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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

I'm normally a self-host maxi, so respect for your solution. But may I ask why you didn't use Discord?

I self-hosted a Matrix server for family chat reasons but the encryption key changes (Let's Encrypt) and frequent need to re-login became a hassle for me and the "membership group" at large. Tried out Discord, haven't looked back.

My mother-in-law even created her own Discord "server" (all done very easily in-app) with no help from anyone.

Very slightly worried about content not being in my control, but shopping lists, pictures of the cat being cute, and requests to pre-heat the oven aren't high on my snooping paranoia list.

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I wanted a solution I could self host. Discord doesn’t allow self-hosting, and at least according to their feedback forum, they don’t plan to[0]. I remember reading an explanation (an FAQ on their site I think, but can’t find it now). It was to the effect of “Our CI strategy is designed to provide all users with the best experience, so we can’t allow versions to get too far behind…” or something like that. Whatever their reasoning they’re closed source, proprietary, and commercial, and unlike SelfHosted [1], I don’t mind the hosting fees or extra work to run it myself.

Edit: grammar

[0] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600301... [1] https://blog.ktz.me/self-hosted-launches-a-discord-server/

I'm not the GP, but lack of multi account support on Discord would be a blocker. I don't want to expose my "gamer" profile to my family.

Why couldn't you use the --multi-instance command line option?

That option doesn't seem to work for me, but personally, if I need to use another discord account, I just use another Discord client, as Discord has 3 official ones (Stable, PTB, and Canary) <https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035675191-D...>, which all use their own account/data. For mobile, my OnePlus phone has a built in multi account app thing called Parallel Apps, and there are apps for it on Android.

Thank you, it's good to know, but is it supported on mobile apps? I think it's more problem on mobile, because on desktop, mostly Discord can be used in browser so Chrome profile or Firefox container works.

Oh, I don't really use it on mobile :( . It's on my work laptop where like you I keep my private and work accounts separate :) . You could certainly do it with multicontainer on android firefox but not on iphone :( . I suppose you could install multiple browsers in that case but again I only need in emergency situations on my phone.

It does support multiple accounts, at least since recently.

You already expose your personal data and metadata (and your family's) to Discord anyway.

Sounds like you didn't set up certificate renewal automation for LetsEncrypt via something like certbot? I can imagine that could be a hassle.

I'm curious by what you mean by frequent need to re-login in the context of Matrix? I've had a Matrix server for several years now and never needed to re-login.

The Riot android client would, periodically, require re-signing in.

The certificate issues were more specifically related to Apple devices not liking that an accepted certificate had expired, and a new one had taken its place, and wouldn't even allow for the updated certificate to be "trusted" in place of the expired one. On Android I'd have to accept a new certificate to trust, and it allowed me to do so - although possibly this resulted in the requirement to re-login (and if memory serves, old messages would be unreadable).

These issues may have been of my own making, or may be fixed now, but I've been using Discord happily for a whole now.

P.S. I don't multi-account on Discord (because I didn't know you could), but I do have different names depending on the server context.

> The certificate issues were more specifically related to Apple devices not liking that an accepted certificate had expired, and a new one had taken its place, and wouldn't even allow for the updated certificate to be "trusted" in place of the expired one. On Android I'd have to accept a new certificate to trust, and it allowed me to do so - although possibly this resulted in the requirement to re-login

Huh, that doesn't sound right. You shouldn't be having to accept anything -- a renewed certificate should just work, transparently, without any interruption. You shouldn't even notice it changed.

Given that a large part of the web now uses LetsEncrypt, if this wasn't so, you would've already had problems on other websites as well.

> (and if memory serves, old messages would be unreadable).

This may have been the case if you managed to lose your keys. This is quite unlikely now since (encrypted) server-side backup of keys is supported. Additionally, if you have more than one device, one of them will likely continue to have keys and can share them with the new device once it is verified.

It may have been a quirk of the Riot client app. All I know is, whenever the cert got updated, the ipad app spat the dummy, although the message about a different certificate seemed to be more a basic ipad security warning than Riot-app-specific.

The Android Riot client was fine with the updated cert, other than the cert update possibly being the catalyst for needing to re-login.

This was three-odd years ago, not sure how much progress there's been since (including on my side in the use of certbot).

I use certbot to automate certificate updates on a couple of self-hosted sites, and it works fine for them - it really was just the ipad being repeatedly / repeatably finicky back then.

agreed. I use Certbot for my server and Mattermost requires re-login every 30 days. I believe there’s a setting in the admin console to change the required relogin frequency.

I'm sorry for your family's safety.

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