TLDR: The r/selfhosted subreddit has a Discord server. The owner’s account got hacked leaving the server in a precarious state. They submitted a support ticket, but Discord has not taken action in weeks and probably won’t at all, so they are considering starting a new Discord server.
Points furiously
THIS Alanis! This right here!The irony.
At least they’re admitting their fault.

Edit; Their matrix room if anyone is interested.
It’s kubernetes so I couldn’t even fix it if I wanted to
lol
My hotest selfhosting take is that stuff I use in my day job, docker/k8s/cloud is not worth it and generally worse for long-term self hosting than a Debian box.
Like I have the skills to troubleshoot containerized setups, it’s litterally my dayjob, but I’d rather not deal with it in my freetime unless there is no other way to run it.
Fitting that r/selfhosted can’t selfhost.
But why a new Discord server? 🤦
That’s the punchline brother man
They’re a completely unserious owner if they use Discord still as a “selfhoster”, that and getting hacked on top of that shows how careless they are as a moderator.
Self hosting and providing a public service are two very different things.
I’ve never self hosted a discord alternative, but it doesn’t seem like it’d cost anything to just spin it up beside existing self hosted infrastructure.
Here is some advice then: Don’t run a public service until you understand the risks and are capable of protecting yourself and your users. It isn’t as simple as booting up a service for self use. By using Discord they minimised damages to users it would be worse if they lost control of a Discord alternative with RCE exploits.
Users probably wouldn’t be too damaged if an IRC server with a few public channels got hacked. I realize IRC isn’t a true Discord alternative (and I realize that’s what you were picturing when you commented- I’m not debating your point). I just can’t imagine why a self hosting subreddit would need more than text chat + help bot.
Without having gone on that discord, like most discords, it would be my guess that 80% of the purpose of it is for shitposting, custom emojis, and sharing gifs.
Ironically few if any self hosted chat platforms share that focus, so that’s likely part of the gap. It’s either irc (very light on features, no ui for administration/customization for those not wanting to use admin text commands), matrix (very heavy, focus on federation, also has many commands that are only through text, very light support for custom emoji or built in gifs), or the crippleware open source business oriented chat platforms like rocketchat, mattermost, or zulip.
Honestly zulip is probably best but then you get into the wonderful world of mobile push notifications, capped at 10 users or unlimited for “eligible communities” there
Fluxer recently added self hosting and it has a mobile app in beta and soon to be released, admin from a web GUI, not difficult to host, and has a good amount of discord features. It is somewhat heavy though.
You just make a few channels on existing IRC servers don’t need to host anything. I mean if you know what you are doing go for it but unless you actually do, don’t put servers on the internet for trawlers to take over.
A fediverse IRC server network sounds pretty cool tbh. #bringbackirc
E: Oooo a middle ground: https://thelounge.chat/ Self Hosted IRC WebClient
Matrix, dudes.
Discord sucks.
Stoat chat has been a good Discord alternative.
It’s worked okay for me so far as well. The mobile apps aren’t super stable yet and notifications don’t work but it works for what it is right now. I do miss the stability of discord but I’m not going back
last i checked it was very difficult to run your own instance (including voice chats)
What advantage does it have compared to Matrix?/IRC?
It mimics discord, so functional voice rooms with screen sharing, text channels, and so on…
Matrix has all that these days too
I have not seen a matrix voice channel ever in any of the servers ive seen. Also using element.
Join different servers then? Not sure what to tell you.
I use element and I am in many different matrix servers with voice rooms. I host my own as well, voice is done via livekit which makes connecting via MatrixRTC very easy, and is easy to setup and host.
Those same voice rooms support webcams / video, as well as screen sharing.
So voice is done via a different software not matrix?
Why, use Redddit if you are in a self hosting community, I understand the community of curious people are there but are you really going to be selling yourself short like that? Than to be using discord as a self hosting community messanger?











