cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/26986197

Wayland and audio is fixed, but only on the canary branch for the moment, this isnt lazy either, they changed the whole screenshare flow to suit linux’s permission prompts

  • kyub@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    223·
    20 hours ago

    Well, “nice” to have that feature, but you still shouldn’t use Discord, or at least limit your time on it as much as possible. Remember, when you use it, you’re part of the network effect that makes Discord big. You have to resist that. Take a look how Discord compares to pretty much any other messenger or communication tool in existence: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html Avoid it whenever possible, get your friends to leave it and weaken its network effect.

    So, some of the drawbacks (there’s probably more):

    • Discord has weak security (see URL above)
    • Discord has non-existent privacy
    • Discord has an incredibly vague privacy policy which means they do what they want. Even companies with strong privacy policies screw users over routinely. Guess what companies do who don’t even care about good privacy policies. They even weakened it further a while back because they need to train their new AI features on your data as well, and probably even their weak privacy policies were in the way before. Well, good thing that the users agreed that they can change it at any time for any reason and be fine with it.
    • You grant all rights of everything you write, say, share or do on Discord to Discord, and everything you type, say, upload or share is being processed by their servers
    • Discord tracks what you’re typing before sending it
    • Discord suspended accounts and required even more user data for “verification”, such as telephone numbers which is completely unnecessary except for tracking and data selling purposes
    • Discord shares chat logs with law enforcement (and they can share everything because they’re collecting everything)
    • The Discord client app tracks what programs you have running so it can for example display what games you’re currently running. That means it contains a process logger. It has to scan every running application and then finds games out of those, and then you have to hope that only the game-specific bits are uploaded to their servers. Maybe that is the case, but can you trust them, and also to never change that? No.

    If you have to use it:

    • Never use their desktop app, always use the web version from a secondary browser (web apps running in the browser have much less rights than locally running applications), and even then limit what the site can access to the least amount of stuff necessary. If you never use your mic or camera then block it in the browser settings. Don’t trust Discord’s own mute setting (this also applies to other proprietary software).
    • Use a fake e-mail alias / telephone number when creating your account, generally give them the least amount of data possible. Opt out of any options or features which are tied to you exposing more data to them
    • Don’t give them additional money e.g. for their premium stuff (you already pay with data they gather from you)
    • Block at least these API endpoints which are purely used for tracking purposes (there may be more though, and they might change) [easy to do with uBlock Origin for example]:
    https://discord.com/api/v*/science
https://discord.com/api/v*/channels/*/typing
https://discord.com/api/v*/track*
    • You can also block these related hosts safely without impairing Discord’s main functions (again there may be more):
    crash.discordapp.com
status.discordapp.com
b.stats.paypal.com
app.adjust.com
client-analytics.braintreegateway.com
  • TypicalHog@lemm.eeEnglish
    71·
    19 hours ago

    I just wish there was a FOSS version of Discord. I haven’t looked too deeply into existing alternatives, but I have a feeling they all miss features Discord has and are just not as good.

  • Kekin@lemy.lol
    3·
    19 hours ago

    What about video acceleration though? Cause last time i tried it as soon as I moved the camera the screen share’s framerate would drop like crazy making it essentially useless. On AMD anyway

    I’ll prob check later today cause im interested

  • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipOP
    46·
    2 days ago

    Note that the flathub version has not yet been updated. The version with the screenshare is 0.0.79.

      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        23 hours ago

        I’ve been using that for ages to share my screen, but it doesn’t bring over the audio which can be annoying, but otherwise works great. I am sure there are ways to get the audio into it, but it felt like it would be more trouble than it was worth.

        • john89@lemmy.ca
          3·
          23 hours ago

          You can stream the audio using PulseAudio volume control. (pavucontrol)

          Click in the Recording tab, find the discord input (it should be called WebRTC engine or something similar) and select the audio device you want to use.

          To stream audio from your computer, just click the ‘monitor’ version of the device you want to use.

            • john89@lemmy.ca
              1·
              22 hours ago

              Really? I don’t have that issue. Are you also using OBS? It’s possible your stream is lagging due to hardware restraints.

              • OrekiWoof@lemmy.ml
                1·
                21 hours ago

                Meh, I guess there’s just no reason for it to be synced. Hardware is out of the question

        • toastal@lemmy.ml
          1·
          9 hours ago

          Not if we want sustainable chat. It runs like a blockchain under the hood & duplicates so much data.

        • priapus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          7·
          22 hours ago

          Matrix doesn’t have voice channels, probably the most important part of Discord for everyone I know. It’s also built around single rooms, not servers, which just doesn’t feel as good as Discord for interacting with friends.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
            1·
            11 hours ago

            Dang, looking into Revolt seems like it’d be more in your use case yet. I wonder if it also has separate voice chat rooms?

            I’d love to be able to get people to switch to something like this.

    • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipOP
      64·
      2 days ago

      because it’s the communications platform for gamers™.

      But seriously discord screenshare was a massive painpoint for gamers switching to linux, so it’s very nice to see it finally, properly, solved.

      • Ashley@lemmy.ca
        1·
        59 minutes ago

        Not only gamers, I use discord for my scouts group and I’ll have to show a spreadsheet or presentation sometimes.

        • toastal@lemmy.ml
          1·
          9 hours ago

          I will continue to kick & scream at every project that thinks free software is the way to go with their software, but not good enough for the tooling around their project. Fuck Discord. Fuck MS GitHub.

          • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
            1·
            3 hours ago

            In my opinion GitHub is seriously good software, but it is awkward when FOSS software is developed on it instead of on Codeberg, Gitea or another FOSS platform.

            Discord is actually a security risk, it walls information off the outside world (compared to a forum or IRC server) and incredibly difficult to find information in even when you’re in the server (as opposed to documentation or a forum)

            Matrix has 2/3 of these issues, so it being FOSS aside I very much would hate it when development discussion and software documentation is done through Matrix, as well.

            • toastal@lemmy.ml
              1·
              3 hours ago

              MS GitHub doesn’t do anything the others can’t besides the social media features which do not need to be so prominent. If you must, it can be one of multiple code mirrors but should not be the exclusive one, or even the primary option.

              Matrix is ass. You cannot reasonably scale an eventual consistency model without centralization & it will be a wasteful network like many of the blockchain projects. We already have had IRC & XMPP MUCs for ages that run on toasters & did not need to be reinvented. Chat has its place tho to help steer folks into asking the right questions, but such questions once formed need to be triaged as bugfixes, issues, FAQs, or forum posts to benefit everyone on the discussion.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
      27·
      1 day ago

      Aside from it being a main way that I spend time with friends, it’s good to see mainstream products spend effort supporting Linux as a viable gaming platform. I have friends who haven’t made the jump to Linux yet, but giving up core discord functionality was simply a dealbreaker for them.

    • jonesy@aussie.zone
      7·
      1 day ago

      Screen sharing is a big social thing for my friends and I, lacking this functionality would mean I wouldn’t be able to interact as much sharing goofy game moments and watching movies together.

      I tried Vencord for a while, but my friends said that the quality of the stream on their end was consistently stuttering, an issue which isn’t happening for me in the official client, so the release of screen sharing on Discord stable after working so well on canary is a welcome update for me.

    • Maxx@lemmy.ca
      31·
      2 days ago

      people like to share their screens with friends. generally so they can stream a game for them to watch or so people can watch stuff together

  • Mikelius@lemmy.ml
    4·
    1 day ago

    For those of us not using Wayland, any idea if this still applies? Waiting on my flatpak version to support audio sharing with screen share… And please performance improvements.

    • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipOP
      15·
      21 hours ago

      literally not a single person i know uses matrix, and calls aren’t supported on most clients, so getting them to switch would be literally impossible.

      • bruhSoulz@lemmy.mlEnglish
        41·
        19 hours ago

        Idk brah I managed to make 3/5 friends switch to it and we almost exclusively use that to chat, and now got 2-3 family members to use it when talking to me too