this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
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Hey everyone.

I make Peersuite, an opensource free communication platform.

It's private by default, there's no sign-in or email collection.

It's peer-to-peer, there's no server, after discovery you are connected directly to your friends my AES-GCN encrypted WebRTC channels. It forms a mesh and identifies superpeers. Because there is no server, in order to save your data between sessions, you can download your workspace into a password encrypted file. Happy to answer any questions.

FEATURES:

  • chat with images, PMs, channels, and file send
  • group audio/video calling
  • screensharing
  • kanban board
  • whiteboard for diagrams/flowchartswith PNG export
  • collaborative document editing with formatted PDF export

The best way for self hosting is docker, its on dockerhub as openconstruct/peersuite. You can also download desktop versions from the github or use on the web at https://peersuite.space/

github - https://github.com/openconstruct/Peersuite

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I have been searching for a discord alternative for so long ๐Ÿ˜ญ THANK YOU THANK YOU! Cannot wait to start testing this out with friends ๐Ÿ˜ƒ

How do we get this listed on ~~alternative.to~~ alternativeto.net ? Would love to get this posted on there for more folks to find it on their own prerogative!!

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Ah nice, seems I misremembered that URL also! Fixed my comment ๐Ÿ™‚

So excited to see this progress!! ๐Ÿ˜ƒโค๏ธ

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Can you please add the ability to delete chat channels after they have been created. Thank you for making this.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I will put that in my to-do list, that's a great idea!

[โ€“] [email protected] 78 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It's peer-to-peer, there's no server

The best way for self hosting is docker

๐Ÿค”

[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

It doesn't contradict by definition. So ipfs is also decentralized yet you will need to run a client /server. So the client is also the server. Allowing you to connect to a mesh decentralized system. Just like torrent is also both a client and a server.

[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, it takes an initial connection for discovery. The peers need to know how to find each other.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If there's no account, how do I "log in" to my community or whatever

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

If you are hosting you send them the room code and a password. You can save a workspace and restart it later, so if you had an active chat it would reload automatically when you imported the file

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've looked into the sources because that was weird to me as well.

It's because the web "client" is using nginx as a local web server. You're selfhosting the web client

The app still is 100% a frontend js client

OP did link to their public instance of the client, but gives more opportunities

[โ€“] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

It's html and javascript, the release comes with loose chromium files, ffmpeg binary and a 190MB executable. The link typo hasn't been fixed in hours, they don't link to the github, they misuse terminology, etc. and it's version 0.3.

That's a no from me.

[โ€“] [email protected] 46 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The link typo hasn't been fixed in hours,

Whoa, hey, they're not paid on-call. Give it a few days.

[โ€“] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've been babysitting my granddaughter, just got on the laptop.

[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

How dare you

[โ€“] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (4 children)

That's fair, the project is about a month old, the electron releases will get an installer for some platforms.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Yeah it's an early version and I have no doubt that you guys will make it a lot neater, and it seems like a nice project. I just think it breaks several basic rules of privacy and security oriented programming, which is why I don't think it's a good fit for this community just yet.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Noted. Thanks for the reralistic input

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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

You should ask for a refund.

[โ€“] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

OK, so I tested Peersuite with a friend and I have to say: wow! We have collected a bit of feedback we would like to share:

Positive: The audio, video and screenshare quality is outright amazing and much better than Discord. We had no crackling, delays or any other disturbances in any of those features. The UI is simple and functional, and everything is snappy and fast. It is also very easy to setup a workspace and to find yourself around the overall UI.

Negatives: There appears to be no option to also share audio while screensharing, which currently is a major drawback for us. There is no dedicated audio channel. As soon as someone starts an audio call, you'll hear the person no matter what. Only if you purposely join the call, will the others hear you. Opting in and out of an audio channel like in Teamspeak or Discord would be nice. When my friend started a video call, the audio input of the webcam's microphone got activated, so I heard him twice. When he turned off the video call, the webcam's microphone stayed activated. Once someone shared their screen or their webcam and turned it off later, you would still see them in the video and screenshare menu but with the picture being black. We would expect to be gone when closing the stream. There is no option to adjust the volume of an individual user. It would be nice to assign users to carts or columns on the Kanban Board. It would be nice to adjust the size of the Collaborative Whiteboard.

It might seem like we are complaining a lot, but we actually really like the experience so far, so thank you very very much!! Once you can also share audio with your screen, and once we can setup our own persistent server (and maybe be able to adjust the volume or mute a user, and have the audio room a bit more isolated from the rest), we are ready to jump ship.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Awesome! Real world testing finds things I never have! I'm going to improve a lot of things based on this, thanks for the input.

I have actually never thought of audio while screensharing, In my head it was mainly for people to watch videos and games. That's an easy fix. Opting out of audio is easy enough. Audio and Vido shouldnt happen at the same time, thats a bug. Seeing a blackscreen after sharing is also a bug. I can implement per-user volume easily enough. User assignments in kanban is already on the roadmap. Adjusting the size of the whiteboard, this one is probably not going to happen. It was a real struggle getting it working as good as it does now. It should scale to your screen for the most part. I may re-implement Zoom in/out for drawing.

It doesn't sound like complaining, this is what I need, thank you for your input!!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Keep up the good work, it's always good to have alternatives. But please at least fix the link in your post, it's giving a bad first impression.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Is this open source? Otherwise this feels like a honey pot.

[โ€“] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago

Asked the same question I was gonna, so I did the googling.

https://github.com/openconstruct/Peersuite

AGPL

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[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There are some seriously toxic fuckheads in this thread. Thanks for your effort so far, I look forward to seeing where your project ends up!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This needs to be widely known. I didn't test all the functions yet, but if this works, this is big!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (7 children)

And revolt was right there being all open source and stuff

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

But it's not decentralized

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Revolt is not E2EE, h fortunately.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

You mean Matrix, surely

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[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Any reason you chose github vs codeberg? Just wondering. Gave your project a star regardless. Nice work!

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

I've been on github for like 8 years now, familiarity, plus the build tools are nice, github actions builds the docker images for me now

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (8 children)

That's so cool, but wouldn't everyone need automat port forwarding/opening like UPnP IGD / PCP to initiate connection? Not everyone has this enabled

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This looks very promising, thank you very much! Going to fully test it out tomorrow.

Is there anything planned to have a persistent server option (self-hosted)?

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, I plan to create a node server for permanent rooms. It will allow you to name the server, which then acts like a superpeer and keeps the workspace open and saves progress every 10-30 minutes.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The website gives a 404 error

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

I removed the dash at the end. Guess it was a typo

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