this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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Discord comes with other issues, but I would be fine with services offering an ad-supported free tier and an ad-free paid tier. That's been a thing for a while. If Nitro gets rid of these ads, then that seems like a possibly sustainable approach to me.
Of course, this is ignoring Discord's other issues, like their handling of user data. I'd love a service like Discord that was fully e2ee, even if it had an ad-supported free tier (without tracking) and a paid ad-free tier. Existing alternatives often lack some Discord features, like screen sharing and voice chats.
Their problem is probably that they actually took too long to monetise it.
Before Discord, groups were often paying for hosted team speak, ventrilo or mumble servers. Then along came discord with it's VC money and did what they did and more for free. Now most people probably are not willing to pay for what used to be a paid service.
That's the silicon valley way though, get people hooked, then monetize.
Where are most people going to go, back to teamspeak? Nope, most are going nowhere, just like most users didn't leave reddit.
Edit: God damn autocorrect needs to chill
Maybe I'm just too old (or not enough of a gamer), but I've never used Discord for screen sharing or voice chat. It's basically my current ICQ.
If I want to voice chat, I have this weird thing called a phone.
Discord's call quality is 100x better than a phone call, btw.
More reliable too, honestly. Plus the video streaming is indispensable. Honestly, discord voice chat is a big part of the reason I haven't made a serious attempt to use Matrix for much if anything. The lack of push to talk is a deal breaker. Also like, none of my friends are there.
Maybe if you pay for Nitro. Without it, the standard call quality is only 96kbps. Meanwhile VoLTE/VoNR and HD Voice have made mobile phone calls typically equal or higher quality. If you only ever call corporate, business or government services, those are typically still narrowband though, so you're not going to notice.
It depends on whether the server you're on is boosted, also. But even a standard voice server is better quality than a phone. Phones may technically be able to play audio with a higher bitrate, but that's limited by both cell service and speaker quality.
It really isn't in my experiences, but maybe it's different in Australia? As well, other services like Telegram or Signal have way better quality too. Discord just kinda sucks.
In my experience discord literally feels like I'm in the room with someone. I use it constantly and it's been great for me. Phones on the other hand are kinda garbage. The signal is consistently unreliable. Sometimes I literally get calls where one of us can't hear the other. Sometimes several calls in a row. Occasionally calls just don't even go through.
I remember when standard mp3 quality -- these are pre-Napster days -- was 112kbps. Honestly, 96 is sufficient for a voice call, especially for those of us who remember landline quality.
I mean yea, absolutely, but HD Voice can do 128kbps and comparatively that's better than Discord. The other person's comment seemed a bit snarky so I wanted to refute their assertion.
A BMW 3-series will get to to 100km/h way faster than a Honda Civic, but way slower than a Swasticar. Context is important. I had three Civics and no issue making it from Point A to Point B, enjoying blowing past 911 Porsches back when Montana didn't have a speed limit. Holy shit, is gas mileage terrible at 198km/h (can be done in a stick while also going downhill).
Thing is, for pure voice communication, 96kbps suffices. We're talking like somehow bumping it to 128 makes a noticeable difference when it doesn't.
It does for me, but I have auditory processing issues so your mileage may vary. Discord also just has a lot of issues, like audio sources messing up, or calls cutting completely for up to ten seconds for no discernible reason.
I dont.
I don't care what calls can do. What they regularly do for me is sound like shit.
skill issue ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
🌏🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
The last thing I want to do with complete strangers is give them my phone number lol. Aside from obvious privacy concerns and call quality concerns, Discord is internet-based, so I don't need cell service or international calling to talk to people.
Screen sharing during voice calls is super helpful as well. It's a pretty major feature of Discord, Teams, and I believe Skype (RIP), but Teams is not really any better than Discord and a lot more bloated.
International calls are what Signal is for!
Yeah, Discord's easy/free voice chat was the reason it got so popular. It was so much easier to use than any of the alternatives, and in-game VC was a mixture of piss-poor quality and full of toxic 14 year olds.