For chat: IRC, Stoat, Fluxer, Root, Zulip, Matrix, Slack, Teams, Guilded.

For voice/video: Mumble, Teamspeak, Jitsi Meet, also several of the above.

Perfect 1:1 drop in hassle free replacement with the exact same feature set? No, there isn’t.

Viable alternatives that aren’t too bad to learn? There are many.

It works as expected as far as Matrix is concerned. From what I can tell the aim and goals are just quite different from what a platform like Discord is going for.

If you’re going in wanting/expecting a perfect Discord replacement then it’s just not going to be that and doesn’t seem to want to be that either. Hence the need for onboarding documentation.

If you’re unable to make the mental shift to it such that it can work for you then there are other platforms that might more closely conform to what you’re after. We tried Stoat, Zulip, and Root before ultimately deciding on Matrix.

This was one of the larger hurdles for me as an admin.

Rooms are their own discreet entity. While they may be organized into your space, they exists as their own thing.

So properly setting who can and can’t create rooms is crucial. If I’m allowed to make rooms in your space then absolutely I can make a room that you’re not the admin in. You’d need to remove it server side if that’s a thing you needed to do.

Spaces aren’t even exclusive. You can link in rooms from other spaces and they can exist in their original space as well as the new linked one.

As far as users seeing rooms, if the rooms are set to visible for space members then they need to join the space. Once done they can see them from the space’s home.

The Matrix.org page touches on the basics here: https://matrix.org/docs/communities/getting-started/

The most up to date stuff I’ve found in that is here: https://matrixdocs.github.io/docs/bots/overview

https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist

I found a Pi Hole blocklist that filters out known ai slop websites but even then they’re still clogging up my DDG result. Such a pain.

Also: Phantasy Star is great! Have you played the Sega Ages release? It adds some really cool stuff to make it more playable.

Discord user here. Spent the last three days bashing my head against synapse.

Finally got it running. Moving my podcast community over as soon as stress testing finishes. This was a great response from Matrix.

Discord can eat my shorts.