dcts.exposedFounder exhibit · u/HackTheDev
Do not hand this person your community.
DCTS asks you to self-host a chat stack and trust a single maintainer with a CLA, a ban hammer, and a subreddit that exists to prosecute rivals. The humility copy on features.html is fan fiction. The public posts are the manual.
Identity
One person, several storefronts.
Public names attached to the same project: Reddit u/HackTheDev, GitHub hackthedev, YouTube “Shy Devil,” Ko-fi shydevil, PayPal paypal.me/devilsstore. r/dcts lists about a hundred members and calls itself “the real alternative.”
The About lore says every other Discord alternative had “toxic project culture, poor software design, limited perspective, big egos.” Then he built a homepage that grades those projects with his own accusations, and a contributing guide that rejects work until he pre-approves it.
The move
Cite yourself. Call it transparency.
“No ego, misleading reports or FOMO tactics! We keep it fair and straight to the point.”
That sentence is on features.html. The same site’s comparison table, under “Trustworthy & transparent,” points at r/dcts threads the founder posted:
- Stoat/Revolt using deceptive tactics and banning people for criticism
- Revolt/Stoat mishandling CSAM
- Revolt/Stoat incompetence, hypocritically and more
- Spacebar, a story of mismanagement
- Spacebar/Fosscord chat is reading user DMs
A comparison table that uses your own subreddit as the only footnote is a press release. Dressing it up as due diligence is cruel to the people who have to share a category with you, and stupid for anyone who might install your server.
Public posts
The voice in the threads.
On rivals, in the founder’s register.
“After voicing these concerns on their official subreddit it let to the post being eventually removed and me getting banned for something i would personally consider valid criticism.”
From the Stoat “deceptive tactics” post on r/dcts. The rest of the post walks from user-count methodology into CSAM allegations. That is how this person argues: start at a metric, escalate to the worst possible charge, host it on the project subreddit, then hyperlink it from the marketing site.
On a GIF API company, after a same-day perma-ban.
“If you dont find anything anymore, it means they know they're doing scummy promotions and spam reddit and they posted on our sub as well, which is why they got perma banned instantly.”
“I think its fair to say that in addition to scummy behavior as in undisclosed advertisement spam we can now say that they're childish as well. I dont think a legitimate business would act in this way.”
Instant ban, then a public post naming people, guessing at future paywalls, and calling the other side childish. This is the temperament that would hold the keys to your members’ DMs.
On standards, from r/dcts.
“First up: No, i will never implement matrix, AcivityPub, Nostr and similar stuff.”
Independence, in this dialect, means nobody can leave. The network is a 200-line library and a promise that it is “almost plug-and-play decentralization.”
On peak design, from r/dcts.
“In my opinion this is peak decentralization without sacrificing the user experience and done right.”
The same month, the principles doc said there were no known instances and the client was not finished. Peak is a feeling.
On users who clone the repo he published.
“I would generally recommend only cloning a release and not the repo directly as i sometimes push something to it thats not ready yet.”
“Docker i cant promise as i didnt test it yet :(”
The README still tells people to clone it. The bug report is the documentation.
How he treats contributors
A community with a velvet rope and a contract.
CONTRIBUTING.md is the culture in writing:
- Do not work on stuff randomly. Open an issue and wait until it is approved. Unapproved features “wont be accepted.”
- Stay in your lane. Touch two systems and the PR is rejected.
- Sign the CLA. Work on the “completely free” project, then assign it.
- Avoid AI “to write anything more than maybe an function,” while the public site is a template full of dummy copy.
This is the same person who wrote that DCTS was “built from frustration” with “toxic project culture” and “big egos.” The contributing guide is that sentence, inverted, as policy.
Why this matters
Self-hosting does not save you from the admin.
A mean maintainer is a product defect. DCTS wants instance admins, a plugin system, IP-based spam filters, proof-of-work on connect, and a culture that perma-bans first and writes a thread later. The comparison table already treats rumor as evidence. The founder already uses CSAM allegations as a marketing footnote.
If the software were excellent, the person would still be a reason to walk. The software is a CSS homework assignment that learned sockets. The person is the part that does not get a patch.