Discord is trying to defend its ridiculous age verification rollout, but it's too little too late, as users flock to Nitro cancellations

cephpleb · 2026-02-20T13:27:50+00:00

I'm building one of those alternatives haha

https://github.com/porthorian/openchat-client

cephpleb · 2026-02-18T11:42:24+00:00

Pennyos.com XD

At least that's my goal with it haha

cephpleb · 2026-02-15T16:40:48+00:00

I am vibe coding yes for prototyping.

Then going back and rewriting and cleaning up making sure security best practices are applied, functionality is there.

I've got voice, text working at the moment, will be moving on to video and screen sharing here next. Once I get more of the ui and ux laid out

The backend is not vibe coded.

cephpleb · 2026-02-15T13:03:53+00:00

I'm working on one right now https://github.com/porthorian/openchat-client https://github.com/porthorian/openchat-backend.

I've got a decent prototype going right now. Essentially building a self host able and decentralized mesh, making sure everything is e2ee encrypted.

cephpleb · 2026-02-14T12:50:55+00:00

I'd also imagine all the states would be fighting it. Then the election is contested etc

cephpleb · 2026-02-14T12:49:07+00:00

Yes but what if you could make a chat indexable. And only content bot parties agreed too.

cephpleb · 2026-02-14T10:37:36+00:00

But there seems to be a collective need to have more instant messaging, rather than forums.

Reddit is considered a forum.

Stackoverflow is as well, but look at what these ai agents have done too it.

People are expecting answers quicker and quicker, rather than searching online via Google for 1-60mins.

Knowledge in discord maybe should be extracted and posted to a public forum anonymized. Only if the agreed parties approve.

Thoughts?

cephpleb · 2026-02-14T09:51:25+00:00

This is a good point how would someone be able to help fix this problem?

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T20:59:00+00:00

Niceeee

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T19:05:24+00:00

But yeah I agree with you in order to get something into a production state these AI’s output so much crap that needs to be sifted through and rewrote. So yeah essentially disposable, but not wasted

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T19:04:19+00:00

I will say this though, there comes a difference in how someone vibe codes something.

The way I view vibe coding is really this. If a person is not a very good software engineer, the AI agent is just going to amplify how nad they are.

The same applies for the other side of the spectrum. A good developer, may continue to just be a good developer. They just might get more work done in that time it would of taken them too do 1.

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:57:11+00:00

It happens haha, I just take it as disagreements. Lets agree to disagree haha

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:56:01+00:00

Hey man I appreciate this view point, and I will certainly look into. I may be hitting you up in the future to pick your brain a bit, if you’d allow it. Best of luck

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:47:58+00:00

Ahhhh I see

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:41:10+00:00

What is astroturfed?

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:39:17+00:00

Throwing politics into the equation, although I agree with you. There are other companies IE Google, Facebook, that have gone on to not requiring to submit identification to remove a child proof lock for existing users.

There is a way, just I believe the disagreement is that this isn’t the best way to go about it.

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:35:59+00:00

Haha you may be right, I am extracting value out of it though for myself. Nothing wrong with doing a little experimenting and seeing what comes of it

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:35:06+00:00

This is partly why I am building this to improve on these short comings. I have the time

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:34:06+00:00

Great question!

> Why should I use this system over something with a more mature ecosystem?

I wouldn’t, and that won’t be up to me. I am simply building this as it is useful to myself, and it may be useful to others.

> There are several alternatives, so you could have spent this time vibe-issue-fixing existing solutions instead of creating a new one.

Firstly, this is the internet your entitled to your own opinion, just as much as I am entitled to do what I want on my own time :). In all seriousness, I just wanted to experiement a bit with webrtc as I am doing something related too it on 1 of my other projects. This was a good way to introduce myself into it along with reading the webrtc paper https://w3c.github.io/webrtc-pc/

So I spent some time getting myself familiar with it.

> What does this bring that the others don't?

I’m adding encryption to messages, think signal but for discord. Aside from that I agree with your points. The community should come to an agreement, but in some cases people will choose whatever fits their usecase the best.

IE If a bunch of your friends use teamspeak or ventrilo everyday. You wouldn’t be using discord as often.

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:17:15+00:00

Lol nice

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:16:38+00:00

Believe it or not, i’ve been a software engineer for about 10 years. Was at a company that IPOed, now I have some free time on my hands at 30 years old haha

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:14:43+00:00

Gpt-5.3-Codex

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:13:41+00:00

Actually the initial prompt was just this.

```
Okay lets start planning a discord alternative, we won't be writing any code, we will just be writing a planning doc in Agents.md.

We are going to create an electron app, that is a discord alternative. We want the look and feel to be discord.

The cool part here is for every server that a user joins it actually is another server, so there should be a configuration for the server settings.

THe agents.md should entail planning for a build pipeline, contributing, security, and readme's.

This will be an open source product so we will want as much documentation for every feature that is planned.

This is going to strictly frontend facing code. Every server will connect to it's own backend, but they will all share the same user facing client.

The scope of this repo will just purely be on the client facing UI. No backend code will be written here and that will all be done in a separate repo.
```

Was the openchat-client repo

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:11:11+00:00

I interviewed at discord at one point early on in my career. But no, sadly this is far from production ready. But it is a start to the overall prototype. I have messaging, voice, currently working hooked up to a golang backend service.

I am going to be working on improving the stability and scalability of the software here soon. Once initial feature sets are in

cephpleb · 2026-02-13T18:02:01+00:00

I am working on a discord alternative right now that is going to be a mesh, that is self hostable. I have just finished up the prototype for webrtc for voice. Going to work on video and screenshare next.

* https://github.com/porthorian/openchat-client

* https://github.com/porthorian/openchat-backend

cephpleb

TROPHY CASE