EDAR is Echo Discord Alternative Review. u/ad3lyt posts it on r/DiscordAlternatives. Each installment scores a chat app out of 9. The disclaimer is always the same: he owns a direct competitor, and he is the only reviewer. Then he keeps scoring.
Scroll sideways on a phone if the table is tight.
| Date | Target | Score | Thread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2026 | Echo (his) | 3.3 / 9 | Echo EDAR Review |
| Aug 2026 | Element | 6 / 9 | Element EDAR Review |
| Sept 2026 | Stoat | 6 / 9 | Stoat EDAR Review |
Fenrid got a separate 3/10 write-up, 1 June 2026, labelled “Heavy” slop, with a conflict-of-interest line at the top. The method is a 3×3 grid: Trust (license, centralisation, other), Experience (UI, UX, features), Readiness (popularity, platform parity, staying power). He is the only person filling the grid. He then built alternatives-discord.com so visitors can weight those cells and receive a ranked list.
Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.
A disclaimer is a label. It does not make a one-person competitor ranking independent. Independent would mean someone else writes it.
Echo EDAR, August 2026, his words:
He told readers that if they wanted a ready Discord alternative, they should pick a higher-scoring app than his. That is the honest product review. The rest of his Reddit history is launch threads, demo videos, “Has anyone tried out Echo?”, and “Is Echo a secure discord alternative that can be trusted?” The self-score and the marketing do not share a narrator.
Element: top pick if you will relearn everything; UK jurisdiction is “a very major concern”; “I would not recommend Element if you care about a good client.” Stoat: “nice conservative option,” “not the most creative,” Material Design “isn’t the right choice,” empty widths and over-long modals. Fenrid: “overhyped,” “way too much obvious LLM assistance,” Turkey as “an authoritarian State.”
On 28 May 2026 he posted “Osmium is botting / manufacturing their own posts + attacking other alternatives.” Evidence offered: a comment that “sounded nothing at all like anything any normal person would write,” and that top commenters “seemed to be devs.” Two days later, a warning thread accused him of upvote botting. He answered that he has done zero botting, and that it is “easily verifiable.” He did not post the verification.
PullPush, author u/ad3lyt, sample from 2026:
Echo Community Guidelines, 3 June 2026: “Self-promotion, advertising, or unsolicited marketing is not allowed on the platform.” The platform is Echo. The channel is Reddit. The distinction is doing a lot of work.
A commenter on the Echo EDAR, u/Any_Illustrator360, put Echo on an “I wouldn’t reccomend it” list, citing Adel’s own review, because of centralized bans even for self-hosted instances. That is a reader using the scoreboard as written. The scoreboard still funnels people through a site Adel owns.
The grid is real. The conflict line is real. The problem is the rest of the method:
You can disclose a conflict and still be the conflict. EDAR is Adel talking about the market he wants to win, in the subreddit where that market argues.