this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Anything that wants to meaningfully compete with Discord will probably also need to be able to near-seamlessly port over existing Discord servers to the new platform, since it's so established now. Is there a competitor that can do that?
I'm completely out of the loop, so I might as well ask you: where is discord so established? Never used it in my life. I used IRC, ICQ and MSN in their time. Now for work Slack, teams and zoom. Signal and Telegram privately. Email for everything.
What am I missing? What does discord provide?
Discord is used a lot for gaming groups, modding, software development, and has largely replaced forums for lots of niche communities
Unfortunately, a lot of fandom communities, video games, and (ugh) hobbyist development projects have Discard servers instead of a forum or similar.
It provides a weird IRC-but-not-really type experience that is similar to MSN in some ways. A lot of younger people flock to it because they find computer stuff difficult and they just want it to work, be easy, and have an app. The UI is trendy even though it's horrible to actually navigate due to all the wasted space and buttons.
I really just think it caught on at the right time, though the video calling is pretty good. What I have a problem with is that you need to join a server to access any information inside of it, so it's not searchable from outside of the Discord ecosystem. For dev projects or large communities, that sucks and makes the internet a worse place.
Personally I originally went to Discord because it was the alternative to skype which was increasingly becoming shittier and shittier when Microsoft bought it.
Discord is great as chat program. It should've only ever been used for that. It completely sucks as forum replacement. Discord should've had very little value to any decent organization.
Yes, that's how I ended up there too. At the time, Skype sucked and Mumble/Ventrilo/etc. were seen as too old-school for my friends (and a lot of them didn't have PCs, just smartphones). We also tried Google Meet, Zoom, and Facebook Messenger at various points but Discord always seemed like the most reliable.
I have a hobby development project with a modest community and maintain a Discord server basically because it's necessary in order to avoid reducing my potential community reach by at least 50%.
I'm active on GitHub and respond to comments and issues there. I maintain an official thread for my project on the official forum for the game it's related to. I also keep all documentation, downloads, and guides off Discord and on the clearnet. Discord is still easily 80% or more of where people look for information about the project.
That's great - I am obviously not talking about you in that case. I understand why people want to use it, I just don't think Discord's features are good enough to justify the mass adoption and the walled garden and UI are bad.
Yeah, I'm just sort of also complaining because it feels like I have to use it.
Every single small game I play has effectively the entirety of their support, community and forums run through discord. Instead of easy to search and discover forums, I have to use crappy infinite chat logs. It sucks.
A really ugly and confusing UI.
You sure about that part? I thought they shut down. I guess they might have some user-based servers?
if you read the whole sentence it might make more sense...
Whoops, I certainly missed that. Thank you!
Discord is fashionable. That’s it. The whole app is fantastically impractical if you want to use file or screen sharing. It’s just a bunch of gamers circle-jerking each other, which is a perfect way to keep them from infesting the rest of the internet.
I say this with all due respect: Who gives a shit? If you were foolish enough to dump your entire community into Discord alone and don't have an off-ramp, that's your own fucking problem.
EDIT: Also, Matrix already has a bridge for Discord and has for a while:
https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/discord/
Who gives a shit? The people who use it that you apparently want to switch to something else, for one. Shouldn't it be easy to switch, like going from Chrome to Firefox? That's how we get out of Discord hell.
Say you have no idea how any of this works without saying you have no idea how any of this works.
Why is it our job to fix the problems of a private, profit-focused company?
We're not fixing Discord's problems, oh my god. We're trying to get their existing users to go somewhere else even though it's what's familiar and Discord works for them.
Also it's definitely possible to code an import tool that scrapes a given server for info on how to structure things on the new platform, so idk what you think you're gaining by insulting my comparison to an aspect of a service that makes users motivated to switch.
I don't know who shat in your coffee, but get a fucking new cup.
Honestly the onboarding for a lot of alternatives to various to popular platforms/apps (Matrix, Mastodon, etc) seems to be the biggest impediment to more adoption of those platforms and apps.
By onboarding here I mean the communities that use those platforms recruiting others to join them and help build communities up.
Like goddamn if that users comment was the first time I'd heard of Matrix it would have turned me away for sure.
Not to mention Mastodon having a reputation that proceeds it.
Yes, exactly! At this point, some of these communities have been on Discord for years and have specialized bots for certain tasks. They don't want to start over, and I don't want them to either - there's tons of real work that these communities have put in. I think that these messaging services that want to make headway in the space Discord occupies need to reduce the friction in switching because a lot of Discord admins do believe that the feature set is better, they just can't easily move over.
This happens to organizations all the time and it's a known issue - Discord communities are no different. I'm hoping something comes along in the next few years if it doesn't already exist in its infancy right now. Even at the user level, I know many people are confused about Matrix. I don't know how exactly to fix these issues, but they need to be priorities.