Matrix seems the way to go, it's generally considered part of the fediverse (even though it's not participating in activitypub)
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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What makes it part of the fediverse then?
It’s FOSS and decentralized/supports self hosting, plus has a large following in fediverse circles so it gets colloquially lumped in
Does it have similar functionality to discord? I looked into signal but it’s basically just group chat and there’s no way to organize subtopics so it’s not too useful for what I want to do.
Yes, Matrix has spaces to organize related rooms.
Ask them what they mean by "FediVerse." I don't know of any ActivityPub chat room software; while there could be one, trying to make a real-time interactive chat with AP seems like hammering a square peg into a round hole.
Matrix is probably the best alternative. It's just as federated as Mastodon is. Here's a reasonably brief, fairly accurate layman comparison of the two protocols, although the write up is for an unrelated topic.
If the concern is that the person wants full integration with the many different projects that provide AP integration, then there's at least one Matrix bridge for ActivityPub. Honestly, it seems like a kind of horrible idea ... like, how would an IRC chat room (IRC ~ Matrix ~ Discord ~ Slack) look like in a Lemmy client? It's even a little awkward when Lemmy content shows up in Mastodon, and vice-versa. The more the UX flow diverges, the more weirdness you see in the federation.
What would this even look like? Could you follow a Mastodon account from a chat room? And would that account's toots just randomly show up with no context in the room? Would people responding in Mastodon automatically get sucked into the room, or would the Mastodon user look like they're having a conversation you see only one side of? And would people replying to the person show up in Toots?
Anyway, Matrix is probably the best federated solution for chat, at the moment. You have one account and can join rooms on any server, or connect to any user on any other Matrix server.
you didn't even mention xmpp
The fediverse as most people on here would reference that term, isn't really designed for what you're looking for.
Matrix effective is what you're looking for. The only alternative to that would be something like TeamSpeak 6, which is a closed federated chat system (that's still not really fully baked).
Are you willing to set up your own thing I recomend Mattermost. https://mattermost.com/
It's open source, but I wouldn't call it a fediverse alternative. But it's still a good slack alternative.