How to leave Discord behind?

[Mæstro]

For years, I have found myself unhappily bound to Discord. I began to use it in 2017, when I first began to care about privacy matters, as a far superior alternative to Skype and the old IM services which were shutting down then. Discord’s privacy policy at the present time remains tolerable, but I have always felt wary about it and, in any case, running the site in my browser heats my processor about 10°. (The ‘desktop version’ is intolerable for forcing automatic updates.) When I heard the rumours in March 2021 about Microsoft acquiring Discord, I abandoned my Discord account and was able to persuade most of my friends to keep in touch with me using XMPP. There have, unfortunately, been two problems with this.

The first of these, in chronological order, is that one of my friends, whom I know as ‘Soupy’, did not go along with me. I met Soupy through Discord in 2018. Although Soupy owns a laptop for a few purposes, he exclusively uses his iPhone for talking with friends, which makes him unique among people I know and makes it impossible for me to test IM applications for iOS in advance, for none of my other friends own an iPhone. To keep in touch with him, I created a new Discord account for the sole purpose of talking with him. We spoke, and speak, daily.

Years ago, when speaking with him about this, he had given a few reasons why he would not switch when I presented him with an XMPP client. The first is that, at the time, he had exhausted his iPhone’s storage and could not download any more applications, leaving him with only Skype and Discord for IM. (I do not know what he has done since Skype shut down.) The other, which he maintained even after getting a new iPhone, is that I tended to approach him about it feeling rather flustered. It is true that I suffer anxiety attacks rather more than average, and Soupy would often mistake my legitimate interests for another fleeting panic attack and refuse to make such dramatic changes in ways that could encourage my frenzy. I have not approached him more recently about this to learn whether his attitudes have changed.

The second problem has somewhat softened the first problem’s sting. In late April, all my XMPP clients (except Conversejs, which works in my backup browser but is awkward and unsuitable) suddenly failed. I have discussed this a bit more here, but it suffices to note that my technical attempts to diagnose the problem have been exhausted and I now consider XMPP unfit for purpose. By this time, only one friend who accompanied me to XMPP in 2021 remained. (The friendship with another grew weaker over the years due to changing interests and values, while a third ended quite dramatically in January after what could have been anything from his joining a sect to discovering hard drugs. The details are murky, but irrelevant.) This remaining, loyal friend, whom I will presently introduce elsewhere on this board, received the contact information for that Discord account I have been using all along to talk with Soupy. I am confident that ‘Kohai’, as I have nicknamed this friend for his relative youth, will accompany me whenever I can find a good Discord alternative. However, I have reconnected with some more Discord friends from before 2021, who had been unable for their own technical reasons to go along to XMPP, over the last year. I know less about their technical situations, but they have shown at least some openness to Discord alternatives if they can work. It remains for me to find one.

At this time, my best guess for a suitable alternative would be IRC in some form or other, but I am still too ignorant on key details for me to be able ot present this with confidence. I knew it existed as a child, but took the internet safety rule ‘don’t talk to strangers online’ too literally because autism and never used it. I know little about how Discord works on mobile, but I would need to know Soupy would be notified if I send him a message at any random time in the same way he would be on Discord. Moreover, my friends and I often send messages to one another when the other is asleep, for us to see in the morning. It is impossible for me to leave my computer on overnight, and none of us are technically experienced enough to be able to set up a bouncer on our own. (Even as I write this, I am only vaguely aware of what a bouncer is or does.) I could only find for the iPhone one apparently adequate IRC client, it costs money and I have no way to verify it would really work as a drop-in Discord replacement before introducing it to Soupy. Moreover, advice in how to discuss this so it might fare better than my past attempts would surely help me. This community seems the best place to ask for where to look for such a thing. I have wanted to break this last shackle to the IT mainstream for a very long time, but I need to know this so I can do so without losing my friends.

TL;DR: I need a drop-in substitute for Discord which will work both for me running Debian 10 and my friend who only uses an iPhone. XMPP seemed the best choice for years, but has lately disqualified itself. IRC is the current best candidate, but I need more information before I could actually try it. I also need a way to discuss this with him without appearing to be in one of my (relatively common) panic attacks as I have seemed when trying years ago.

[zonk]

Is there a reason you can't use Signal? That's probably the lowest-friction option. I have been searching for a better option but haven't really found one so far.

I will say as an active IRC user that IRC is probably unfit for your purposes. It is really not designed for asynchronous communication like you want. As a compromise, you could use IRC for when you are both online to chat and use good old email for sending messages when the other is offline.

[Mæstro]

Is there a reason you can't use Signal? That's probably the lowest-friction option. I have been searching for a better option but haven't really so far.

As I have declared in my introduction, I do not own a smartphone, or even a mobile phone at all now. Hence, creating an account is impossible for me (even if an existing account can be used without one) unless there is some way, unknown to me, to do so without one. Signal and Telegram had both caught my attention early on, but this unhappy fact has turned me away from both.
Because this forum does not support [hr], [br], [line] or anything like it, this self-referential line of text will break the original message from this addendum instead. Good on you for reading it!
I was reminded today of Wire, which apparently supports iOS and is reliable enough for our government to use, but does not require a mobile to register. I remember testing it once on my own years ago and encountering some forgotten problem quickly, but this was long enough ago that I think I should consider it afresh. Is anybody here familiar with it (or some other alternative)? It seems promising also, but I would need to know more about it before going ahead.

[BlueChinchompa]

I would recommend giving revolt (most discord like) or Matrix a shot. They both offer desktop and mobile clients without a phone number. You can also self host them (Matrix is better for self hosting since its federated with other instances)

https://revolt.chat/
https://matrix.org/

[Mæstro]

I recall hearing sometimes before about Matrix, but until today, I had lingered under the false impression that it was only possible to run self-hosted instances, which I lack the capacity to do for several reasons. Out of everything considered so far, I think Matrix would likely serve best. Would you be able to recommend (for Soupy) an iOS client and (for me) a client that looks more like it belongs in the 2000s than today? The master list offers three mature iOS clients for him, but Nheko, in its own words, ‘feels more like a mainstream chat app (Element, Telegram etc) and less like an IRC client’, whereas I definitively want something that feels like an IRC client. (CLI interfaces are rather alien to me.)