Ditch Discord

Discord, such a convenient, popular, and... unsecure instant messaging app. Should you still be using it in 2026? What are some alternatives? Let's talk about it!

In case you don't know, Discord, starting service in 2015, is an instant messaging app that takes some inspiration from internet forums, dividing chats into channels organized by topic, which can further be organized into categories. It also has video call rooms, direct one-on-one messaging, role-based permissions, automod, etc. It's no wonder it got as popular as it did. At the time the best thing was Teamspeak, but Discord appealed to a larger userbase and added even better features to make a chat app that no one could compete against. Many have tried, such as Matrix, Stoat (previously Revolt), or Spacebar, but none have succeeded. Discord's ease of use and style keep it well ahead of everything else, but there's one thing it doesn't have, and that's security. 

It's 2026, all across the world conservatives are trying to outlaw porn, they're trying to outlaw queer people, and they're trying to outlaw security. We've seen internet anonymity slowly die, through mandatory ID uploads, face scanning, social media bans, and payment processor discrimination. As governments attempt to ban end-to-end encryption, forcing companies to work backdoors into their chat ecosystems, one company gladly gives in to all demands to enshittify, and that's Discord. Why wouldn't they? They're a corporation trying to make money, and that means they're happy to play by the government's rules.

These days we have many options available for keeping up with our friends, be it Signal, Telegram, or even just SMS. But with all these options to choose from, people choose Discord... why?

For starters, it just looks cooler: Discord is sleek and minimalistic, whereas an app like Element tries a bit too hard to be futuristic. Discord is also more organized: sure, Matrix has organized chat, but not in the same way. Matrix doesn't have channel categories, and you have to manually join rooms instead of them all displaying in your server. Plus, Matrix rooms and spaces are separated, where on Discord they have a clear relationship where channels are contained by servers. Discord also just works: Matrix has constant decryption failure issues when federating, and SimpleX sometimes doesn't exchange messages. Discord is also easier to use: Matrix makes you save backup keys, and verify people's identities, and it's so much work compared to Discord where you sign up and you're free to just start chatting. Finally, Discord implements a level of social-media-iffication that none of the other options do: It offers the ability to make posts, link to other services, run leaderboard bots, and more. 

If that was all, it would make Discord seem clearly better than the alternatives, and that's what the company wants you to think. But there are hidden ways in which is worse. For starters, it's not encrypted, meaning that the company can spy on your messages, feed them into its AI for training data, give your info to law enforcement, sell your data, and more. It's also for-profit. Where Signal is supported by a nonprofit organization, Discord is a corporation, and is constantly trying to sell things for you. Finally, Discord does everything it can to strip your anonymity. Between ID uploads, phone number requirements, credit card info, fingerprinting, and VPN bans, there's truly no way to use Discord without them knowing who you are or where you live.

Why does it all matter though? If they're scanning your messages, then you can just watch what you say, right? And surely if only they know where you live that's not an issue, it's not like they'll dox you, right?

For starters, it doesn't matter what you say now. People in the U.S. live under a fascist regime that is threatening to grow more powerful everyday. With every piece of legislation Republicans try to pass, are you really sure that the things you are doing now that are legal are going to stay that way? No amount of being careful can predict the future of a fascist government. And even if you don't live in the U.S., Discord is headquartered here, so any fascism they have to do might reach you too. Fascism aside, even things that aren't illegal are things Discord will ban for, such as openly identifying as radqueer.

And why should we have to censor ourselves? We live in a time where "unalive" has become a part of everyone's dictionary, and we all speak leetspeak as a second language. We shouldn't have to censor ourselves, especially not in environments we view as private. If not for the principle of it, than for the fact that censorship doesn't just change how we talk, it changes how we think. And the more accustomed we get to giving into censorship, the more we are being controlled.

Also, something I've seen come up on Tumblr recently is the wave of "spies" showing up in radqueer Discords. These people are reporting the servers and their members to Discord, leading to account bans and the ground-zeroing of important community spaces. Why do we even want to use a platform that's gonna do this to us? Discord hates us, we shouldn't reward them for that by continuing to use their platform. If we find somewhere else to go, we can stick it to them AND have safe spaces that don't run the risk of getting communities banned. The larger our movement gets, the more hate we're gonna get, after all things get worse before they get better. This is a problem that's gonna happen more and more, and we need to be prepared to deal with it, or else we're gonna have nowhere to go. One option is to just strictly vet everyone coming into a server, but that can't possible catch all the trolls. We want our movement to gain more members, but if this leads to us pushing out anyone who can't pass a strict vetting test, then doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? Like it or not, we're fighting a battle for our rights, and when we use Discord we're fighting that battle in enemy territory.

It also doesn't just matter what you do, it matters what your friends do too. In cases like with Tyler Robinson, police were able to get in contact with all of his friends for questioning. How? Because they chatted on Discord. Even if you act perfectly, if one of your friends is wanted by the regime, then you're connected, and the police will use whatever Discord knows about you to find you.

In addition, someone using Discord is enabling this company to keep doing what it does, being complicit and possibly even directly supporting a company that wants to steal and sell its users' data, hand them over to the police, de-anonymize them, and not even stop there. In a world of ever enshittifying capitalism, we shouldn't be helping contribute to that. It may seem like just an online service, but it's a product and you're the customer, and their job is to try and make you forget that so you'll keep using it without thinking of the repercussions. Even if you don't give them money they're still profiting off of you through ads, selling your data, and non-financial means. (At the very least just... please don't buy anything on Discord. Don't directly give money to this company.)

And finally, another bad thing is that staying on one platform is punishing everyone who chooses not to use that platform. For those who need to stay anonymous for their own safety, despise censoring themselves, or are too young to age verify, using Discord might just not be an option entirely. And if we all use Discord, then we're pushing those people out of our communities. 

As you can see, there are a lot of good reasons to stop using Discord, and that's not even all of them! You might already be aware of all of this, if you are, then good! That's a great start. But a concern I see come up time and time again is that if someone leaves Discord, then they're leaving all their friends behind. The funny thing about that is, as mentioned, I've seen this concern come up time and time again, which leads me to believe that a lot of people want to leave Discord, but have a hard time talking about it with others out of fear of being left behind. So talk about it with your friends, show them this article! You may be surprised. However, some people are stubborn and don't want to leave, and in cases like these, people need a push.

If you tell someone that you want to leave a platform but you don't want to leave them behind, you're giving them a choice. They can either keep doing what they're doing and they know you'll stick around, or they can put it some work and sign up for another website just to talk to you. Both choices result in the same outcome, because they know you won't leave unless they do as well, so they're always going to choose the easier of the two options. In cases like these, it's imperative that you don't make it a choice. Make it a fact you are leaving and that you can be found on other chat apps, and if they want to stay in contact then they need to make an account there. You're leaving Discord because it's unsafe, among other reasons. If they're your friend and they really care about your safety, then they'll follow you wherever you go. I've seen it many times between me and Vi's past Discord friends, any of the real ones who cared about us were willing to make new accounts for other apps in order to stay in contact with us. But if we had made it a choice they likely wouldn't have, as I've seen whenever I've talked to anyone else who wanted to leave Discord but never actually did. If you really think about it, you're doing your friends a favor by forcing them to follow you to other platforms. A lot of people need a push in order to do what's smart and safe, and you're just the one doing that for them. When doing so, tell them everything I've said here. After seeing all the evidence, they likely won't want to stay anymore.

Okay, so you know why Discord is bad, you know how to get people to leave, but the final question is the most important one: where do you actually go? In a digital ecosystem of Signal, Stoat, Matrix, SimpleX, Rocket Chat, Spacebar, Zulip, Jabber, SMS, Session, Telegram, WhatsApp and more, is it any wonder why people are having a hard time actually making the leap? Let's explore a few popular options and see what makes them good and bad. 

Signal – Signal is a very popular choice for end-to-end encrypted messaging. It supports direct messages as well as group chats. Unfortunately, its Achilles Heel is that it requires a phone number to use, but they have a track record of preserving your privacy and providing good security. For those who don't want to hand over their phone numbers, you can get a burner number with a VoIP service or something like JMP. Highly recommended as a replacement for SMS, but it doesn't quite offer the organization that Discord does, since it lacks "servers" for grouping topics of channels together, and instead operates just like normal group chats. To sign up for Signal, simply download the app on your phone. Then once you have an account you can link it to your desktop to chat on there. To learn more, visit signal.org. (Before you add anyone else on Signal, be sure to enable usernames and disable your phone number from showing up to contacts.)

Matrix (Element) – Matrix, a popular choice for tech people, is actually the name of the protocol, as there are multiple server softwares (such as Synapse) that use the Matrix protocol, and then clients (such as Element) that communicate with these servers in order to show you your chats. It is end-to-end encrypted and decentralized, meaning that multiple homeservers using the Matrix protocol can interact with each other to share messages, similar to email. So if you have an account on matrix.org and someone else has an account on example.com, you can still chat with each other. The downside is that sometimes this federation fails, leaving you with vague errors. Additionally, the main homeserver, matrix.org, isn't very radqueer-friendly. And finally, for people with big security concerns, not everything is encrypted, the only things encrypted on Matrix are message content and file uploads, so if you federate with a homeserver run by just anyone they can see some of your data. Instance admins have access to your IP address, email address (if you signed up with one), and the rooms you are in. It's better than something not encrypted at all, but this false sense of security can lead to unwise decisions about how Matrix is used, so if you do use Matrix, it's probably best not to talk about anything illegal on it and to use an instance where you trust the moderation. To get on Matrix, you must sign up on a client (such as Element) and, when making your account, choose an instance to use, that is, a website hosting the Matrix software. Popular radqueer instances (I am told) are matrix.org, snepsocial.net, lolison.chat, cuteness-overdose.com, and xmr.se. Before signing up for an instance you should research into them and learn about their moderation, rules, etc. (For the tech savvy, you can also selfhost your own Matrix instance. To learn more, visit matrix.org.)

Stoat (formerly Revolt) – Stoat is a direct clone of Discord, a competitor. It is functionally very similar to Discord, with the exception that you can make your servers publicly discoverable, not unlike how communities on Reddit are found. It is also self hostable, meaning that anyone can run the Stoat software themselves, providing a Discord-like experience on their own terms. However, it is not federated like Matrix is, so users on different servers can't interact with each other, and it is also not end-to-end encrypted. For that reason I wouldn't recommend using the main Stoat service, but it should be perfectly fine to host yourself as long as no one gets their hands on the server who shouldn't. To learn more about selfhosting, visit stoat.chat. 

Some of the other mentioned options, like Telegram and WhatsApp, are popular and encrypted, but that does not mean they are good options. Facebook actually got sued recently because the "encryption" that WhatsApp provided actually had a backdoor, rendering said encryption meaningless. For that reason, it's important when choosing a platform to use something open-source, meaning that the code is public. This ensures that everyone using it knows exactly how it works without any secrets, and it also means anyone can audit the code and point out security flaws. 

Additionally, Session and SimpleX are both good options for end-to-end encrypted chat, but they aren't very popular so I won't be going to into detail about them. I encourage you to do research into them on your own.

With all of the above options, it's obvious that there's no objective best choice. Maybe someday there will be, after all, Discord's ID requirement is causing a lot of users to leave the platform, but for the time being there isn't. But does there really need to be? We're in the mess we are because Discord became a giant. When users all flock to one platform, they are turning that platform into a monopoly. If we all choose one platform to move to, then 5 years down the line when their user numbers are in the millions we're just going to do this all over again. I know it's annoying to use multiple chat platforms, everyone just wants to be able to have one place to all come together, but as we've seen time and time again, that allows large scale censorship, forces everyone to use the one platform, and will eventually lead to the same enshittification. The only way to avoid these problems is to not put all our eggs into one basket. Lots of us use multiple social media platforms: Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon... we should do the same for chat apps as well. Plus, the more we use and support these apps, the better they'll become over time.

We the people have all the power. We get to decide which platforms get big, and that in turn decides what happens to platforms like Discord. Many want a big platform to move to, just like how Twitter users moved to Mastodon and Bluesky, but it's important to remember that these social media platforms didn't get big overnight, they only got to the size that they did because people started moving to them early on. The first 1,000 Bluesky users could have waited until Bluesky got bigger, but if they did then it never would've gotten bigger. If we want another platform besides Discord to succeed, then we cannot simply wait for a platform to get bigger, because those platforms are waiting on us to make them get bigger.

It's also important to remember that Twitter competitors like Bluesky got big because they're supported by corporations. The same applies to Mastodon, but smaller social media platforms never get a time to shine because they don't have the proper backing. We live in capitalist nations, and that means that the stronger businesses wipe out the smaller ones. So it's only natural that platforms ran by for-profit companies do better than those run by nonprofits, federated networks, or just individual people. I mention this because it relates directly to why Discord is doing what it's doing. Many think that the ID verification thing is a choice Discord is making, but they more-or-less have to do it in order to stay legal. They're a business, and the more customers a business gets the larger they become, and the more pressure they have to obey the law. They could just not be a business and they'd have an easier time not having to do these ID verification things, but then they wouldn't have gotten as popular as they did in the first place. Again, I'm just saying this because I think it's important to remember how platforms get big in the first place, and what that monopolization ends up leading to. That knowledge will inform the decisions we make when we choose what platforms we move to, and the platforms that we choose to move to may very well impact the future of the internet as a whole. By specifically choosing platforms that aren't supported by for-profit corporations, we have a better chance of them not giving into fascist demands later down the line.

A lot has changed recently. The internet, once an anonymous horizon of endless possibilities, is now mostly controlled by major corporations and the government. They want to strip away your anonymity, they want to outlaw harmless content, and they want us to use the internet through whatever company is the biggest. One thing will remain though, and it's that consumers will always have the power. We make choices about what websites we use, and those choices shape the very internet. We must remember the power that we have and not fall into thinking that we are powerless to watch the events of the next few years unfold. We may not be able to stop what's already happened, but we can stop what's coming, and that's only something we can do if we know all the facts and all act with conviction together. 

This is also a time to think about how your life and social media (which includes Discord) intertwine. I won't go into detail here, but I've made several posts about finding in-person community, which will be essential to the future of our movement. They can force us to show IDs and scan all our messages online, but they can't in-person. The best encryption will always be face-to-face communication.

This post's call to action is this: ditch Discord. By using it, you're furthering capitalist endeavors and showing the government that if they make us de-anonymize ourselves then we'll give in. We will not give in, we can't. We have the ability to change things, but in order to make change we have to all do it together. End-to-end encryption is imperative for secure chatting, by using anything else you're putting yourself and the others you chat with at risk, no matter what you say. We must choose new platforms to go to, but never give one platform enough power so that they can force us to stay just like people feel forced to stay on Discord. It's a hard choice to make, but we can do it as a community. Wherever you go, bring your friends too. Spread this message to them as well so that they can bring others along with them. Companies and governments want you to think that they have the power, but they only have power because their customers and citizens give them power. In reality, YOU are the one with the power. Never forget that. 

Yesterday it was mandatory phone numbers, today it's ID verification. We live in fascist times, so tomorrow may be much worse. Don't wait until tomorrow.

- Ally K <3