

Because lot of people just either don't care, are too lazy to switch, or the vast majority of their friends and family still use the apps.

In addition, they may feel like they are losing out on something, especially for Instagram where a large portion of the population uses regularly.

Network effect and the path of least resistance.

People usually resist change until there's a net and obvious gain, or when thing don't work as expected anymore.

And you need to consider that what's important in a messaging platform for someone, might be vastly different for another.

I don't have very many friends, although of the ones I do have the majority of them use Signal, or are terrified of recent politics and I'm trying to move them over currently. I'm not concerned about platform lock-in for communicating over proprietary platforms since if something happens we can just move, I am concerned about the security implications.

Why is it so hard to get friends to leave

I mean the reason is usually summed up with a single word when I make the suggestion: "Why?". People don't know and/or don't care. You try and explain it and they mock you and act like you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

what apps do you feel most trapped in?

Geeze, you name it. Right now I need a new job, and if you're not looking on Indeed, you're severely limiting your options. You can't see anything on Indeed without creating an account and turning over ALL of your personal details, much less actually submit an application. Not to mention the site itself is just horrendous to use. If we had some sort of technological standard protocol for submitting resumes ( so you could send them the same way you send contact info via .vcf), or even OCR that actually worked, it could be a lot easier, but we don't, so the alternative is going and typing in all of your information for every individual application, which simply doesn't work when you're submitting a couple dozen every day, on top of their meaningless personality quizzes and chatting endlessly with AI bots, and aptitude tests and video response interviews and and and...

I make a good % of my money for my business using FB and IG. Not through ads but just through networking. Although I'm about to close my doors (due to unrelated market circumstances), at which point I'll delete them. But then I will mostly lose access to all of the events that are shared exclusively on these platforms. I ask them to share them elsewhere but it's more of the same, mocking and asking why.

When it comes to open source, Discord and Reddit seem to be the platforms of choice. Usually this means I simply ignore otherwise-promising projects.

Fortunately almost no one has ever asked me to use WhatsApp. Usually only international travelers. I usually just decline and/or ask them to use Signal.

It's hard - give them a compelling reason to leave. I use Telegram, Signal, Discord and Session... Discord is rarely used - I use Telegram and Signal the most. Session is quite new.

But what we need is for someone like Mozilla to make a messaging app - someone with the users best interest at the heart, and who don't share anything with anyone else... And at a reasonable price... Privacy isn't free - if anyone should be in doubt.

1. move your closed source messengers to another phone
2. keep it always turned off additionally with all the graphene features, always at home, somewhere inconvenient
3. open it once a week, and you will see who needs to contact you will ask you for a better way to communicate

Totally get you. It's why I roll my eyes anytime someone say "Be the change you want to see" as if I wasn't trying to and also getting a burntout from doing so. Easier said than done.

Sadly, people are simply just so comfortable with whatever massaging & social media app they used that trying out other alternatives is immediately dismissed as a inconvenient before they even tried it. And also we are so used to corporation taking so many of our data that some are just numbed about it and see it as a losing battle or they don't know how much valuable their information is which you often get the infamous "I got nothing to hide" BS.

I have got few my friends to use Signal when I was about to delete my Instagram. Still in contact with them which is a small victory for me.

I tried to get friends to use Signal. It's hard because it's a new app they e never used. One flat out refuses to use anything other than SMS and one messaging app to avoid bloat, and the others it's just hard to get buy in when you're the only person they know using it.

The inconvenience of switching and learning a new thing is the largest deterrent. People complain but don't care enough due to those reasons to switch.

I only text people on Signal, except the old grandparents or potential new friends that I will in time get to switch to Signal.

Find new friends in Russia. These are banned there

Yes, I understand. The annoying thing is that you end up with two or more apps for the same purpose. Mid-term, I think the only way to go is to go cold turkey at some moment, but it will costs you some friends and family contacts.

I have a anonymous IG to keep up with activist events. The dumb asses post their actions on Meta FIRST!!! I've already deleted or am in the process of deleting all META accounts and even though I use the Aluicord version of discord, it still has trackers. I never use discord. I enjoy Cleotri more. But I just straight up told people I'd be deleting them altogether. If they won't move off then they can hang themselves without me.

I think for my friends it's just what we have been using for literally a decade since we were kids, combined with apathy towards privacy - although of my friends does use duckduckgo. I don't judge them for that since I've been pretty bad with privacy. I do worry if we get into more activism that we will need to secure our privacy

I'm personally trapped on Discord and Instagram.

Discord is required by my workplace, so no way of getting rid of it until everyone decides to move to something better. I have some friends on it too, but most of them also made Matrix accounts when I explained I won't be very reachable on Discord (I only open it when necessary; and it doesn'r run on my phone since they rewrote the app in JS). I have Instagram as a way to people I meet during travel or events to "add me" easily, and then we can figure out a good way to communicate afterward. I'm not too bothered by having it as I don't use it daily or anything.