Why are FOSS platforms like Matrix having such a hard time getting users to migrate from Discord? Because of PluralKit.
So, let me see if i understand the argument: Discord, a piece of closed source software which is very popular at the moment because they hit first (user inertia) and haven’t yet ramped up the enshittification (but sooner or later will because they already announced the intention to go the IPO route), wins over free software alternatives because of a 100% unofficial bot designed to help with one tiny niche user case most users of the platform haven’t even heard about, which is itself free software and therefore could be migrated and/or adapted to other free software?
I’m not sure the argument is very solid
This bot detects messages with certain tags associated with a profile, then replaces that message under a “pseudo-account” of that profile using webhooks. This is useful for multiple people sharing one body (aka “systems”), people who wish to roleplay as different characters without having several accounts, or anyone else who may want to post messages as a different person from the same account.
Yeah, that seems incredibly niche. Never heard or thought of necessity of it.
I don’t see the point of PluralKit, you can just use multiple accounts.
Discord gained popularity and maintains it, in spite of the many reasons to avoid it, because of usability and feature richness. Slack, Teams, Matrix, Telegram, they are miles ahead of everyone else in the live-chat space, when it comes to user experience.
This was an interesting article about some tech I’ve never heard of before, but it has little to nothing to do with Discord’s overall success.
As someone who is very much inside the queer bubble, and who thinks pluralkit is an essential tool to have in any discord server that considers itsself accessible or queer friendly: I strongly disagree that its the feature preventing FOSS alternatives from taking off. It could be a small factor in a sea of small factors, but I’d wager over 50% of discord users have never even seen PluralKit.
Literally never heard of it let alone know anyone who cares…
That’s really strange, this seems like the sort of Lemmy instance where people would care about accessibility the minute they heard about the issue
You’re responding to someone from a different instance. Lemmy is not Discord, it’s federated 😉
Very interesting indeed.
I guess a usecase like this easily slips past most developers due to lack of exposure :?
Is the need to respond as a separate entity so frequent that separate accounts for each entity would not be enough or is the user switching process too much friction?
I once knew a system with 400 members. That’s not common, but it is a thing. Systems of around 10 people are very common. Discord only allows up to 5 accounts. And only up to 1 account on mobile. And besides, having to maintain separate email accounts, even for a small system, is a burden. What about walk-ins and dormancies? What about new members who are still figuring themselves out and might want a change of name later? Pluralkit makes it all simple.
Matrix allows up to ∞ accounts, changing the display name, and user icon at any time, plus true E2E encryption (if enabled). Also allows only sending to cryptographically verified accounts, to curb impostors.
There is a list of several clients with multi-account support if you filter by “Featuresv Multi-account”: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
It’s a pity the reference client doesn’t have the support, and some of are in beta, but still seems like PluralKit is kind of a clumsy workaround for an artificial limitation imposed by Discord’s monetization goals.
How long would you say it takes to change your username and pfp on Matrix if you know exactly what you’re doing and have done it plenty of times before? 20 seconds? Pluralkit can do a proxy in 2 seconds. 20 seconds is not an acceptable delay to sending a chat message to most people, but 2 seconds is.
And what if two members of a system are in a conversation, possibly with a third person? Is it going to retroactively change the username and pfp on the old messages? Cause that would turn the conversation to complete nonsense. Imagine I’m having a discussion with some friends, two of whom are in a system, I step away to go to the toilet, and when I come back 5 minutes later I can’t tell who was talking in the last 5 minutes.
Changing from one account to another takes… let’s see: click on the icon, pick an account, done. 2 seconds? yeah, something like that. You had to setup the accounts beforehand, but I’m guessing the same thing happens with PluralKit, doesn’t it?
Is it going to retroactively change the username and pfp on the old messages?
Each account/user has their own setup, so… yes? no? Not sure what you mean.
Imagine I’m having a discussion with some friends, two of whom are in a system, I step away to go to the toilet, and when I come back 5 minutes later I can’t tell who was talking in the last 5 minutes.
Not sure I follow. How does PluralKit do it? Does it create a separate user for every message?
PS: for reference, FluffyChat even has an alt account grouping feature:
This seems like a rather really hyeprspecific use case than “the reason platforms like Matrix don’t get as much traction as Discord”.
Preach
(a) network effects (b) inertia © Matrix is still kind of a pain in the ass
Are all easily more capable to explain it (d) all the users are otherkin
Plurality is a lot more common than most people think. The existence of pluralkit exposed a LOT of people to the idea of plurality and got them realising they were already plural. Myself included.
It’s kind of like how a lot of lesbians didn’t understand their own identities until they heard Katy Perry sing “I kissed a girl”.
Furthermore, imagine you’re on a server with 500 active members, and there are 5 systems who use pluralkit. That server has probably had the “why are you a bot” “I’m using pluralkit” conversation dozens of times. All 500 people know how important pluralkit is. On Discord, there are dozens of allies for every one system.
As far as I’m aware, there’s nothing preventing a PluralKit equivalent from being made for other platforms. In fact, a quick search turned up a WIP Matrix port on github.
So no, I don’t think this is true. Lack of PluralKit isn’t what’s preventing people from switching en masse. It’s the opposite—lack of people switching means there’s a lack of demand for a PluralKit port in the first place, so even though there is a port people don’t know it exists and thus it doesn’t get as much dev attention.
It comes down to network effects, ultimately, and just plain inertia. If you’re already on Discord, and all your friends are on Discord, it’s hard to convince you to switch. And being more familiar with the Discord bot ecosystem (like PluralKit) is just one more thing that adds to the inertia.
