$120k a year for Slack with 1k users
twitter.com
twitter.com
I couldn't imagine using discord for a company. Slack actually provides some value outside of just chat that makes it legitimately nicer than the mid 00's solution of AOL messenger (or MSN) that companies used to use. I don't think self hosting a chat of similar value would be much cheaper if you did it properly. 1,000 users will require plenty of servers and failover, plenty of storage for messages (even if you cut it off at 90 days), etc. A lot of people use slack as an ad-hoc note storing service with search so go ahead and add even more hardware. On AWS this would get prohibitively expensive quickly. Honestly I could do without 90% of the features and would be very happy if I could just run IRC in my terminal for work. Unfortunately IRC is non-trivial to get a normal person started on.
IRC provides probably at most 2% of the features of those two, even stuff that I use daily like settings a status, having a profile picture, editing messages, pining messages, and other very basic stuff.
Anyone suggesting IRC as an entreprise solution is a greybeard of thr highest order.
Yes.
> I use daily like settings a status, having a profile picture, editing messages, pining messages, and other very basic stuff.
These are client side. I got by for a long time without any of this. I continue to get by without it today. I use about 2% of slack's features and remain as productive and "available" as needed. Slack is a complete waste of time and space to me. The only people who seem to REALLY like it are normies. Which is the market anyway.
In what way? I didn't know about this.
1) A good chunk of Discord is owned by Tencent, a big Chinese conglomerate
2) Discord decrypts and then re-encrypts content on its servers, allegedly for efficiency reasons
I think for a small startup that is making games/software which are non-controversial, Discord might still be a fine choice. For anything requiring assurances of enterprise-grade security, I'd avoid it.
The most credible source from this is this article[0], but since it's VC we have no idea what the ownership looks like. For all we know Tencent owns 5% or less of Discord, especially given two companies are listed before them in the article:
> The round was led by Greenoaks Capital with participation from Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures and Technology Opportunity Partners.
In general Tencent has more pull in other big gaming companies[1], which is more concerning imo.
0: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/gaming-chat-startup-discor...
Not only that, the attachments on private messages are publicly visible.
Send an attachment in a private chat. Grab the link. Open it in a browser unaffiliated with your Discord login. wget it on a VM a thousand miles away. Its now publicly hosted.
Each attachment's ID is in a snowflake[0], so the urls are
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/:SERVER_ID/:ATTACHMENT_ID/:filename.png
0: https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/channel#attach...
"We may also use content posted in public spaces to help power features like Server Discovery and to help us identify harmful content on the services."
So they monitor all chat for badthink.
"We collect information about the device you are using to access the services. This includes information like your IP address, operating system information, browser information, and information about your device settings, such as your microphone and/or camera."
Inappropriate access to hardware and private information.
"We may collect or share personal data if we think someone’s life is in danger—for example, to help resolve an urgent medical situation."
So not only do they monitor chat they monitor it for someone's life being in danger. Not sure how this is their responsibility.
> We may share information in response to a request for information if we believe disclosure is required by law, including meeting national security or law enforcement requirements
Say something 2 years ago that is logged forever and law enforcement goes on a fishing expedition when the party in power thinks its wrongthink.
> We retain personal information for as long as it is needed for the purposes for which we collected it.
Information is never deleted.
There's even more in the privacy policy but I'm not going to keep rooting around in it to prove my point that you're wrong.
Funding [2]
Discord has taken funding from Tencent which means they're liable to the CCP. Moreover, the list of funders includes large companies known for suing/taking legal action against users historically. Sony, for example.
Moreover EVERYTHING YOU DO including interacting on unrelated websites that support discord goes to them. They MINE YOUR DATA and you have no control over it.
Your argument my claims are gradiose is false on its face. I assume you're a paid shill. Discord is spyware by any other name. Maybe you're willing to accept the risks but most people use it ignorant of the fact they are as bad as Facebook when it comes to spying.
"Badthink"? Please. They engage in automatic moderation based on keywords and maybe some ML to detect spam, like any other company. And only based on chats that happen in already-public servers that have opted into the server discovery feature.
> Inappropriate access to hardware and private information.
Inappropriate? Private information? Name one server that wouldn't store some analytics data about your user agent and IP.
> So not only do they monitor chat they monitor it for someone's life being in danger. Not sure how this is their responsibility.
If Discord gets a T&S ticket about a possible suicide attempt, what do you think they should do about it, ignore it? I would hope that Discord would use their best judgement and the information at their disposal to notify the proper authorities, as long as the authorities in question could be trusted to act in a non-confrontational manner (unfortunately, most can't and often inflame the situation)
> Say something 2 years ago that is logged forever and law enforcement goes on a fishing expedition when the party in power thinks its wrongthink.
Okay, and? How is that "discord is just spying equipment"? If you have a server with archival logs and search capabilities, which are feature that users really, really value out of discord compared to e.g. IRC, then you're not going to get out of the requirement to present those logs to authorities if legally required.
Even if you call it "automatic moderation" it is a privacy violation. I don't really are how you spin it.
> Inappropriate? Private information? Name one server that wouldn't store some analytics data about your user agent and IP.
Just because it's done often doesn't mean it has to be done. There's a difference between incidental IP storage via a firewall or edge router, and actively storing the running applications, IP address, geolocation data, camera status, images, etc on a device. One is incidental (to make that abundantly clear) and the other is deliberate spying.
> If Discord gets a T&S ticket about a possible suicide attempt, what do you think they should do about it, ignore it? I would hope that Discord would use their best judgement and the information at their disposal to notify the proper authorities, as long as the authorities in question could be trusted to act in a non-confrontational manner (unfortunately, most can't and often inflame the situation)
I can think of all the fun ways this could be abused to SWAT someone. Again to restate the conclusion: it is not discords problem. Legally, or otherwise. It likely endangers people more than it helps, and of the people it does help, they are likely better serviced by the people in the channel or their family and friends.
> Okay, and? How is that "discord is just spying equipment"? If you have a server with archival logs and search capabilities, which are feature that users really, really value out of discord compared to e.g. IRC, then you're not going to get out of the requirement to present those logs to authorities if legally required.
First, you're not required by any law enforcement to carry logs. A subpoena can ask you for logs, but if you have none there's most likely nothing they can do. If you get busted withholding data with a valid judge signed a court ordered subpoena then you are in trouble. Do you honestly believe they'll send the marshals to your door when you say honestly and under oath you have no data to give? If they want logs they'll just tap the line. See room 641a, and assume that they likely have one in every telco and every major service including discord. If they really want the data they will go to great lengths to get you to do something to give it to them (See: Edward Snowden's case) but this instances are so extremely rare they almost aren't worth considering.
I've ran online services for a number of years, worked in numerous companies, and none of them had a legal department for logs of chat. Since email is persisted it can be subpoena'd easier. Same with SMS, etc. IRC logs, etc can be transient (they really aren't needed) and so are far less likely to be requested.
Further, storage of logs pursuant to lawful warrants where the user base is notified of the existence of a search ongoing is different than logs who are given, without a fight, to authorities.
Discord falls into the category of services that give up information without a fight. This is, yet again, another privacy violation on several terms.
You honestly cannot argue that we should accept these violations as normal. The constant encroachment of corporations and law enforcement into our homes is bordering on constitutional levels of violation. If you don't recognize this stuff and act to stop it, it will simply get worse. They already convinced 93% of the earth to carry a tracking device in their pocket. Now you're being followed around in great detail on every major website and every major chat platform. Arguments aside, the only people not worried about this work for Them.
I too prefer IRC. For those that want the message history and scrollback that IRC lacks they can front-end it with things like TheLounge [1] or Convos. TheLounge uses a Redis cache for messages. And for the Slack-specific features, one could implement them either in IRC modules or IRC bots. UnrealIRCD [2] is very modular.
Something which ties events in the community with messages and also has voice chat and other capabilities on the side.
Discord is popular because there are no free alternatives which does what Discord does poorly.
https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bridge/matrix-appservice-sl...
So, again I could be misunderstanding, but I don't think much is really gained here, relative to (say) implementing Matrix for internal use and also asking employees to keep Slack running for certain external chats.
Also it’s been like that for about 4 years now, with very little development or investment by Google, so that should tell you that it’ll just get cut one day.
It would be nearly impossible to this for Salesforce. But for a lot of other applications like Slack and Dropbox, you could carve out a profitable niche.
As part of it we released open source platform covering all use cases from chat to events, videoconferencing, etc. And it interoperates with Discourse and other open source projects, in case you want to use them instead.
See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LvbFg1aaFE
But as for the open source platform, for products like Linux or FreeBSD or Discourse, what's the MRR?
https://medium.com/swlh/why-microsoft-teams-has-been-overtak...
Microsoft Teams now has the most users but they have been pumping money into it like it's free. It's a typical SV move, let's see how long it's sustainable, ie. enough time to kill everyone else.
From the perspective of other users, I just quit the call all of a sudden. How can that be acceptable UX?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal...
I'd like to see something like Matrix, Wire become more mainstream but will be impossible task with Slack/MS already entrenched into so many orgs.
Failing that, many hosted Mattermost options are available.
On the other, I can run you an IRC server for roughly the cost of electricity.
Matrix, on the other hand, is better than Slack, and anyone can run it.
Isn’t this what forums are for (Eg your home private “HN” of sorts)
Frankly, real time chat is a big way to get to know people. It’s basically conversation. Meanwhile 10 years on HN and I don’t know a single person.
Forums are good for lots of things, but don’t discount chat.
How many chat channels/DM/etc do you still message with 10 years later?
I’d guess very few if any.
If that’s the case, what problem is the company trying to solve with a community section? Do they want long term engagement by its users (like you on HN for 10 years) or do they just want tourists stopping by for the short “chat”?
Not OP, but I’m decade plus on here. I am on good terms with people from the internet from back then still. it will be a lot more in a couple more years. Like the person says, OTOH they don’t know a single HNer. Same with me.
—
In regards to your last paragraph. Good Q.
This is besides the point completely but HN isn’t a community in the same way. No one really gets to know any one else on HN. Since there’s so many usernames and most are anon. There is no DMing. Chat is totally diff.
Zoho has a history of being good: https://www.zoho.com/25/
(Disclaimer: I work at Zoho).
Instead of Slack, you can use Discord, Gitter, Telegram, or you can install an open source software like Discourse or our platform Qbix (which integrates with it to add events, meetings etc.)
Why pay third parties for some black box solution that bundles everything, to host your company's data, when there is open source software and free market of hosts that compete on price?
What we really need is IRC 2.0 that supports the quality of life features these companies offer without all of the negatives.
Paying $120k/yr for 1k users is just madness, I was thinking I'd rather force everyone to use a self-hosted IRC server rather than pay $10/user/month for a basic text chat application.
I like the Discord solution much better :)
What would Discord cost for a comparable organization size?
Edit: Womp, womp.
Discord "Nitro" is almost the exact same price per user as Slack: $9.99/mo or $99.99/year.
Maybe you don't need premium Discord, but these are the accounts subsidizing the freemium users and thus making the business viable.
What should the annual cost be to provide chat to 1,000 users? The amount of data can probably add up kinda fast, and retaining and indexing it all to make it searchable at scale is not trivial. Hmm.
Conclusion: I guess the outrage I felt when I upvoted this story was just sticker shock :)
It sounds pricy but not crazy unreasonable, if $10/mo for a core productivity tool (per employee) is too much, I wonder what that 1k employee business is actually doing. In the USA the median wage is $41,000/yr per employee, with tech companies paying far more, so like 0.02% per employee? Does Slack make an employee more than 0.02% productive vs trying to use IRC or Discord? I'd argue it's pretty obvious that it does.
As I've stated in the edit in the grandparent post, my initial reaction appears to have been only early-morning groggy sticker shock. I'm now going to open my computer and proceed about my day, a significant portion of which will be spent on Slack. :D
Cheers bud.
Mattermost is almost free compared to that.. people paying 120k a year for that have lost their mind regardless of the value they extract from it.
It doesn't have the ACLs and controls Slack does, but it certainly feels better and friendlier.
Up until then Slack was used by a number of communities. I ran one of them and Slack never told me to use Discord.
1. https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/18/slack-is-increasing-prices...