I've always been turned off by the fact Slack retains a single point of contact (and failure) rather than something like git which can be self-hosted if you really need to do so. There's open...
I've always been turned off by the fact Slack retains a single point of contact (and failure) rather than something like git which can be self-hosted if you really need to do so.
There's open source alternatives out there, but afaict none of them have traction. And Slack has become that integrated into so many companies I know of it's really strange there isn't a push for more.
Even more than the single point of failure, I've always found it baffling that so many companies are willing to host their work-related communication on someone else's platform and servers...
Even more than the single point of failure, I've always found it baffling that so many companies are willing to host their work-related communication on someone else's platform and servers unencrypted. Imagine the kind of internal secrets that would come out from companies like Apple if Slack ever has a data breach, or even if some unethical Slack employee snooped through their chat logs.
There's just so much potential for things to go horribly wrong in devastating ways. I think at some point there's going to be a major incident based on data getting leaked from Slack, and that'll probably trigger a bunch of companies to realize they shouldn't be using it.
Rocket.Chat and Mattermost seem to be gaining traction. I host a Rocket.Chat instance for my friends, and I see small companies using both of those occasionally for team communications.
Rocket.Chat and Mattermost seem to be gaining traction.
I host a Rocket.Chat instance for my friends, and I see small companies using both of those occasionally for team communications.
Zulip is another option that's interesting. It uses a threading model to split conversations up based on topic, which (at least in theory) should make it much easier to keep track of chat that you...
Zulip is another option that's interesting. It uses a threading model to split conversations up based on topic, which (at least in theory) should make it much easier to keep track of chat that you actually care about: https://zulipchat.com/why-zulip/
They're pretty different. Slack is more for group-based conversations, a bit like a modern IRC server. It's used by a lot of companies for their work chat system, and also by various projects,...
They're pretty different. Slack is more for group-based conversations, a bit like a modern IRC server. It's used by a lot of companies for their work chat system, and also by various projects, online groups, etc.
Yes, the use cases and capabilities are quite different. You can take a look at Slack's site if you want to see how it works: https://slack.com/features
Yes, the use cases and capabilities are quite different. You can take a look at Slack's site if you want to see how it works: https://slack.com/features
I have an unreasonable amount of hate for discord too, mostly because of their disingeniousness. "iT's tiMe to DITCh SKypE And teAmSpeAK"... yeah right. Skype wasn't that bad. It was bad, but not...
I have an unreasonable amount of hate for discord too, mostly because of their disingeniousness. "iT's tiMe to DITCh SKypE And teAmSpeAK"... yeah right. Skype wasn't that bad. It was bad, but not as bad as people are retroactively making it out to be. Same goes for teamspeak imo.
neither of those have ever forced users to spam the same message over and over with the client thinking it had "failed to send" continually retrying. I've also never had the issue of servers randomly vanishing, direct messages not working, message history not existing, or whatever strange symptoms you get when their backend shits the bed (which is unreasonaby often)
They're burning money that isn't theirs to provide something that's literally both too good to be true, and yet somehow worse than what we had before.
Ew wtf, yeah that sucks but this is the first I've heard of that. Shame you had to hit the anti-lottery. The worst me and mine ever got was occasionally when you'd call someone and they accepted,...
Ew wtf, yeah that sucks but this is the first I've heard of that. Shame you had to hit the anti-lottery.
The worst me and mine ever got was occasionally when you'd call someone and they accepted, it'd put them into a call but show you that they were busy and hang up. Re-calling them insta hung up until they left the phantom call they were in with "me". But iirc that only happened when you both called eachother at the same time or something relatively unlikely.
I've always been turned off by the fact Slack retains a single point of contact (and failure) rather than something like git which can be self-hosted if you really need to do so.
There's open source alternatives out there, but afaict none of them have traction. And Slack has become that integrated into so many companies I know of it's really strange there isn't a push for more.
Even more than the single point of failure, I've always found it baffling that so many companies are willing to host their work-related communication on someone else's platform and servers unencrypted. Imagine the kind of internal secrets that would come out from companies like Apple if Slack ever has a data breach, or even if some unethical Slack employee snooped through their chat logs.
There's just so much potential for things to go horribly wrong in devastating ways. I think at some point there's going to be a major incident based on data getting leaked from Slack, and that'll probably trigger a bunch of companies to realize they shouldn't be using it.
Rocket.Chat and Mattermost seem to be gaining traction.
I host a Rocket.Chat instance for my friends, and I see small companies using both of those occasionally for team communications.
Zulip is another option that's interesting. It uses a threading model to split conversations up based on topic, which (at least in theory) should make it much easier to keep track of chat that you actually care about: https://zulipchat.com/why-zulip/
Verge has also posted an article about the issue as well.
That's frightening.
I don't use Slack. Is Signal an adequate replacement ? Or is it missing functionality ?
They're pretty different. Slack is more for group-based conversations, a bit like a modern IRC server. It's used by a lot of companies for their work chat system, and also by various projects, online groups, etc.
But you can create groups chats like those in whatsapp/telegram/facebook messenger, right ? Are those substantially different ?
Yes, the use cases and capabilities are quite different. You can take a look at Slack's site if you want to see how it works: https://slack.com/features
Oh wow, cheers. That's an impressive feature list. It looks like trello, group chats and github had a baby.
The closest match for Slack would be Discord (or IRC, as mentioned above).
I have an unreasonable amount of hate for discord, mostly because everyone I know uses it in place of the nice and lightweight mumble.
I have an unreasonable amount of hate for discord too, mostly because of their disingeniousness. "iT's tiMe to DITCh SKypE And teAmSpeAK"... yeah right. Skype wasn't that bad. It was bad, but not as bad as people are retroactively making it out to be. Same goes for teamspeak imo.
neither of those have ever forced users to spam the same message over and over with the client thinking it had "failed to send" continually retrying. I've also never had the issue of servers randomly vanishing, direct messages not working, message history not existing, or whatever strange symptoms you get when their backend shits the bed (which is unreasonaby often)
They're burning money that isn't theirs to provide something that's literally both too good to be true, and yet somehow worse than what we had before.
Ew wtf, yeah that sucks but this is the first I've heard of that. Shame you had to hit the anti-lottery.
The worst me and mine ever got was occasionally when you'd call someone and they accepted, it'd put them into a call but show you that they were busy and hang up. Re-calling them insta hung up until they left the phantom call they were in with "me". But iirc that only happened when you both called eachother at the same time or something relatively unlikely.
Skype is bloated, ad-filled garbage.
Teamspeak's UI was dated but it was fine otherwise.
That's how it goes, eh? I'd use mumble, but everyone I know is on discord
Matrix is a very close replacement of Slack its just less known. In the last year it has become a lot better.