every time i think "i wonder if i could use ____ instead of that one chat app" i realize ____ doesn't have pluralkit, and it repels me from even trying.
at this point i consider pk a fundamental accessibility tool. i can't express who i am--more really more who we are--without it. but ultimately it's just tools that, from a plurality standpoint, just make sense. you have one @, and you can use that one [body] to host multiple instances of [you] online. it just attributes the posts made by that [body] to various [drivers].
that's something that could just be... there by default. apps all being built by large shareholder-bound corporations run by neurotypical individuals makes it feel improbable, but it's probably not. just a native command to switch headmates and what have you, built-in management for system members and profiles and such. does all the things that one chat app does, except it's specifically designed around plural folks.
would probably do it even better than that one chat app, too, because the way webhooks operate on that one chat app is [comment redacted].
it'd be cool. even if it was a fork of matrix that required self-hosting and could only really be useful for small groups of friends, like, that's all i need. i don't need a social network, i just need a little chat app that's as robust as that one chat app but scaled for groups of 2-20 people and hosted on a machine that you own.
revolt has Masquerades built into its message send API, which theoretically allows users to change their avatar and/or display name on a per-message basis, but this feature does not currently have a front-end implementation, and as far as I can find there are no bots that actually implement this yet.
there is a rudimentary port of pluralkit called pluralbug for matrix and therefore element but it needs to be instanced on an individual virtual environment, and thus has a pretty sizeable adoption barrier and would not sync across servers (as the instance you're running, for your server, would have your headmates, but someone elses' instance, for their server, would not, unless they're running your instance).
this is in contrast to pluralkit itself, which works incredibly well sometimes in direct opposition to how discord would have you use it, and is so robust that it has its own API, is baked into some discord client mods, and has interesting tools built around it (s/o @wowperfect) that make it even better.
i would prefer to use a FOSS alternative for my everyday needs (read: the server where i talk to my partners) for my own little reasons (yes, i'm aware that it's me saying this, read the room). however, i can't, because doing so would mean giving up on what's become an essential accessibility tool. and i can't really ask FOSS messaging alternatives to just decide plural accessibility matters to them out the gate, because uh, i don't think it ever will, as much as that sucks.
there are 5 websites and i can only be plural on one of them and none of the alternatives are interested in fixing that and that's a bummer.
