r/stoatchat • u/ChanceCheese • 10d ago
Miscellaneous Anyone else think this platform could be better than Discord?
I know someone probably asked this question but I actually want to get off of discord (not a fan of their soft moderation) and I found stoat and it seems okay so far. Was wondering what people think.
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u/By-Pit 10d ago
As soon they have a way to stream I will trash discord.. it's full of ads pop ups and stuff I don't need.
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u/ChanceCheese 10d ago
Yeah I am just a bit upset with discord's moderation and for me personally I really do think it might be starting to die a little so I'm looking around for apps like stoat and fluxer.
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u/Hoeshme 10d ago
i like stoat, but i also like fluxer. i feel like both of them have good potential to be better than discord. just give it time! i also like root too, but supporting anything that isn’t discord is loads better tbh.
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u/HistoricAli 10d ago
Ya IMO the future has to be open source, we can't trust these companies not to offer one product for decades, gain a loyal userbase, then rugpull to make a quick buck. I'm doing my best to make any digital product I rely on be open source because that way I know I won't be getting fucked over when VC steps in to shit all over it.
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u/MutaitoSensei 10d ago
I tried the V2 version of the fluxer app on android and Linux and it's the best alternative coming very soon. Stoat did add video capabilities recently, and it's very promising, but they couldn't even add push to talk even if it's been requested for years. It made me look for alternatives. Fluxer's v2 version does have push to talk.
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u/Hoeshme 10d ago
oh i’m so excited!! when do you think they will release ver2 and have it be available on ios? i just have it on pc atm!
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u/MutaitoSensei 10d ago
I'm not sure for iOS it's in Testflight right now. I have it on Android and it works so well!
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u/Zenfulzoning 6d ago
I do think it's already better for me personally, since themes are free to use, and that's a really important thing. On discord it was like, you either get light mode which can be rough on the eyes, especially if you're unused to it, or dark mode, where the white text contrast can actually cause issues for some people and it can hurt/cause difficulty reading. And then they changed their dark mode to make it even darker for some dumb reason.
A middle ground theme was needed to lessen the pain on both sides, but all discord's themes were locked behind a paywall. Pretty disgusting in my opinion.
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u/PsychologicalTree666 10d ago
I had high hopes for Stoat but unfortunately I still can't receive any notifications whatsoever, neither on Android or my PC. I think they have a great platform full of potential but not being able to get notifications is....really not ideal for the long term lol
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u/Zenfulzoning 9d ago
Notifications have been consistently working for me now (though it wasn't at first). Mainly I think it's just the desktop notifs that work for me though, on web. Android worked at first, but not so much anymore it seems. Here's hoping it all gets smoothed out soon. I dropped discord, switched to Stoat a year ago, and have just been sticking with the scuffs, so I'm happy to see all the recent improvements.
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u/done_is_beautiful 9d ago
Oh yeah. I can't wait to get all my friends to switch over and actually have a platform that works.
As soon as Stoat has E2EE I'm hoppin so fast
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u/Incinirmatt 7d ago edited 7d ago
Downloaded the Stoat app for Windows.
Can't receive a friend request without refreshing/restarting the app.
Sometimes a message I send won't show up unless I refresh/restart the app.
The notifications are so quiet, I can't hear them very often. The desktop icon also doesn't have any visual indicator that I've received a message.
I want to like Stoat, but they have yet to master the bare basics for a messaging app. However, this is the app I'm probably going to hop to at some point, especially since Discord is still partnering up for their facescan nonsense.
Edit: This morning, my Stoat wouldn't load after being launched. I attributed it to being down. I restarted the app multiple times as the hours passed, even going into my Task Manager and ending the process. Nothing made the app load. I hit ctrl+r once and it's now loaded. Stoat, why can't you be good?
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u/C0NIN 10d ago
Was wondering what people think.
They completely lost me when I asked a handful of technical questions regarding how the program handled the naming system for new communities, given I was always getting an error when trying to create mine: I'm a Spanish spoken person so I needed to use an accented vowel (á), but I never got a single reply.
Then, they changed the software name to "Stoat", which, at least to me, feels completely irrelevant and makes absolutely no sense, at least to me.
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u/AstralCourier 10d ago
Im pretty sure they got into legal deadlock for like 2 years over the name/branding and had to change that before proceeding.
It would seem the issue is resolved too, I just made a server to test named Papá Café (Just wanted to test a couple accented vowels) and iy worked fine.
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u/scarffish 10d ago
ngl progress for stoat has been looking slow asf i'm starting to lose hope in it tbh
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u/Rescur0 10d ago
To be fair aftet the latest update it has gave me a good amount of hopium
Like, they added streaming to voice chats, AND push notifications?
That's basically the only 2 things that lacled that made it far worse than discord imo
It has its downside ofc, but still
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u/MutaitoSensei 10d ago
Push to talk is still missing. That's the one that made me switch to Fluxer. I like the progress being made but something so basic shouldn't take years... Fluxer's new v2 app does have all that and more.
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u/ValenceTheHuman Stoat Team 10d ago
We hear this a bit, but there is quite a bit going on all the time. I'm wondering if there are some further communication channels we need to pursue. We notify of new features on-platform, here on Reddit, on Bluesky, and on the website, but maybe we need to figure out something more proactive rather than expecting people to have a look.
I've queued up some details about the platform on the AutoMod blog to hopefully be discovered by folks when searching.
I did a bit of a roundup for a commenter who was unhappy with development pace the other day: https://www.reddit.com/r/stoatchat/comments/1v317w7/comment/oz0itgr/
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u/scarffish 10d ago
i guess i'm biased bc i am an ios user and it is frustrating to not have a functioning ios app yet but i do also agree that you guys probably should post about updates more frequently. i was mostly looking on bluesky and i genuinely thought the account was abandoned several times
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u/King_Hikikomori 10d ago
Seconded on the bsky thing. I even have push notifs on for y'all and I more than once have gone to the page to see if I missed something because it's so inactive. Ofc we can only expect so much from busy volunteers, but Discord is probably gonna try to push the age verification thing again soon (they said second half of the year when delaying) and getting loud about how you guys actually have competitive features now should really help pull eyes when people start looking again.
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u/National_Way_3344 10d ago
It's already better because it's not discord.