How that MIGHT change things?
Just look at every other tech company in the space that’s gone public to see how it WILL change things. It’s not a mystery at this point.
The real question is how do you enshittify a product that is already shit?
Since when is Discord shit? Oh no, an easy to use application with incredible sound quality! Ahhhh
Anything annoying I can think of is stuff that makes a lot of sense considering said application is, for most people, 100% free.
The gamification, closed protocol and grey patterns make sense? It really doesn’t have to be that way.
That said, up to this point, Discord at least appears to have made a good faith attempt at providing a useful service while also making a profit. I suspect we’re about to see the dial crank over into “turn a profit for the next quarterly report” territory.
You don’t need to engage with the gamification thing. Closed protocol sure I guess, and also I’m sorry I don’t know what “grey partterns” are and am gunna assume that you’re not referring to the colour palette.
But it’s a solid product that largely just works. I’m still worried, obviously, that certain voluntary things will become less voluntary and things will get much more frustrating as they search to go public.
Discord is technologically lightyears ahead of their competition. Its by far the smoothest large scale chat application out there. The only “dark pattern” is them pushing Nitro and you know what users should buy nitro not free to run a service at that scale.
Let the final enshitification commence
╰( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )つ──☆*:・ﾟ
Is discord not enshitty?
I open it and it updates 6 times, then I get a full page ad for nitro. Then all the settings push nitro. And all the “servers” push nitro.
It is. Which is why I‘m baffled they didn’t go public already.
discord is one of those things i struggle to find an alternative to. not because i lack the skill to do it myself or to make something else do the same tasks, but because all my friends who aren’t as techy as me or big servers i like talking to wouldnt migrate.
having seen its decline since 2016, sooner or later ill have to make the jump but its gonna be harder than ditching google or microsoft because of the community aspect of it.
And so many things using it instead of a forum for information or questions
A great problem of our society is there being too many problems to have any group of people focus on enough to get any of them solved.
If every issue has just 2% of people caring about it, companies can easily just write those 2% off and do business as usual.
This is why to not have an enshitifed world it has to be top down, and people have to participate in politics logically as opposed to based on which groups of people they hate.
The basic maths of it just doesn’t work for any sort of bottom up action.
It would have to be a relative time of quiet and one company sticking out like a sore thumb for long enough for them to be damaged.
You have seen how rapidly things are getting worse.
There is not going to be that happening, and even if there were, it wouldn’t be enough as there are thousands more issues.
It will inevitably focus more on pleasing its public investors than anything else, therefore enshittification.
Maybe Steam/Valve is a unicorn, but it’s not publicly traded and it’s doing just fine.
Don’t use Discord!
IRC and Matrix are better, free alternatives.
Discord got popular because it did Skype and Mumble better than both, but it has suffered a lot from Enshitification
I use both matrix and discord regularly and matrix is nowhere near a viable alternative for discord, the way they work is just too different. The only real alternative I’ve been able to find is guilded but it’s no better than discord since it’s still completely centralized and closed source
I’m on Matrix. That felt like an epic accomplishment that required both mobile and desktop. I don’t remember why it was so difficult, but the registration/login/association process was awful. Maybe that’s just Matrix.org.
Looking for things to do with my Pi that I’m upgrading today with an SSD. Maybe I’ll run my own Matrix server on it so that there can be something else technically running with no traffic.
Came here to say this. Matrix is also a bit clunky still.
Also: Stoat (formerly Revolt)
IRC doesnt fit the usecase at all.
“I wish all my friends would leave discord and go to an alternative chat platform”
The monkey paw curls and all your friends move to MS Teams.
ICQ
I’m guessing this will lead to more things being locked behind their subscription model. Ransoming core features for cash is the standard template of this process.
Well this gives me time to start my own Mumble server now
I ran one off a raspberry pi for years before we switched to discord. It just worked for voice chat.
This news comes immediately after they floated the idea of embedding AI, you say?
Pretty much immediately after yeah
Well the developers, like all techbros, have been sweetening up Discord to what it is. Once they find a pretty buyer, they’ll sell it for top dollar. That’s the real completion cycle of enshittification. Some private firm will have it or someone like Microsoft may have it and do to it like they’ve done with Skype.
They did, at least, be smart enough to already say no to a buyout attempt by Microsoft a few years ago
I genuinely do not know how that would change anything. It‘s already monetized thoroughly. They will just add even more ad campaign quests and stuff which you can ignore.
Have you not seen the world? Everything, no matter how horrific, can always get infinitely worse.
The PIF could buy it and ban gay people. Israel could buy it and persecute people against genocide. A rich right wing billionaire could buy it and force even more nazi memes upon the youth. They could make a monetized limit to how many servers one can join that is purposefully below any sane reasonable or normal level. They could make PMs pay per message.
There are infinite ways it can get worse. Infinite.
I‘m pretty sure Discord is already selling data of every single chat message to everyone. Especially secret services for prosecution. If they make it too shitty people will just migrate somewhere else and nothing of value was lost. It does not have the strong network effect of a Xitter or Youtube.
They can lock more features behind nitro. They can charge to run a server. They can add servers you have to pay to join. There is a ton of stuff they can do that would just make things suckier for users on the platform.
Yes, finally! I’m ready for this shitty platform to fucking die already.
Wonder what’ll be next after Discord enshittifies and alienates all the current users.
There’s like 4 contenders, but all missing the crucial thing, critical mass of users
It’s been enshittifying for a while now.
Who the hell would pay $12 for some fancy profile template? Who’d pay $6 just for an animated thing that revolves around your profile picture? Half of that garbage obstructs your profile.
Not even subscribing to their $10 Nitro deal is worth it. Wow, you get to have a poor selection of ways to display your name. Maybe if a server you really love to be in was active and could take advantage of some of the things advertised, probably might be worth it. But a lot of the time, I’m in servers that don’t so I don’t see a point.
The only reason for a sub is to use emotes everywhere and thats it. Thank god there is Vencord
You’re right, guess I should’ve said “enshittify further”.
I didn’t think Discord could get any worse!
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