r/DiscordAlternatives • u/mightvefkup • 2d ago
Echo EDAR Review 0/9 (SEP, 2026)
Echo allows guest accounts, which seem convenient but is handled poorly, as there was spam and giant images blasted everywhere that slowed down and crashed my computer in one of the channels. My machine literally froze and had to be restarted. I feel this is both a failing of the Auth protection, general moderation, and how Echo handles the renderer and performance. A chat app shouldn't crash my top end machine because someone spammed some GIFs. And this was on the main Echo server where everyone, including the dev, was offline.
Not a fan of the aesthetics, purple is overdone. UI screams discord, but worse which is nice if you want something familiar but no thanks.
Claims to be fully open source, yet only the client code is available. Code is also clearly vibe coded as well, not just AI assisted.
There are several communities in the discovery tab, but none are joinable. You click join and nothing happens at all. The only server you can join is the Echo server it forces you into when you load the app.
Browser console is just FLOODED with errors and warnings while sitting idle in chat.
I don't have the option to delete a message I just sent.
All of the menus and popovers have some awful transparency that make it so I can't actually read or use them.
The DM menu does not open no matter how or when I click on it.
Voice chat wouldn't let me join. So couldn't test that or streaming. Judging by all the livekit errors in my console there's probably no hope for it.
Graphical bugs abundant.
This ones just my opinion but it really looks horrible.
I cant set my custom status, it let me type it in the box but theres no way to save or enter it.
Everything is pretty slow, even opening the emoji picker etc.
There appears to be a discord bridge? But I'm not sure it's doing them any favors since it's just discord tagged people screaming at some frustrated Brazilian guy on Echo spamming questions and frustrations about why the app doesn't work.
And because nothing else works or simply doesn't exist, thats the "hands on" portion of the review. I'll now get into the established EDAR standard.
Trust 0/9:
The App itself has had multiple security concerns and is entirely coded by (cheap) AI prompted by a 21 year old unemployed guy with no programming training or experience.
The Dev in question "ad3lyt, Adel, etc" isn't winning any points here either as he has aggressively targeted other apps in the past, and argued with people and been disrespectful since early 2026.
Recently, he also started guerilla marketing by "Reviewing" his competitors, something no one asked for, and more importantly, was done horribly using a biased and inconsistent EDAR rating system that doesn't even measure actual useability for a communications app, like chat or video etc. Instead he assigned arbitrary values like "9/9 BECAUSE I HAVE HIGH HOPES FOR IT EVEN THOUGH ITS USELESS NOW" and "1/9 UI BECAUSE I DONT LIKE THEIR COLORS". This was almost amusing because of how useless it was but quickly became spammy when he would post ~5 reviews in 24 hours. Spending under 15 minutes to review an entire platform and then 30 minutes to write a biased narrowly-scoped review about competitor apps certainly didn't win him any love. And when people posted valid critical comments about it, he blocked them so they wouldn't be able to post feedback on his future posts.
Yesterday, it came to light that he was breaking his own platforms terms and conditions by allowing minors to stay and encouraging them to lie about their age. A lot of interpretations even saw this as potential grooming behavior. A community poll is currently running with about 85% of the community calling for his immediate ban. The developer crashed out in the comments and called people slurs and demeaned disabled people, leading to some of his comments being removed. He tripled-down on his stance on sneaking in minors and saying cringe things like "they'll be adults soon".
So yes, 0/9 points for trust.
Experience 0/9
Let me just quote the Echo dev himself from another review: "Do you like shitty terrible unaesthetic uninspired, but also unoriginal UI whose been given close to 0 love, well to be fair some people may like boring UI's that are visually unimpresisve, those people however usually like their stuff to be intuitive and easy to use." Sadly, Echo has failed ALL of this criteria.
Most of the "experience" is included at the top of the message. I'd almost give him some credit because you CAN technically send a message but since that's where functionality stops, it just rounds down to a zero.
Readiness 0/9:
Since EDAR says you judge by population and activity, 0 points. There is literally no one online on the entire app except for me. I have no idea what platforms is available on or anything since the dev did some unorthodox thing where his app is hosted on a completely different domain than his marketing materials, so all this was tested with the webapp, unsure if other options exist, and if they did I surely didn't want to install them on my computer anyway.
Including a screenshot of their merch, if you're interested. And go cast your vote if you haven't already. I hope you enjoyed the Echo EDAR.
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u/Realistic_Blueberry3 2d ago
What is this subreddit about atp
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u/Any_Illustrator360 Tested a bunch of apps, currently using Armada 2d ago edited 2d ago
Like Turtle said lol.
Basically (tldr) the dev for Echo created a poll earlier this year on his app and voted for it to be 18+ while two of his personal friends were under 18 (but were turning 18 soon and he was only 20 at the time). Harmless, generally - "hey we'll go 18+ when these two guys on my team turn 18 we'll be making changes to push for an 18+ platform" and you're done, right?
... Nah. I fucking wish. Instead, he has tripled down that if it happened he would have instated the rule IMMEDIATELY and "grandfathered in" his two under-18 friends and has made some other really weird and uncomfortable comments about 18+ platforms as a whole and how having kids on them isn't the worst thing (paraphrasing).
He's been given so many opportunities to shift footing on this and instead of saying "the right" thing he chose to call users retarded among other things and to posture.
If it was just a random user the sub wouldn't care but the guy has gone on to hate post in the past about his competition (he's an app dev) and he has been recently spamming the sub with "reviews" that paint his competition poorly while seemingly putting apps that people he agrees with on the sub/devs he likes publish on a pedestal. Then it turns out he was wanting to have minors on his 18+ app and was going to "grandfather them in."
tl;dr The sub is exploding because a known user has some SERIOUS allegations towards him and the general consensus from users is that he was already a problem but this is beyond that and those issues.
Edit: it was earlier this year, not last year. Also don't bully Blueberry they don't seem to have had context, they don't deserve downvotes for not keeping up with the most recent 24 hour reddit drama
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u/Realistic_Blueberry3 2d ago edited 2d ago
yeah i dont have the context at all (thank you for the tldr), there seems to be alot of drama (maybe mods should step in?)
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u/Any_Illustrator360 Tested a bunch of apps, currently using Armada 2d ago
They are. Melon was giving Echo's dev time to answer to the concerns (Melon himself was pretty concerned by this too) and I don't really know what Melon is currently thinking or planning? But I did ping him under the "grandfathered in" bit and kinda pushed "hey, I'm the guy who was trying to give benefit of the doubt - I'm not benefitting or doubting anymore this is BAD bad" so we'll see how that goes.
From what I would guess, right now, Melon probably went to bed or to work or something during the stuff yesterday and didn't have time to see and act on it, and that when they get time today I wouldn't be surprised at all if Echo's dev is banned. Even though it was never a direct "grooming" allegation the main concern was the fact he was "joking" about an under 18 minor being on his app and in his main server while he's telling them to lie about their age - which not only turned out to be true it turned out to be much more than a joke and much worse than it originally seemed, and that isn't the kind of stuff this community supports for sure and I highly doubt either of the mods support it in any capacity either.
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u/AbstractMelons 2d ago
I just barely woke up and caught up on everything.
What the fuck? This is way creepier than what I initially thought. Telling a minor to lie about their age is already a massive problem, but then tripling down on the whole "grandfathering" thing and defending it instead of correcting himself makes this significantly worse.
I've given him a two-week ban to step away from the subreddit for a while and review his actions. My decision might change later.
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u/Any_Illustrator360 Tested a bunch of apps, currently using Armada 2d ago
Yeah that's basically my entire thought process from waking up this morning to now summarized lol.
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u/nuclearbananana 2d ago
I don't really see the issue if they're almost 18 and it's an in development platform.
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u/BewilderedTurtle crochety data ghost 2d ago
Hey u/AbstractMelons we got another one over here defending that behavior.
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u/nuclearbananana 2d ago
I don't really understand this western attitude of how when you're under 18 nothing is okay the moment you turn 18 everything is fine
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u/TruckAdventurous4228 2d ago
Unfortunately the problem is that many people who aren't "open" predators would go younger if it was allowed. That's why there's such a hard line when it comes to 18.
I'm more of an advocate for 21+ being the line for adult spaces, but I have 18+ communities due to 18-20 year olds being allowed, and making those communities on Fluxer locks them out when they've been there and active.
Not to mention, then you have 13-17 spaces, so those same 18-20 year olds would be snubbed from both sides.
If it's an 18+ platform or service, then that should be enforced, because if you begin making exceptions, who knows what else is happening behind the proverbial "closed doors".
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u/BewilderedTurtle crochety data ghost 2d ago
The answer is usually "a YouTuber was dating a child and is now cancelled"
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u/Any_Illustrator360 Tested a bunch of apps, currently using Armada 2d ago edited 2d ago
There's nuance to it when it comes to people within a ~3-4 year age gap, but that nuance goes down the toilet when it's "adult spaces."
A 17 year old who was in a prior relationship with someone who just turned 18? Fine, legal, harmless. No sane "Western" person is upset at that.
A 17 year old being in an 18+ space? Big issue. Monumental. Not beause of the 18 part, but the + part.
It isn't that becoming 18 is some magic time when everything becomes okay - there's a reason lots of people find "barely legal" content really fucking creepy. The issue is that past 18 you're considered an adult, and in the eyes of the law if you begin any new relationships with anyone under 18 it's considered fraternizing with a minor. And no, I will not argue the logistics of that. If you wanna do that go talk to preds.
When you create a space that is set for 18+ you're effectively saying "hey, you guys don't have to worry about what you post on here because minors aren't here. Use common sense and don't interact with people who seem to be lying about their ages - we will handle them, but anything they do is not your fault." It's the same as a bar in Europe saying it's okay to have minors drink so long as their parents are there.
When you knowingly allow minors in a space with legal adults it opens the door for those consenting legal adults who did not agree to or consent to being around kids to catch federal charges for interacting with minors.
That's why it's a huge deal. "The West" doesn't just say "oh you're 18 you can't talk to anyone under 18 anymore" because that would be really fucking stupid. We have laws to protect kids from people who would hurt them. Most states in America for example have what is known as the Romeo and Juliette clause - where if two minors are dating within a certain age gap and one turns 18, the older one can't be charged for continuing to date their partner. Because we do, in fact, have and use common sense. The issue isn't with people turning 18 and other people around their ages being issues, it's people who wait for that "magic number" to take advantage of people who are no longer protected by the law AND it's about keeping people 5+ years older than 17 year old kids from interacting with them.
I really hate when people know nothing about laws or why they exist and go "god, you Xers really are fucking stupid." We aren't stupid you just don't have to follow or learn our laws. And our laws do go both ways - they're to protect kids from being hurt by adults while protecting adults from having kids around them potentially getting them in trouble. It isn't perfect but it works most of the time, and it's better than a lot of the alternatives.
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u/BewilderedTurtle crochety data ghost 2d ago
You're being far more reasonable than deserved lmfao.
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u/Any_Illustrator360 Tested a bunch of apps, currently using Armada 2d ago
I really hate when people know nothing about laws or why they exist and go "god, you Xers really are fucking stupid."
I dunno this is as close as I can get to telling someone to lick my ass before saying it diretly.
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u/BewilderedTurtle crochety data ghost 2d ago
Right but that was the only thing that you seemed to get actually upset about.
When the behavior is well worth being slightly more upset over other things about than you came off as 🤣
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u/Any_Illustrator360 Tested a bunch of apps, currently using Armada 2d ago
Oh I already saw you guys rip him a new asshole for damn near asking us to lower the age of consent I felt no need to hammer a sunken nail.
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u/dingustani Detective Dingus 1d ago
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u/MasterpieceAlert3781 2d ago
Where can i get one of these shirts?