What isn't a Viable Alternative: Revolt

#revolt #discordAlternatives

This post is part of a series of posts about viable alternatives to discord. You can check the #discordAlternatives tag above for all blogposts in this series.
Next in the list of common recommendations is Revolt.

Revolt is a pretty young, centralized platform initially started as a hobby project by Insert sometime in (I believe) 2020 to see if they could build a clone of Discord. Pretty simple goals.

Over time it grew, insert had a couple more friends join for moderation and development, and now there is a small team working on it in their free time—including an Android app and soon an iOS app

And whilst I certainly see the connection between seeking an alternative to Discord and Revolt...I don't see how anyone would recommend Revolt today as an alternative for communities, especially large ones. Quite frankly, the platform is not built out in some key ways yet for it to really be viable for most communities, especially those that like to meet up regularly

So, let's go over what I think is still missing before I can recommend it personally, shall we?

Voice and Video chat

This has been a long one for Revolt, with initial work on, well, re-working that entire part of Revolt happening in the backend in...2023? 2024?

Either way, reworking this has been on the roadmap for a long time, as there is technically speaking a Voice Chat feature but it is very rudimentary, kind of buggy, and entirely nonexistent on the mobile apps

That said, the plan is to have voice & video out by the time the new Web/Desktop client releases, which is gonna take a while still as Insert needs to find the time to actually be able to do that

Pinned messages

Currently, Revolt has no concept of pinned messages. Well, maybe in the API, I remember hearing something about that, but definitely not in any of the clients. As such I am gonna say that pinned messages simply aren't a thing on Revolt as of right now, which is kind of a bummer as a small yet still very frequently used feature.

I guess this one could be lived without...for however long it's gonna take still

End-To-End-Encryption

The main reason I am including this here is because quite frankly it's been quite some time since this has been on the roadmap and, sadly, there is a lack of transparency in especially this part unless you happen to catch one of the developers in the official Revolt community

Effectively, this was confirmed to become a killer feature a while back (like, literal years) and since then not much has happened. Really, huge features like this probably shouldn't be confirmed until you've got even a vague idea of what's gonna happen. Or if you do have a vague idea of what's gonna happen, be transparent about it in the context of an Open-Source project.

API-Only features

For some reason, some features still haven't made it past the “we have it in the API!” stage despite being used a lot on the platform.

Masquerade

Masquerade has technically been a thing for a while now, but only really usable if you installed a specific plugin with the current/old web/desktop client.

It allows you to define a profile per-message, e.g having a different profile or avatar for just one message

This is especially useful to plural systems, but also for bridge bots and the likes, and the fact that it was added and supposed to come at some point and just never did is kinda disappointing. At least it can be used via the API I guess...?

Gradient role colours

Another feature that only made it to the API and never the Clients/UI is gradient role colours. Not an essential thing, but it is weird how all clients can display it and none can configure it. You'll HAVE to use the API to get gradient role colours, or some bot.

Spam on the platform

Another issue is that right now, there are no robust anti-spam or anti-flood measures built-in to the platform. There is AutoMod, maintained by a Revolt contributor, but it isn't built-in functionality and as such only discoverable at worst when something has already gone wrong.

But, worse than that, their servers regularly get DDoSed, leaving the platform unresponsive. And when they aren't getting DDoSed, the most common part to break is their CDN / Media service.

Point is, most unpleasant to anyone that tries to run and moderate a community. At least the tools that exist actually exist and work unlike certain other projects, but it's not good either.

Small Stuff

Here is just a collection of small nitpicks that I wanted to include but don't warrant their own entire sections.

↓ To support me, check out my Ko-Fi! ↓

https://ko-fi.com/cyrneko Any little bit helps <3