For many scenes, the community is an integral part of the ecosystem. Unless OP is the only person who can develop anti-cheat software, s/he's beholden to the community even if s/he's among the leader(s).
> People need to learn how to adapt.
They will adapt by starting their own Discord and cutting OP out.
Exactly. And it's depressing. People of every community think they "need" Discord (or a similar tool) and if you don't create it, they'll create it themselves.
"Hey, what about if AwesomeCommunity had a Discord?"
"I don't see the point, we already have a group here."
"Well, but some people like Discord!"
"Ok"
"Do you mind if we create a fan Discord community then?"
And presto! The community gets Discord and additional fragmentation, whether you like it or not.
Discord is a cancer.
The good news is that you'll have additional fragmentation with facebook groups and reddit, all overlapping your community so that no two groups are exactly the same!
If you want to post an update to the community for $thing, you must remember the Discord, Facebook group and reddit sub!
"Hey guys, we already have a reddit sub, do we really need a facebook group?"
"Well, if you don't mind I'll go create an unofficial $thing fb group!"
(Bonus points if you subscribe to all and get to see the same content being posted to every venue, with somewhat the same people reacting to it. It boggles the mind)
If you don't post on those groups or create them, they get created anyway, and now they exist and you have no direct influence on them; and that can easily result in a community misunderstanding and split.
And if you do create them, you've encouraged walled gardening and there will STILL be stuff not duplicated.
Doesn't mean you have to support the people that chose to go elsewhere and tolerate those that are advertising platforms.
Splits are happening in small-ish communities too. People don't know why, but they have to have Discord, facebook, reddit, etc. And if you join all of them -- which you often do in case they are similar but not exactly the same ("Why are you asking this? The answer was posted to the facebook group! Oh, but we are in Reddit, never mind, here's a link to fb") -- you'll see some of the same people in all of them. The one caveat is that the "owner" of the community (say, the game devs if this is about a game) are likely to be more active in only one of the platforms; Murphy's Law dictates it likely won't be in the one you prefer.
Which really raises the question, if (almost) the same bunch of people is posting in Discord/fb/reddit/whatever, do we really need all those platforms? What purpose do they serve?
But indeed it's doomed if you do and doomed if you don't. You have no control. You can be sure someone will create that goddamn Discord.
But for large groups of the world (who are not 'gamers' or 'computer literate' or whatever) Facebook wins because everyone has Facebook.
I loved phpbb forums! I felt in control. Sadly, every community I was part of has moved on from there. One private community (I'm talking fewer than 15 members) I belong to moved to Discord.
It went like this:
"Hey, let's have a Discord"
(me) "But I don't wanna."
"Yesss... it's optional, the forum won't cease to exist and you can opt-out of Discord".
Current situation: the phpbb forum is all but dead. All of the activity happens in Discord. For no good reason, except that people who are online and chatting 24/7 like it. I don't. The forum has died for me.
Rinse and repeat for many other communities I used to enjoy (sometimes it's not Discord but facebook groups, with their absolutely aweful usability which is miles worse than phpbb, but you get the idea).
I've noticed that one small sized community still has an active forum at the same time as a Discord, I suspect because one/two of the users have absolutely refused to use Discord (it might help here that they are 60+ years old ?).
I've seen this happen more than once. "Resisting" is not an option if you value the group of people more than the software platform. What would be the point of "making my stand" in phpbb? The forum software is not my friend.
> but it can still be used as a blog of sorts at that point
No. Why would I want a blog? I wanted to keep this community of people.
But I can see how this can be tempting for interacting with people that aren't friends yet (so won't spend extra effort to communicate with you via the medium of your choice), but aren't just random acquaintances any more.
(But personally, at this point I don't see why I would want to associate myself with the kind of people that insist on using platforms.)
The people come first, the software comes second. Always. I value people over software.
> (But personally, at this point I don't see why I would want to associate myself with the kind of people that insist on using platforms.)
I... don't know how to respond to this. Yours is such a bizarre take to me. People come first, my preferred software (platform or not) comes a very distant second.
https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html
Assuming you must use proprietary solutions to reach your people, RMS's solution is to use the other platforms to convert to your open platform. Maybe that won't work for everyone, but at least it allows usage of cockroach motel systems to your open one.
(At least Stallman's advice is targeted at organizations, where the official nature of communications might stop the person doing the job getting in the engagement trap...)
Its hard to be suckered into a social media site if you never go there. Then again, HN is also a social media site too.