Safe apps like Discord for adults, and what makes one safe
Looking for safe apps like Discord? An honest guide for adults to Signal, Telegram, Element, Discord's own settings and Hashti, and what safe really means.
If you want an app like Discord that feels safer, the honest answer depends on what "safe" means to you. If you mean private, so nobody can read your messages, Signal is the strongest choice for groups of people you already know. If you mean "my phone number and details stay hidden," Telegram with its privacy settings turned on is a reasonable middle ground. If you mean "I do not want one company holding everything," Element on the Matrix network is the option. If you want to stay on Discord, its own safety settings fix more than most people realize. And if safe means "the strangers in the room are real adults and bans actually stick," that is the problem I built Hashti to solve. This guide is for adults choosing for themselves.
Safe means three different things
I am Armenian-Iranian, I live in Los Angeles, and I have used chat apps in two very different worlds. In one, the worry was a bored troll. In the other, the worry was who else might be reading. Those are not the same problem, and no single app solves both.
When people search for a safe app like Discord, they usually mean one of these:
1. Privacy. Can the company, or anyone else, read what I write? 2. Exposure. Can strangers find my phone number, my real name, or where I live? 3. Behavior. Will the people in the room be decent, and if someone is not, does anything happen to them?
Discord's reputation problems are mostly about the third one. Anyone can make a new account with a fresh email in a minute, so a banned troll can be back in a server before the moderator finishes their coffee. Keep your own answer in mind while you read the rest, because the best app for privacy is not the best app for behavior.
Signal: the most private, and the least like Discord
Signal encrypts every message and call end to end by default. That means the company cannot read your chats. It is run by a nonprofit, and it has usernames now, so you can talk to people without handing over your phone number.
Groups work well and can be fairly large. Voice and video calls work in groups too.
Where it is not like Discord at all: there are no public servers to browse, no channels, no rooms you can stumble into. Signal is for people you already know or people who send you a link. If you want a private group chat for your friends that replaces a Discord server, Signal is my first pick. If you want to meet new people, it will not help you.
Telegram: big public groups, with settings you need to change
Telegram is the closest thing to Discord outside gaming. There are huge public groups and channels, voice chats inside groups, and it works on bad connections. In the Iranian world in particular, a lot of community life runs on it.
On safety, two things matter. First, ordinary Telegram chats and groups are not end-to-end encrypted. Only one-to-one Secret Chats are. That is a well known and stable fact, and plenty of people do not realize it. Second, Telegram has good privacy settings, but you have to go and turn them on. Set who can see your phone number to "Nobody," and limit who can add you to groups. Without that, large public groups expose you to spam and scam accounts.
In my opinion Telegram is safe enough for open community talk if you lock down those settings and assume anything in a public group is public. Moderation is entirely up to each group's admins, so quality varies a lot.
Element and Matrix: safe from a single company
Matrix is an open chat network, and Element is the best known app for it. It looks a lot like Discord: rooms, spaces, voice and video. Private rooms and direct messages can be end-to-end encrypted, and nobody owns the whole network. A community can even run its own server.
The trade-off is polish. Setting it up confuses non-technical friends, encryption keys can trip people up when they change phones, and active public rooms take effort to find. I would recommend it to a group that cares about independence and has one patient technical person to help everyone else.
Staying on Discord, but safer
Before you move a whole community, it is worth knowing how much Discord's own settings change. A server owner can raise the server's verification level, so new members need a verified email, or a verified phone at the highest level, before they can talk. That stops a lot of drive-by accounts. Owners can also turn on content filters and use AutoMod to block words and links.
As a member, you can turn off direct messages from server members, so strangers cannot message you just because you share a server. That one setting removes most of the creepy messages people complain about.
What settings cannot fix: a determined person can still make another account. A phone number helps, but phone numbers are cheap. If your problem is the same troll coming back again and again, settings slow them down but do not stop them.
Where Hashti fits
Hashti is a free app for adults, 18 and up, out now on the App Store, with Android in closed testing. It is closer to Discord than to Signal: public rooms with names and topics you can walk into, plus private chats, calls and a walkie-talkie.
The thing I built it around is the third kind of safety, behavior. Every account checks its identity once against a government document. The photo is deleted after the check, but a fingerprint of the document stays, so that same document cannot open a second account. Unverified accounts cannot host rooms, speak in voice rooms or message strangers. Twelve verified reports closes an account permanently, and because of the fingerprint, that person cannot simply sign up again. The full rules are on the Hashti safety page.
That is the honest difference from Discord. On Discord a ban costs a troll one email address. On Hashti it costs them their document.
There is also live translation in 29 languages, which is part of Hashti Plus at $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Everything else in the app is free.
What Hashti does not do
A guide that only praises my app would not be worth reading, so here are the limits:
- It is young. Discord has millions of communities. Hashti has far fewer rooms, and some will be quiet at some hours.
- It is not built for privacy first. If your main fear is someone reading your messages, Signal is the stronger choice. Hashti's strength is knowing the people around you are real.
- You have to show a document once. Some people will never be comfortable doing that with any app. That is a reasonable position, and if it is yours, Telegram or Matrix will suit you better.
- No bots, no screen sharing for gaming. If your server is a gaming group that lives on bots and streams, stay on Discord and tighten its settings.
- The interface is English today. A Farsi interface is being built.
Which one I would pick for you
- You want a private chat for friends and family: Signal.
- You want big public communities and you will change the privacy settings: Telegram.
- You want no single company in charge: Element on Matrix.
- Your server works fine apart from a few bad actors: stay on Discord and raise the verification level.
- You want to talk with adults you do not know yet, and you want bans to stick: Hashti.
Many people end up with two of these. Signal for close people, and something with public rooms for everyone else.
Habits that keep you safe on any app
The app matters, but habits matter more. These work everywhere, including on Hashti:
- Keep identifying details out of public rooms. Your workplace, your street, your gym, your travel dates. Say less than you think you need to.
- Move to private chat slowly. Talk in public first. Anyone in a hurry to get you alone is a warning sign.
- Never send money or codes. If someone asks for a verification code, a gift card or crypto, it is a scam, on every platform, every time.
- Use block and report. They only work if people use them. Reporting is not rude. It is how rooms stay good.
- Watch the moderators. Before you settle into a community, see how its admins handle the first argument. If they ignore it, leave.
- If you have family abroad, think about what you post under your real name. This one is personal for me. What is a normal opinion in Los Angeles can be a problem somewhere else.
My honest bottom line
There is no app that is perfectly private, perfectly open and perfectly well behaved at the same time. Those goals pull against each other. Pick the kind of safe that matters most to you, set the app up properly, and keep the habits above. If what you are missing on Discord is the sense that the strangers around you are real and accountable, I think Hashti is worth trying. If it is privacy you want, go to Signal, and I mean that.
Hashti is free, and it is 18+. Hashti Plus — live translation, writing help and catch-ups — is $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and nothing else costs anything. How rooms work is on the rooms page, and how reports and the ID check work is on the safety page.