Discussion - Introduction

What is Discussion

Discussion is above all a mobile app for keeping in touch with friends and family – similar to WhatsApp or Messenger. You can chat one-to-one or in groups, send photos, videos and files, make voice and video calls (including group calls), play online games together and vote in polls. The app can automatically translate a conversation into each participant's language, so you can easily chat with friends and family abroad. The app is available for Android and iPhone, speaks 12 languages and you can download it for free using the buttons or QR codes above.

What sets it apart from the big apps is mainly how it treats your data:

• Your data stays in the Czech Republic. We store messages, photos and other content on our own server in the Czech Republic, not in the data centres of multinational corporations.
• We don't exploit anything. We don't sell your data to anyone and we don't use it to target ads or build profiles.
• Free and ad-free. No ads and no subscription. Even artificial intelligence features such as automatic translation come with a free weekly allowance.
• There is no corporation behind it. My wife and I programmed the app and the website in the evenings and at weekends, and we run them as our hobby. We don't make money from your data or your attention.

Your account is shared by the app and the website, so you can also send messages from your computer (the envelope icon in the website's top menu).

Discussions and articles on the website

Besides the app, there is the discussion.cz website – a social network that isn't about self-promotion, so you don't have to stress about uploading photos of your amazing life here every day. The website is meant for discussions, i.e. articles under which you can write comments and vote in polls. For example, you can create a discussion about a birthday party just for your friends, upload photos from the party and use a poll to agree on the date of the next event. Or you can write a public discussion about your short story, game or curiosity and send the link to anyone – anyone can read a public discussion, even without registering, and thanks to search engines others can easily find it too. No annoying ads will pop up here either. Try to create discussions in the categories that suit them best.

How to get started

Without registering, you can read all public discussions – the home page shows the newest ones and the “Discussions” item in the top menu leads to their categories. If you want to write a comment, vote in a poll or chat with friends, you need to register. When registering, you only fill in your e-mail, nickname and password and then confirm the link that will arrive by e-mail. You won't start receiving advertising e-mails. You will find registration in the top menu under “Register” (or directly in the app); next time you sign in with “Sign in”.

A signed-in user sees discussions of their friends and discussions marked with a star, which means greater importance for everyone, under the “News” item. At the top are the ones where something happened most recently – the article changed, someone wrote a comment and so on.

How do you add friends? In the app on the “Contacts” tab, on the website on your account page (the item with your nickname in the top menu), enter your friend's nickname or e-mail and send them a friend request. If they don't have an account here yet, you can send an invitation straight to their e-mail. You can also send a friend request from any user's profile with the “Request friendship” button. As soon as they accept your friendship, you can chat, call and play together, and you will also see their discussions for friends.

Your own discussions

As a registered user, you can create your own discussions. In the category where the discussion belongs, click the “New discussion” button. The most important part is the article itself, into which you can also insert photos or a link to a YouTube video. After saving, the discussion appears in that category and, as the author, you will see a pencil icon in it that lets you edit it at any time, add photos and so on. Below the article, you can also add a poll with your own answers using the “Add poll” button – either with one vote per user, or with the option to choose several answers.

Types of discussions

The type of a discussion determines who can see it:

• Public: everyone can see it, including people who aren't registered, and it is offered in discussion lists and in search. You can send the link to anyone.
• For friends: only your friends on Discussion can see it, after signing in. It is handy for family events or photos that not everyone should see.
• Private: only you can see it. It is handy for an article in progress that you want to publish later – you can change the type of a discussion at any time.

Development team

Michal & Markéta

Technical information

• .NET 10: ASP.NET Core, Blazor, Entity Framework Core, SignalR
• .NET MAUI – mobile app for Android and iOS
• PostgreSQL 18
• Ubuntu server in the Czech Republic, Nginx